151 
time, and whose works had merit. Well, supposing you were 
. going to pull down the church or to re-arrange it—supposing you 
could take away the galleries and do anything that was satisfactory 
to the modern idea, nothing in the world ought to make you take 
away that carving. I wouldn’t say keep it upon that pew ; because 
the pew is inconvenient—not at all satisfactory to those who 
occupy it, nor to those who sit around it. The pew might be 
taken away, but the carving should not be taken from the church. 
I would put that in the category of what is good. In the same 
way, if there was such a thing as a Danish door in a church I 
would keep that—as a curiosity. 
I don’t attempt, for my present purpose in the present state of 
things—in the present confusion and chaos which architecture is 
in, all over the world—England, of course, included—I wouldn’t 
attempt to distinguish between degrees of artistic merit, and say, 
“This is good,” and “That is bad.” No; if this belongs to a 
period, and is the work of an individual artist, as Mr. Street says, 
there I would keep it. Now, I think that is a very liberal view of 
the point, and I hope you are in accord with that. As to anyone 
being able to restore or make things like what they were, that is 
impossible. If Westminster Abbey were pulled down to-morrow 
you could not build it up again. It is an agglomeration, as every 
other Cathedral is an agglomeration, of different periods and 
different men’s ideas; so that it would be quite impossible to 
recreate them. You cannot reproduce, as Mr. Poynter said, a 
thing that has ceased to exist in art ; and all these imitations, as I 
humbly conceive, are entirely based on wrong principles and false 
ideas, and I dispose of them by the story I have alluded to of the 
modern antiquity. Having read you a very long paper, and made 
an exceedingly dull speech, the hour being late, I have to return 
you my best thanks once more for the manner in which you have 
received the vote which has been proposed to you from the chair, 
