On entering the eye is astonished by the pomp of architecture and
the elaborate beauty of sculptured detail. The very walls are
wrought into universal ornament encrusted with tracery, and
scooped into niches crowded with the statues of saints and
martyrs. Stone seems, by the cunning labor of the chisel, to have
been robbed of its weight and density, suspended aloft as if by
magic, and the fretted roof achieved with the wonderful
minuteness and airy security of a cobweb.
Along the sides of the chapel are the lofty stalls of the Knights
of the Bath, richly carved of oak, though with the grotesque
decorations of Gothic architecture. On the pinnacles of the
stalls are affixed the helmets and crests of the knights, with
their scarfs and swords, and above them are suspended their
banners, emblazoned with armorial bearings, and contrasting the
splendor of gold and purple and crimson with the cold gray
fretwork of the roof. In the midst of this grand mausoleum stands
the sepulchre of its founder--his effigy, with that of his queen,
extended on a sumptuous tomb--and the whole surrounded by a
superbly-wrought brazen railing.
There is a sad dreariness in this magnificence, this strange
mixture of tombs and trophies, these emblems of living and
aspiring ambition, close beside mementos which show the dust and
oblivion in which all must sooner or later terminate.
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