View PDF version of this page

A GOTHIC CATHEDRAL 75 later that the eye took note of the differences. I went slowly round it. For one half of the circuit a road, practicable for vehicles, passed actually through the buttresses, whose arches flung a succession of shadows over it. Every shy corner showed some detail of architectural beauty. NO cathedral in England could show more. What struck me most, however, was the great western front, across the whole of which ran a lofty and magnificent portico. The groined roof of this rested on a series of fluted columns, in which were empty niches once filled with statues, and three tall doors of equal size opened from it into the aisles within. Here I set up my camera ; and I had, whilst selecting 'the best point of view, a good oppor-tunity of watching a stream of worshippers who at short intervals were passing in to their devotions. The dress of some of them was semi-European, but they had for the most part turbans and loose robes. What could their business be, my English mind asked—the business of these strange figures within these familiar-looking doors ? My eye instinctively looked for a gowned verger extracting a halfcrown from some pleased sight-seeing clergyman, and for demure young ladies mincing in with their prayer-books and parcels of slippers hidden under their arms for the curate. But before the doors barbarous curtains hung, marked not with crosses, but huge cabalistic symbols ; and when these were pushed aside, and a faint sound came from within, it was not

View PDF version of this page