Page:A tour through the northern counties of England, and the borders of Scotland - Volume I.djvu/297

 and its breadth eighty. The length of the transept is one hundred and seventy; of the Gallilee, one hundred; of the sanctum sanctorum, one hundred and thirty; and the height of its great tower two hundred and twelve feet. The baptisterium, built of oak, and finished with the richest tabernacle-work, is the finest in the kingdom.

A little to the east of these is a cross in the pavement, thelimits to which females might be admitted; beyond this they were prohibited from proceeding, as some events which had occurred to St. Cuthbert, (the tutelary saint of the place) whose bones lay reposed by the great altar, had rendered that holy man rather afraid of the sex during life, and desirous of keeping himself uncontaminated by their approach to his remains after death. But they were recompensed for this exclusion by the gallantry or kindness of Bishop Pudsey, who, in the twelfth century, added to the western end of the cathedral the Gallilee, or Lady's-Chapel, a beautiful building, consisting of five ailes, separated from each other by airy Norman arches, fretted with zig-zag decorations. This is connected with the cathedral by a grand arch-way of the same architecture, and was dedicated to the sole use of devout females. Here, amongst many other monuments, is that of the venerable Bede, (who died in