True, the hand of
the restorer had been busy, but it had wrought lovingly and gently, and
wherein it had erred, the same influences of nature, though as yet their
effects were invisible, were already at work--of the many making one. I
will not trouble my reader, I say, with any architectural description,
which, possibly even more than a detailed description of natural beauty
dissociated from human feeling, would only weary him, even if it were not
unintelligible. When we are reading a poem, we do not first of all examine
the construction and dwell on the rhymes and rhythms; all that comes after,
if we find that the poem itself is so good that its parts are therefore
worth examining, as being probably good in themselves, and elucidatory of
the main work. There were carvings on the ends of the benches all along
the aisle on both sides, well worth examination, and some of them even
of description; but I shall not linger on these. A word only about the
columns: they supported arches of different fashion on the opposite
sides, but they were themselves similar in matter and construction, both
remarkable. They were of coarse granite of the country, chiselled, but very
far from smooth, not to say polished.
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