137 
their estates as a piece of patronage which is the perquisite of 
their agents.” These are some of the many passages in Sir Gilbert 
Scott’s writings, which I could read to you, but time compels me 
to quit this branch of the subject. 
These were brave words, no doubt; but whether Sir Gilbert 
Scott was not strong enough to resist the pressure and temptations 
which his lucrative professional engagements brought upon him, or 
whether he was of an irresolute and vacillating disposition, it is 
absolutely certain that he failed to practice the doctrines which he 
preached with such energy and fervour, for his deplorable restor- 
ations of many of our cathedrals (Salisbury to wit), and of the 
innumerable parochial and other valuable churches, date subse- 
quently to these fruitless protests. 
Again, the brutal war which has been waged by Mr. Butterfield 
and others against Sir Christopher Wren’s original and beautiful 
churches in the City of London was initiated by Sir Gilbert Scott, 
who long after he had so unreservedly denounced the evils of 
radical restoration, led the attack by his transformation of the 
elegant Church of St. Michael, Cornhill, daubing the interior with 
glaring and vulgar paint, filling the windows with clumsy and 
inappropriate tracery, and disfiguring the bold and noble tower— 
one of the most happy inventions of modern genius—with an 
ill-shaped and ill-executed Gothic porch which has no meaning 
whatever, except, perhaps, to prove how idle it is for the pigmy to 
measure himself with the giant. 
> Reyerting to Sir Gilbert Scott’s injudicious meddling with 
medizval monuments, I would observe that such of us who have 
been connected from our youth with Westminster and its famous 
Abbey, or who are intimately acquainted with the details of that 
unsurpassed structure, can never cease to regret the day when Sir 
Gilbert Scott became its surveyor, and was permitted to run riot 
at the expense of the governing collegiate body, whose blind 
confidence in their architect far exceeded their knowledge of his 
art. Happily, not much has been done ; but with the exception, 
perhaps, of the rebuilding of the Chapterhouse, all that has been 
done is bad. Externally, the south transept has been renovated 
