Ancient_and_modern_York_a_guide

50 ANCIENT AND
adorned with a beautiful variety and richness of sculpture,
cover almost the whole front, and are wrought in each of
the principal buttresses, as well as in the walls between
them. The chief feature of the middle division is a grand
window, an unrivalled specimen of the leafy tracery that
marks the style of the middle of the fourteenth century.
From the arch of this window, rises an acute gable, or
pediment, the point of which, rising above the line of the
battlement, is pierced into open tracery ; behind which is
seen the proper gable of the roof, adorned in front with
tracery mouldings, similar to the window, and crowned at
the top by battlements of open work raking on the sides, up
to a tabernacle on the apex or summit. The principal door
has a gable over its arch, with strait sides, but not so
highly pitched as that over the great window. The door
way is divided by a slender pillar, composed of three
clustered columns, with polished capitals, into two smaller
arches, above which is a circular glazed compartment with
tracery :* the whole is enclosed within a splendid recessed
arch, the headway composed of various mouldings relieved
by hollows. The mouldings are ornamented with sculp
ture, of exquisite delicacy and beauty ; and exhibit the
story of our first parents in the garden of Eden. Over the
door are statues ofArchbishop Melton, Percy, andVavasour.
The Nave is divided into seven parts by buttresses, and
consists of two stories. On the north side it is finished in
a plain style ; the aisle having no pinnacles over its broad
and massive buttresses. This part, remarks Mr. Britton,
"was anciently blocked up by the archbishop's palace and
other buildings ;" but it is now entirely laid open to
view. The once lofty pinnacles of the south aisle, he adds,
" have suffered severely from time, and are now so much
decayed as to display shapeless fragments." Several of
these have, however, been since restored. On entering
* It is worthy of observation that although the great doors were reduced to
ashes in the conflagration of 1840, the painted glass just 'above them was not de
stroyed; a remarkable instance of the great durability of the ancient glass.