building on July 3rd, 1472, when an ordinance was passed by the Dean and Chapter that “on the same day the feast of the Dedication shall be celebrated in time to come.”

Perpendicular Piscina

I have no space to dwell on all the innumerable details of architectural ornament or quaint mediæval devices which decorate the walls, neither on the many interesting monuments scattered throughout the aisles, such as the delicate piscinas, or the Fiddler, a modern reproduction of an old figure which had crowned the little spiral turret of the south transept, intended as a portrait of Dr. Camidge, the organist, at the beginning of this century; or the tomb of good Archbishop Frewen, the first prelate of the Province after the Restoration.

But even a sketch of York Minster would not be complete without some mention of the glass, for if the beauty in the form of our “flos florum” is due to its architecture, very much of its beauty in colour depends on the glowing and mellowed tints with which its windows are filled. But it is a large subject to enter upon, for as regards quantity there are no less than one hundred and three windows in the Minster, most of them entirely, and the remainder partly filled with real old mediæval glass, excepting the tracery. Some of the windows too are of great size. The east window, which is entirely filled with old glass, consists of nine lights, and measures 78 ft. in height, 31 ft. 2 in. in width. The two choir transept windows, that in the north transept to St. William, and the south to St. Cuthbert, measure 73 ft. by 16 ft. They have both been restored, the latter very recently, but by far the greater part of them is old glass. On each side of the choir the aisles contain nine windows measuring 14 ft. 9 in. by 12 ft., only the tracery lights of which are modern; the same number of windows fill the clear-story above, the greater portions of which are ancient.

The Fiddler

The famous window of the north transept, the Five Sisters, consists of five lights, each measuring 53 ft. 6 in. by 5 ft. 1 in., and is entirely of old glass. There are six windows in the north and six in the south aisles of the nave, with only a little modern glass in the tracery. The superb flamboyant window at the west end of the centre aisle measures 56 ft. 3 in. by 25 ft. 4 in., and consists, I believe, entirely of old glass, except the faces of the figures. The clear-story windows are studded with ancient shields, but a great part of the glass is, I fancy, modern; those of the vestibule, 8 in number, measuring 32 ft. by 18, are of old glass, including the tracery lights. And in the Chapter House the seven windows, of five lights each, are filled with old glass. The east window has been clumsily restored by Willement. In the side windows of the transepts there is some old glass, and the great rose window over the south entrance still retains much of the old glass; while far overhead in the tower there are some really fine bold designs of late, but genuine, design and execution. Altogether, according to actual measurements, there are 25,531 superficial feet of mediæval glass in the Minster, i.e., more than half an acre—a possession, we should think, unequalled by any church in England, if not in Christendom.

But the difficulty in describing the glass arises from the fact that many of the windows are composed of fragments of glass of different dates, which, for various reasons, perhaps to preserve them, have been interchanged during past generations. The educated eye of the glass painter can detect splendid specimens of every school of glass painting throughout the Minster, but sometimes comparatively small portions isolated in the midst of glass of a totally different period. The Five Sisters window is an almost complete specimen of Early English glass, with an elaborate geometrical pattern formed by the conventional foliage of the planta benedicta, but at the foot of the central light there is a panel consisting of distinctly Norman glass, portraying Jacob's dream, or Daniel in the lion's den, for it is indistinct, and critics differ. The suggestion is that this panel formed part of the previous window, in the old Norman transept, and, for some unknown reason, being specially valuable, was preserved and incorporated in its successor. The tracery lights of the vestibule windows are filled with old Norman glass, and the late Canon Sutton was of opinion that the stone tracery had been specially designed to suit it. The clear-story tracery in the nave contains also much Norman glass, probably from the old Norman nave, and in many other windows we can trace similar insertions.

Transept, Lantern, and Five Sisters' Window

Sometimes groups of figures may be noticed evidencing, by their utter lack of connection with their environment, that they have been transplanted from some other window. Sometimes a single figure, under a Decorated canopy, stands out in a window of distinctly Perpendicular tracery. Sometimes several of such figures fill separate lights when they have evidently been intended to be together. Sometimes kneeling figures, each of which had been intended to represent the donor of some window, have been brought together in a rather amusing and inharmonious fellowship. Sometimes the whole of some large figure has been removed, and only the outline left, which has been indiscriminately filled up with a patchwork of scraps of all kinds and subjects. This is specially noticeable in the window on the north side of the choir, where the letters R.S., in the bordure, indicate that it had been put up to the memory of Archbishop Scrope; here there are three large outlines of female figures, each with a child in her arms, one of them probably the Virgin, but all detail has been obliterated. Sometimes only a portion of a figure remains, e.g., a beautiful and venerable head and shoulders of some grave ecclesiastic in the most delicate mezzotint; or a dignified face with splendid crown and nimbus, and cope and pectoral cross adorning what remains of a saintly figure; or a crowned head, in a maze of painted fragments, around which the initials, E., in the bordure, evidently denote Edward the Confessor. Again, there are legs only, with the water flowing over the feet and the end of the staff which the hands had grasped, evidently the remains of some grand figure of St. Christopher, a very frequent and favourite figure in the church windows of York. Or, again, draped figures of ecclesiastics, complete almost to the hem of their robes, but destitute of feet, which may be discovered in the tracery above, where they have been utilised simply to supply some fracture. Sometimes heads and bodies, which have evidently no real association, are found united together. The former occasionally the work of