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fury amongst the clergy. Next to building a new church in the 
approved style of the day, their passion was to restore the edifices 
under their control, and the Anglican ecclesiastics having, for the 
most part, no artistic education, and neither the patience nor the 
humility to learn, and inspired, moreover, only by sentiment and 
narrow ideas, thus fell an easy prey to speculating architects, 
decorators, and furniture dealers ; and under the influence of these 
interested guides, a crusade was preached against all art subsequent 
to the time of the Edwards; and much that was good and true 
within and without the churches was rooted out, in order to sub- 
stitute the wares of the ecclesiastical toy-shops. 
“It is essential that I should briefly place before you the actual 
outcome of this superstition, because literally it was nothing else, 
and for this purpose will quote an extract from an article written 
in October, 1877, by Mr. Colvin, Slade Professor of Art in the 
University of Cambridge, who puts the salient points in language 
infinitely better than any I can command. Professor Colvin 
writes, with reference to Church restoration, that the average 
practice is something like this: First, the seating of the church is 
taken up; the church is partly lined with oak panelling, enriched 
in the chancel with fluted pilasters and Corinthian capitals and 
elaborate pediments ; and if there is a carved oak pulpit of the 
same date and style, and a communion table of old carved oak, 
all these fittings must go—they are pagan, they are barbarous, fit 
only to be broken up or sold. Then, the whole floor comes up; 
the funeral stones are thrown aside and broken, the brasses are 
removed and put against the wall in some out-of-the-way part of 
the aisle. There are monuments in memory of village celebrities 
and the ancestors of local magnets, chiefly in the form of tablets 
let into the walls, some of the chancel, some of the aisle. From 
the chancel they are cleared out altogether ; in the aisle, perhaps 
one or two are left ; and if there is a mutilated recumbent effigy of 
the period allowed as “ancient,” it is preserved for repiecing and 
repainting. The windows are filled with white glass, interspersed 
with a few scraps of old coloured, saved at the Reformation, and 
with a few coats of arms and other simple transparencies added 
