the weathercock from rain and wind, and a new church be built alongside for services (assuming the parish to retain sufficient earnest-mindedness to desire them), the method would be an ideal one. But even a parish composed of opulent members of this society would be staggered by such an undertaking. No: all that can be done is of the nature of compromise. It is not within the scope of this paper to inquire how such compromises between users and musers may best be carried out, and how supervision, by those who really know, can best be ensured when wear and tear and the attacks of weather make interference unhappily unavoidable. Those who are better acquainted than I am with the possibilities of such cases can write thereon, and have, indeed, already done so for many years past. All that I am able to do is to look back in a contrite spirit at my own brief experience as a church-restorer, and, by recalling instances of the drastic treatment we then dealt out with light hearts to the unlucky fanes that fell into our hands, possibly help to prevent its repetition on the few yet left untouched.

The policy of thorough in these proceedings was always, of course, that in which the old church was boldly pulled down from no genuine necessity, but from a wanton wish to erect a more modish one. Instances of such I pass over in sad silence. Akin thereto was the case in which a church exhibiting two or three styles was made uniform by removing the features of all but one style, and imitating that throughout in new work. Such devastations need hardly be dwelt on now. Except in the most barbarous recesses of our counties they are past. Their name alone is their condemnation.

The shifting of old windows, and other details irregularly spaced, and spacing them at exact distances, was an analogous process. The deporta

tion of the original chancel-arch to an obscure nook, and the insertion of a wider new one to throw open the view of the choir, was also a practice much favored, and is by no means now extinct. In passing through a village less than five years ago the present writer paused a few minutes to look at the church, and on reaching the door heard quarrelling within. The voices were discovered to be those of two men -brothers, I regret to state-who after an absence of many years had just returned to their native place to attend their father's funeral. The dispute was as to where the family pew had stood in their younger days. One swore that it was in the north aisle, adducing as proof his positive recollection of studying Sunday after Sunday the zigzag moulding of the arch before his eyes, which now visibly led from that aisle into the north transept. The other was equally positive that the pew had been in the nave. As the altercation grew sharper an explanation of the puzzle occurred to me, and I suggested that the old Norman arch we were looking at might have been the original chancel-arch, banished into the aisle to make room for the straddling new object in its place. Then one of the pair of natives remembered that a report of such a restoration had reached his ears afar, and the family peace was preserved, though not till the other had said, "Then I'm drowned if I'll ever come into the paltry church again, after having such a trick played upon me."

Many puzzling questions are to be explained by these shiftings, and particularly in the case of monuments, whose transposition sometimes led to quaint results. The chancel of a church not a hundred and fifty miles from London has, I am told, in one corner a vault containing a fashionable actor and his wife, in another corner a vault inclosing the remains of a former venerable

vicar who abjured women and died a bachelor. The mural tablets, each over its own vault, were taken down at the refurbishing of the building, and refixed reversely, the stone of the theatrical couple over the solitary divine, and that of the latter over the pair from the stage. Should disinterment ever take place, which is not unlikely nowadays, the excavators will be surprised to find a lady beside the supposed reverend bachelor, and the supposed actor without his wife. As the latter was a comedian he would probably enjoy the situation if he could know it, though the vicar's feelings might be somewhat different.

Such facetious carelessness is not peculiar to our own country. It may be remembered that when Mrs. Shelley wished to exhume her little boy William, who had been buried in the English cemetery at Rome, with the view of placing his body beside his father's ashes, no coffin was found beneath the boy's headstone, and she could not carry out her affectionate wish.

This game of Monumental Puss-in-the Corner, even when the outcome of no blundering, and where reasons can be pleaded on artistic or other grounds, is, indeed, an unpleasant subject of contemplation by those who maintain the inviolability of records. Instances of such in London churches will occur to everybody. One would like to know if any note has been kept of the original position of Milton's monument in Cripplegate Church, which has been moved more than once, I believe, and if the position of his rifled grave is now known. When I first saw the monument it stood near the east end of the south aisle.

Sherborne Abbey affords an example on a large scale of the banishment of memorials of the dead, to the doubtful advantage of the living. To many of us the human interest in an edifice ranks before its architectural interest,

however great the latter may be; and to find that the innumerable monuments erected in that long-suffering building are all huddled away into the vestry is, at least from my point of view, a heavy mental payment for the clear nave and aisles. If the inscriptions could be read the harm would perhaps be less, but to read them is impossible without ladders, so that these plaintive records are lost to human notice. Many of the recorded ones, perhaps, deserve to be forgotten; but who shall judge?

And unhappily it was oftenest of all the headstones of the poorer inhabitants-purchased and erected in many cases out of scanty means-that suffered most in these ravages. It is scarcely necessary to particularize among the innumerable instances in which headstones have been removed from their positions, the churchyard levelled, and the stones used for paving the churchyard walks, with the result that the inscriptions have been trodden out in a few years.

Next in harm to the re-designing of old buildings and parts of them came the devastations caused by letting restorations by contract, with a clause in the specification requesting the builder to give a price for "old materials"-the most important of these being the lead of the roofs, which was to be replaced by tiles or slate, and the oak of the pews, pulpit, altar-rails, &c., to be replaced by deal. This terrible custom is, I should suppose, discontinued in these days. Under it the builder was directly incited to destroy as much as possible of the old fabric as had intrinsic value, that he might increase the spoil which was to come to him for a fixed deduction from his contract. Brasses have marvellously disappeared at such times, heavy brass chandeliers, marble tablets, oak carving of all sorts, leadwork above all.

But apart from irregularities it was

always a principle that anything later than Henry VIII. was Anathema, and to be cast out. At Wimborne Minster fine Jacobean canopies were removed from Tudor stalls for the offence only of being Jacobean. At an hotel in Cornwall, a tea-garden was, and possibly is still, ornamented with seats constructed of the carved oak from a neighboring church-no doubt the restorer's honest perquisite. Church relics turned up in unexpected places. I remember once going into the stonemason's shed of a builder's yard, where, on looking round, I started to see the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments, in gilt letters, staring emphatically from the sides of the shed. "Oh, yes," said the builder, a highly respectable man, "I took 'em as old materials under my contract when I gutted St. Michael and All Angels', and I put 'em here to keep out the weather: they might keep my blackguard hands serious at the same time; but they don't." A fair lady with a past was once heard to say that she could not go to morning service at a particular church because the parson read one of the Commandments with such accusatory emphasis: whether these that had become degraded to the condition of old materials were taken down owing to kindred objections one cannot know.

But many such old materials were, naturally, useless when once unfixed. Another churchwright whom I knew in early days was greatly incommoded by the quantity of rubbish that had accumulated during a restoration he had in hand, there being no place in the churchyard to which it could be wheeled. In the middle of the church was the huge vault of an ancient family supposed to be extinct, which had been broken into at one corner by the pickaxe of the restorers, and this vault was found to be a convenient receptacle for the troublesome refuse from the

Ages. When a large number of barrow-loads had been tipped through the hole the laborer lifted his eyes to behold a tall figure standing between him and the light. "What are you doing, my man?" said the figure blandly. "A getting rid of the rubbage, sir," replied the laborer. "But why do you put it there?" "Because all the folks have died out, so it don't matter what we do with their old bone cellar." "Don't you be too sure about the folks having died out. I am one of that family, and as I am very much alive, and that vault is my freehold, I'll just ask you to take all the rubbish out again." It was said that the speaker had by chance returned from America, where he had made a fortune, in the nick of time to witness this performance, and that the vault was duly cleared and sealed up as he ordered.

The "munificent contributor" to the expense of restoration was often the most fearful instigator of mischief. I may instance the case of a TransitionNorman pier with a group of shafts, the capitals of which showed signs of crushing under the weight of the arches. By taking great care it was found possible to retain the abacus and projecting parts supporting it, sculptured with the vigorous curled leaves of the period, only the diminishing parts, or the bell of each capital, being renewed. The day after the re-opening of the church the lady who had defrayed much of the expense complained to the contractor of his mean treatment of her in leaving half the old capitals when he should have behaved handsomely, and renewed the whole. To oblige her the carver chipped over the surface of the old carving, not only in that pier, but in all the piers, and made it look as good as new.

Poor forlorn parishes, which could not afford to pay a clerk of works to superintend the alterations, suffered badly in these ecclesiastical convul

sions. During the years they were raging at their height I journeyed to a distant place to supervise a case, in the enforced absence of an older eye. The careful repair of an interesting Early English window had been specified; but it was gone. The contractor, who had met me on the spot, replied genially to my gaze of concern: "Well now, I said to myself when I looked at the old thing, I won't stand upon a pound or two: I'll give 'em a new winder now I am about it, and make a good job of it, howsomever.'" A caricature in new stone of the old window had taken its place.

In the same church was an old oak rood-screen of debased Perpendicular workmanship, but valuable, the original coloring and gilding, though much faded, still remaining on the cusps and mouldings. The repairs deemed necessary had been duly specified, but I beheld in its place a new screen of deal, varnished to a mirror-like brilliancy. "Well," replied the builder, more genially than ever, "I said to myself, 'Please God, now I am about it, I'll do the thing well, cost what it will!" "Where's the old screen?" I said, appalled. "Used up to boil the workmen's kittles; though 'a were not much at that!"

The reason for consternation lay in the fact that the bishop-a strict Protestant-had promulgated a decree concerning rood-screens-viz., that though those in existence might be repaired, no new one would be suffered in his diocese for doctrinal reasons. This the builder knew nothing of. What was to be done at the re-opening, when the bishop was to be present, and would notice the forbidden thing? I had to decide there and then, and resolved to trust to chance and see what happened. On the day of the opening we anxiously watched the bishop's approach, and I fancied I detected a lurid glare in his eye as it fell upon the illicit

rood-screen. But he walked quite innocently under it without noticing that it was not the original. If he noticed it during the service he was politic enough to say nothing.

I might dwell upon the mistakes of architects as well as of builders if there were time. That architects the most experienced could be cheated to regard an accident of churchwardenry as high artistic purpose, was revealed to a body of architectural students, of which the present writer was one, when they were taken over Westminster Abbey in a peripatetic lecture by Sir Gilbert Scott. He, at the top of the ladder, was bringing to our notice a feature which had, he said, perplexed him for a long time: why the surface of diapered stone before him should suddenly be discontinued at the spot he pointed out, when there was every reason for carrying it on. Possibly the artist had decided that to break the surface was a mistake; possibly he had died; possibly anything; but there the mystery was. "Perhaps it is only plastered over!" broke forth in the reedy voice of the youngest pupil in our group. "Well, that's what I never thought of," replied Sir Gilbert, and taking from his pocket a clasp knife which he carried for such purposes, he prodded the plain surface with it. "Yes, it is plastered over, and all my theories are wasted," he continued, descending the ladder not without humility.

My knowledge at first hand of the conditions of church-repair at the present moment is very limited. But one or two prevalent abuses have come by accident under my notice. The first concerns the rehanging of church bells. A barbarous practice is, I believe, very general, that of cutting off the cannon of each bell-namely, the loop on the crown by which it has been strapped to the stock-and restrapping it by means of holes cut through the crown itself. The mutilation is sanctioned on the

ground that, by so fixing it, the centre of the bell's gravity is brought nearer to the axis on which it swings, with advantage and ease to the ringing. I do not question the truth of this; yet the resources of mechanics are not so exhausted but that the same result may be obtained by leaving the bell unmutilated and increasing the camber of the stock, which, for that matter, might be so great as nearly to reach a right angle. I was recently passing through a churchyard where I saw standing on the grass a peal of bells just taken down from the adjacent tower and subjected to this treatment. A sight more piteous than that presented by these fine bells, standing disfigured in a row in the sunshine, like cropped criminals in the pillory, as it were ashamed of their degradation, I have never witnessed among inanimate things.

Speaking of bells, I should like to ask cursorily why the old sets of chimes have been removed from nearly all our country churches. The midnight wayfarer, in passing along the sleeping village or town, was cheered by the outburst of a stumbling tune, which possessed the added charm of being probably heeded by no ear but his own. Or, when lying awake in sickness, the denizen would catch the same notes, persuading him that all was right with the world. But one may go half across England and hear no chimes at midnight now.

I may here mention a singular incident in respect of a new peal of bells, at a church whose rebuilding I was privy to, which occurred on the opening day many years ago. It being a popular and fashionable occasion, the church was packed with its congregation long before the bells rang out for service. When the ringers seized the ropes, a noise more deafening than thunder resounded from the tower in the ears of the sitters. Terrified at

the idea that the tower was falling they rushed out at the door, ringers inIcluded, into the arms of the astonished bishop and clergy, advancing, so it was said, in procession up the churchyard path, some of the ladies being in a fainting state. When calmness was restored by the sight of the tower standing unmoved as usual, it was discovered that the six bells had been placed "in stay"-that is, in an inverted position ready for the ringing, but in the hurry of preparation the clappers had been laid inside though not fastened on, and at the first swing of the bells they had fallen out upon the belfry floor.

After this digression I return to one other abuse of ecclesiastical fabrics, that arising from the fixing of Christmas decorations. The battalion of young ladies to whom the decking with holly and ivy is usually entrusted, seem to be possessed with a fixed idea that nails may be driven not only into old oak and into the joints of the masonry, but into the freestone itself if you only hit hard enough. Many observers must have noticed the mischief wrought by these nails. I lately found a fifteenth-century arch to have suffered more damage during the last twenty years from this cause than during the previous five hundred of its existence. The pock-marked surface of many old oak pulpits is entirely the effect of the numberless tin-tacks driven into them for the same purpose.

Such abuses as these, however, are gross, open, palpable, and easy to be checked. Far more subtle and elusive ones await our concluding consideration, which I will rapidly enter on now. Persons who have mused upon the safeguarding of our old architecture must have indulged in a reflection which, at first sight, seems altogether to give away the argument for its material preservation. The reflection is that, abstractly, there is everything to