It would be well worth doing. The western
men, gifted with a fitting medium, worked as
happily in stone as the men of the east counties
in wood ; and surely this array of images
must have been one of their happiest final
efforts.
July 4. — The more I look at the west front
of Wells Cathedral the less I like it. A be-
lauded west front no doubt, more so, perhaps,
than any in England except Peterborough.
That is a mere meaningless facade, put up
in a hurry by ambitious monks who were
reckless of the fact that what they were
putting up had no organic relation to the
church behind it and was, therefore, quite
false. The front of Wells is not false but it
is crude and incompetent. What we see here.
78 IMPRESSIONS AND COMMENTS

indeed, is not characteristically a west front
at all, but just a wail, with six great buttresses
projecting from it and an arcading that runs
right across it below, while through this
arcading, as by an afterthought, the west
door has been awkwardly pierced. One thinks
of the west front of many a French church,
so perfectly planned and proportioned, so
enchantingly beautiful ; and indeed, even in
England, the west front of, for instance, York
is lovelier far than this of WeUs. It is true
that the sculpture here at Wells is fine, not
to be compared with that at Chartres or at
Rheims, yet as fine no doubt as anywhere in
England, but it is obscurely and ineffectively
arranged amid the irrelevant buttresses, hard
to see, better seen by iar in the photographs
that illustrate the study of EngUsh Medieval
figure sculpture by Prior and Gardner.
