Very possibly, in some cathedral that I have seen, or
am yet to see, there may be arches as stately as these; but I doubt
whether they can ever show to such advantage in a perfect edifice as they
do in this ruin,--most of them broken, only one, as far as I recollect,
still completing its sweep. In this state they suggest a greater majesty
and beauty than any finished human work can show; the crumbling traces of
the half-obliterated design producing somewhat of the effect of the first
idea of anything admirable, when it dawns upon the mind of an artist or a
poet,--an idea which, do what he may, he is sure to fall short of in his
attempt to embody it.
In the middle of the choir is a much-dilapidated monument of a
cross-legged knight (a crusader, of course) in armor, very rudely
executed; and, against the wall, lie two or three more bruised and
battered warriors, with square helmets on their heads and visors down.
Nothing can be uglier than these figures; the sculpture of those days
seems to have been far behind the architecture. And yet they knew how to
put a grotesque expression into the faces of their images, and we saw
some fantastic shapes and heads at the lower points of arches which would
do to copy into Punch. In the chancel, just at the point below where the
high altar stands, was the burial-place of the old Barons of Kendal. The
broken crusader, perhaps, represents one of them; and some of their
stalwart bones might be found by digging down.
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