“For other tales they told, and one of these
     Not all the washing of the troublous seas,
     Nor all the changeful days whereof ye know,
     Have swept from out my memory:  even so
     Small things far off will be remembered clear
     When matters both more mighty and more near,
     Are waxing dim to us.  I, who have seen
     So many lands, and midst such marvels been,
     Clearer than these abodes of outland men,
     Can see above the green and unburnt fen
     The little houses of an English town,
     Cross-timbered, thatched with fen-reeds coarse and brown,
     And high o’er these, three gables, great and fair,
     That slender rods of columns do upbear
     Over the minster doors, and imagery
     Of kings, and flowers no summer field doth see,
     Wrought in these gables.—­Yea I heard withal,
     In the fresh morning air, the trowels fall
     Upon the stone, a thin noise far away;
     For high up wrought the masons on that day,
     Since to the monks that house seemed scarcely well
     Till they had set a spire or pinnacle
     Each side the great porch.  In that burgh I heard
     This tale, and late have set down every word
     That I remembered, when the thoughts would come
     Of what we did in our deserted home,
     And of the days, long past, when we were young,
     Nor knew the cloudy days that o’er us hung. 
     And howsoever I am now grown old,
     Yet is it still the tale I then heard told
     Within the guest house of that Minster Close,
     Whose walls, like cliffs new made, before us rose.”

It is rather a porch, or piazza, than a front; for it consists of a paved walk of some extent outside the wall of the cathedral covered at a great height by a vaulted roof which is supported by the wall and by the three great arches.  Mr Fergusson, in his “Handbook of Architecture,"[20] pronounces that “as a portico, using the term in its classical sense, the west front of Peterborough is the grandest and finest in Europe”:  and there are few that will not agree with him.  Professor Freeman says:[21]—­“The portico of Peterborough is unique; the noblest conception of the old Greek translated into the speech of Christendom and of England has no fellow before it or after it.”  Exclusive of the spires, and the central porch and parvise, the dates of which have been given previously, the whole is of the best and purest Early English style.  The effect is certainly improved by the middle arch being narrower than the others.  But if the gables above had been of unequal angles, the result would have been far less satisfactory.  Wisely, therefore, these angles have been made equal, and all of the same height:  and the device of the architect to secure this, by making the central gable rise from points somewhat higher than the others, is admirable.  It is to be observed also that the turrets, or large