The choir of the Collegiate Church at Manchester may challenge comparison with any similar structure.

Its thirty elaborately-carved stalls, covered with canopies of the richest tabernacle work, surmounted by niches, mouldings, pinnacles, and perforated tracery, and crowned with a richly-sculptured cornice; its side aisles, with their pillars and arches; its moulded ceiling rich in the most delicate and fairy tracery; its gorgeous altar-screen of carved oak; and its magnificent eastern window, then filled with stained glass, form a _coup-d'oeil_ of almost unequalled splendour and beauty.

Few of these marvels could now be seen.

But such points of the pinnacles and hanging canopies of the stalls, of the facades of the side-aisles, and of the fretted roof, as received any portion of the light, came in with admirable effect.
"All is prepared, you perceive," observed Dee to Viviana.

"I will retire while the ceremony is performed." And gravely inclining his head, he passed through an arched door in the south aisle, and entered the chapter-house.
Garnet was about to proceed with the service appointed by the Romish Church for the burial of the dead, when Viviana, uttering a loud cry, would have fallen, if Catesby had not flown to her assistance, and borne her to one of the stalls.