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Untitled Article
of uneasy attention—the two respectable gentlewomen suddenly awoke , gave one short stare , and then looked unusually devout to atone for their brief state of somnific abstraction . The service ended , we were free to take a survey of that part of the building we had passed so rapidly on entering .
The peculiar advantage which York Minster possesses over every other cathedral which we have seen , is in its magnificent central tower . Standing at the profusely ornamented entrance to the choir , then sending the eyes up into the stupendous
vault above , suddenly to bring them down again to look along the avenue of pillars that lead to the western end , is a demand upon the vision that almost agonizes the eye , lest it should not at once take in all that is spread out before it . The pillars
that support the tower are fluted , without one single horizontal
impediment . They rise up higher—higher still , so that the eye as it gradually follows their upward tending , is in the same condition perpendicularly as it is in the gallery of the Louvre horizontally—it seems to be taking an endless journey . There is in no part of it . anything to mar the magnificence of the whole . The windows are all on a grand scale , and wherever modern additions have of necessity been introduced , even of the minutest kind , good taste has ever been ready to regulate
their disposition . As we were leaving the area that surrounds the cathedral , a 1
persou who had sat near us duringthe service , seeing that we were strangers , most kindly informed us that in the afternoon there would be a fine anthem , and no sermon ! a fair practical comment upon what had been the reflections of the morning . Our visit was to the Minster , and not the town , and even had the infliction been repeated , we had intended passing as much of
the day with it as we could . The day had cleared—the mists were all gone—and a blue afternoon sky , with a faint tint of coining twilight , showed the tower in clearly defined beauty when next we saw it . The sun had set behind the surrounding houses , but it threw up a parting gleam on the rich pinnacled towers of the western front ,
and here and there the more lofty parts of the building glowed with a bright amber hue . We entered the garden in which it partly stands , with its surrounding erections generally in good keeping , and its beautiful cluster of grey ivy-covered miniature arches . Another pre-eminent beauty which York Minster possesses over most others , is in the superiority of its many
different points of view . There is no sacrifice of the rest to one magnificent front , leaving the remaining whole as a sort of large back door to the other . As you walk round it , each successive point of view is a sublime picture * . It is like seeing a procession of cathedrals pass one after the other . Towards the eastern end , on one side , there is an evil which , is often
Untitled Article
York Minster and the Forest Bugle . 41
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1836, page 41, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2653/page/41/
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