To the involuntary fancy, the air of petition and of holy need
seems to linger in the place, and the uncovered head acknowledges the
sacred symbols of human inspiration and divine revealing. But this was no
ordinary church into which I followed the gentlewoman who was my guide. As
entering I turned my eyes eastward, a flush of subdued glory invaded them
from the chancel, all the windows of which were of richly stained glass,
and the roof of carved oak lavishly gilded. I had my thoughts about this
chancel, and thence about chancels generally which may appear in another
part of my story. Now I have to do only with the church, not with the
cogitations to which it gave rise. But I will not trouble my reader with
even what I could tell him of the blending and contradicting of styles
and modes of architectural thought in the edifice. Age is to the work of
contesting human hands a wonderful harmoniser of differences. As nature
brings into harmony all fractures of her frame, and even positive
intrusions upon her realm, clothes and discolours them, in the old sense of
the word, so that at length there is no immediate shock at sight of that
which in itself was crude, and is yet coarse, so the various architecture
of this building had been gone over after the builders by the musical hand
of Eld, with wonder of delicate transition and change of key, that one
could almost fancy the music of its exquisite organ had been at work
_informing_ the building, half melting the sutures, wearing the sharpness,
and blending the angles, until in some parts there was but the gentle
flickering of the original conception left, all its self-assertion vanished
under the file of the air and the gnawing of the worm.
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