129 
THE PRINCIPLES ON WHICH THE 
RESTORATION OF ANCIENT BUILDINGS SHOULD 
BE CONDUCTED. 
By THE Rt. Hon. G. C. BENTINCK, M.P., JupGE Apvoc. Grn, 
(Read at Whitehaven.) 
The restoration of architectural buildings is a matter entirely 
different from the architecture itself. I can only regret that 
circumstances over which I had no control prevented me from 
delivering the paper last year, as I had intended ; because then I 
could have spoken freely upon the subject, and could have given 
you ideas which you would believe, no doubt, as I believe them, 
to be my own. But since that time the subject of the restoration 
of architectural buildings has so occupied the mind of the artistic 
world and the public, that floods of literature have been poured 
forth—literature which is due not only to some of the highest and 
most distinguished names upon the roll of the artistic profession, 
but also to gentlemen who are not professionally artists, but interest 
themselves in such subjects. Therefore, I am very much afraid 
what will come from me will almost appear second-hand. At all 
events, it will have this disadvantage, that I shall be obliged to 
recapitulate to you (not, I hope, at any great length) the position 
in which the question now finds itself, beginning with the campaign 
opened last year with a duel between the late Sir Gilbert Scott and 
Mr. Stevenson, and which wound up before they went into winter 
quarters with what was called the battle of St. Alban’s—the 
controversy which has taken place as to how and in what manner 
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