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ings became so important that it raised a controversy within the 
solemn precincts of the R. I. B. A. itself, where the campaign was 
opened by a paper read by Mr. Stevenson, a distinguished architect, 
on 28th May last. The subject was continued on the ri1th June, 
by Sir Gilbert Scott, who read at great length a reply to Mr. 
Stevenson. After the reading of this last paper, a discussion 
followed, conducted by those who were called upon by the 
President. I do not propose to give you any extracts from Mr. 
Stevenson’s and Mr. Gilbert Scott’s interesting discourses, because 
they are in print, and you can read them for yourselves. But I 
will briefly observe that Mr Stevenson holds the extreme view 
that we should leave our churches alone, keep them in repair, keep 
out the wet, underpin a sinking wall, or build a buttress and keep 
the wall from sinking. ‘ Why,” Mr. Stevenson asks, “ should not 
our children have the chance of seeing what an old English church 
used to be like, with its high oak pews and galleries, and old 
monuments left on the walls, as all churches used to be forty years 
ago, such a church as David Copperfield used to go to? Would 
such, even allowing the old three-decker pulpit to remain, be quite 
incompatible with Christian worship? Why this haste to destroy 
it? It is because they feel that unless the work is done speedily 
the feeling may be changed, and people may discover that in 
purging England of her characteristic old churches, they have 
made a mistake.” Sir Gilbert Scott, on the other hand, in his 
reply, adopted a tone of great moderation, and based his observ- 
ations entirely upon the principle of what he called conservative 
restoration, and had not the works then actually in progress under 
his hand been so entirely contradictory to the opinions he expressed, 
I, for one, could not have disagreed with him. But the pith of 
the whole controversy is to be found in the discussion which 
followed the reading of the papers, and it is upon what was then 
said by the Fellows and visitors present, and notably by Mr. 
Street, Mr. Stevenson, Mr. Poynter, and Sir Edmund Beckett, 
that I shall found the practical portion of the task I have under- 
taken, which is to explain to you my views with regard to the 
