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new may look continuous and complete, and that the alleged 
baseness of imitation and copying was all nonsense.” 
This proposition embodies in substance the ideas of the | 
ultra-restorationists, amongst whom I must include, after what 
has been alleged and proved, Sir Gilbert Scott and his followers, 
and it admits that the real may be levelled down to the unreal, the 
true to the sham, and justifies any amount of tampering with 
precious but decayed monuments of art, provided always that they 
are manipulated into continuous and complete harmony with the 
coarse and inanimate manufactures of the modern Gothic workman. 
If these doctrines are to prevail, the activity and energy of modern 
painters and decorators will be subject to no restraining force. 
Once teach them that it is lawful to make old and new work 
continuous and complete, and that the baseness of imitation and 
copying is all nonsense, they will continue to cut, pare, daub, and 
destroy so unmercifully that the few churches which have hitherto 
escaped their hands will speedily share the fate of their fellows. 
Besides, if the principle is admissible with regard to architectural 
details and sculpture, it must also apply to painting ; and then we 
may well enquire, where is the mischief to stop ? 
Mr. Poynter was, to my mind, very satisfactory and quite 
unanswerable when he said, “where a church exists from 
medieval times without any paintings, I hold strongly that any 
attempt to supply them as they would have done in the 13th or 
14th centuries would be quite out of place, simply because 
it is impossible to reproduce the spirit in which these paintings 
were done. The architect may produce a very good imitation, but 
he cannot produce the same thing. It would be an attempt to 
put into a church something which has no reality ;” and thus Mr. 
Poynter not only disposed of Sir E. Beckett, but hit an obvious 
blot in Sir G. Scott’s system, which in ail principal cases, as, for 
instance, Salisbury Cathedral, involved a large amount of painting, 
executed not by artists, but by workmen employed under contracts 
entered into with decorating firms. 
A circumstance, which occurred to me in my youth, and 
which I will venture to relate to you, led me long ago towards the 
