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was appointed to execute the ungrateful task ; and whatever may 
have been his shortcomings, his bitterest foes must allow that he 
fooled his employers to the top of their bent. It would now be 
irrelevant to attempt any detailed criticism of this vast structure ; 
but while I admit the ingenuity and resource of the architect, and 
agree with Mr. Ferguson that it is the most successful attempt 
which has been made in our time to apply medizval architecture 
to civil purposes, I must protest that the whole building is simply 
an adaptation of other men’s ideas without one detail which has 
any pretension to originality. The fittings, furniture, and other 
accessories are standing examples to posterity what they ought to 
avoid, Everything is ground down to the lowest level of manufac- 
ture, and yet everything is to match. The effigies of the. Royal 
personages of the present age are disguised in the costume of the 
Henrys. The roofs, walls, and floors are covered with inscriptions 
which no human intelligence can decipher, and which seem to be 
intended by the architect as a satire upon the ignorance and 
credulity of those who insisted upon such an undertaking. 
Similar follies are common enough in these days, and are 
perhaps excusable, but the inexcusable was the wanton destruction 
of the ancient chapel of St. Stephen’s, and its conversion into a 
feeble, commonplace, “perpendicular Gothic ” waiting hall, further 
degraded by the introduction of white marble statues of departed 
statesmen in the costume of their respective ages ; and these by 
contorted limbs and rueful countenances plainly express their 
disgust at being exhibited in situations so entirely inappropriate. 
Let me here add, though I break my chronology, the particulars 
of another atrocity which, during the last ten years, has been 
committed within these time-honoured precincts. Underneath 
St. Stephen’s Chapel there exists a crypt, which, although for a 
time in use as the Speaker’s state dining-room, still retained 
important remains of its former self. It was a dark sequestered 
spot, and might easily have escaped the chisel and paint brush of 
the destroyers. But, unfortunately, the First Commissioner of 
Works under Lord Palmerston’s Government was ‘“‘a man of taste,” 
and he induced the House of Commons to vote a large sum for 
