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| ST. CANICE'S CATHEDRAL, KILKENNY. -The famous old Cathedral of St. Canice, which, sentinelled by its round tower, stands on an eminence in Kilkenny's "Irishtown," dates from A.D. 1180, although antiquaries claim that the existing structure is built on the site of a church established in the very earliest days of Christianity in Ireland. It is a noble ecclesiastical style, not much less in the area that St. Patrick's or Christ Church cathedral in Dublin. It is like most edifices of its kind in Ireland, of cruciform shape, two hundred and twenty-six feet from east to west. The transepts from north to south measure one hundred and twenty-three feet. Its founder was the learned and pious Bishop O'Dullany, who translated in the latter part of the 12th century, the ancient Ossorian see from Aghaboe to Kilkenny. There are in the nave a central and two lateral aisles, which communicate by means of pointed arches. Windows of the same form illuminate the aisles, and those which light the upper portion of the nave, five in number, are of quadrefoil shape. Owing to the immensity of the original design, the cathedral remained for centuries in an unfinished state, and even now the tower is so stunted as to be almost ridiculously disproportionate to the extent of the building. It is supported on groined arches, which spring from marble columns of massive formation. In the last century Bishop Pockocke had the cathedral restored, and its simple grandeur is its chiefest charm. |
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