426 SUNDRY JOURNEYS AND EXPERIENCES -III 



one of the two which I have seen last. But I found in 

 iquity triumphant: the &quot; restorers&quot; had been at work, 

 and had apparently done their worst. A great scaffold 

 ing covered the superb rose-window of the west front, 

 perhaps the finest of its kind in Christendom, and, in 

 a little book published by one of the canons, I soon 

 learned the reason. It appears that the architect super 

 intending the &quot;restoration&quot; had dug a deep well at one 

 corner of one of the massive towers for the purpose 

 of inspecting the foundations; that he had forgotten to 

 fill this well ; and that, during the winter, the water from 

 the roofs, having come down into it and frozen, had up 

 heaved the tower at one corner, with the result of crum 

 bling and cracking this immense window adjacent. 



At Troyes it was hardly better. It is a city which 

 probably never had sixty thousand inhabitants, and yet 

 here are four of the most magnificent architectural mon 

 uments in Europe. But the work wrought upon them 

 under the pretext of &quot;restoration&quot; was no less atrocious 

 than that upon the cathedral at Eheims, and of this I 

 have given an example elsewhere. 1 



Continuing my way homeward, I stopped a few days 

 in London. From my diary I select an account of the 

 sermon preached in one of the principal churches of 

 the city by Dr. Temple, then bishop of London, but later 

 archbishop of Canterbury, before the lord mayor, lady 

 mayoress, and other notable people. The sermon was a 

 striking exhibition of plain common sense, without one 

 particle of what is generally known as spirituality. The 

 text was, t Freely ye have received, freely give, and the 

 argument simply was that the congregation worshiping 

 in that old church had received all its privileges from 

 contributions made centuries before, and that it was now 

 their duty, in their turn, to contribute money for new 

 congregations constantly arising in the new population 

 of London. Of spiritual gifts to be acknowledged no 

 thing was said. In the afternoon took tea with Lecky, 



i See Chapter XXI, p. 376. 



