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from the Dublin Review (May, 1841) may well cause us 
to reflect deeply upon this subject : 
" By the parish churches (says Mr. Pugiu, a Roman 
" Catholic architect), the faith of our nation is to be sus- 
" tained and nourished ; the parish church gives, in fact, 
" the history of the adjacent county. If the English Catho- 
" lies (Roman) avail themselves of this feeling of attachment 
" to the old parish church, which exists among the great 
" body of the people, wonderful good may be produced; but 
" if they neglect the means they are bound to employ to turn 
" this feeling to the restoration of the old faith, then it will 
" be found extremely inimical to the revival of our religion !'* 
Far be it from me to gainsay the motives expressed in 
this extract, but I breathe the fervent hope that Protestant 
feeling will render it unnecessary to receive aid from such 
a quarter ; tendered as it must be from those who are 
so inimical to our old faith, handed down to us from the 
apostles, and whose author and finisher is Christ himself. 
If we admire the Architecture of our ancient edifices, it 
is our duty to restore them to their pristine beauty, where 
decayed by time, or injured by adventitious circumstances ; 
and as the feeling of ignorance is frequently the precursor 
of a desire to obtain knowledge, so may an enthusiastic 
feeling in favour of Gothic architecture, and of the preserva- 
tion of the structures in which it is enshrined, be imbibed by 
a practical acquaintance with the glaring innovations which 
have arisen from the permitted exercise of a Vandal taste. 
" Our village carpenters and masons have too long con- 
spired with ignorant churchwardens, in converting our fine 
old churches into dens of ugliness and confusion." If 
Canova felt and declared that " it would be sacrilege in him 
" or any other man to presume to touch the works of Phidias 
with his chisel" — is it not more improper that the restoration 
of our Gothic structures should be any longer left to those 
