educational impulse) is the amount of interest in special arts and sciences professed by persons who, a quarter of a century back, would have disclaimed any such devotion. This would be satisfactory but for the doubt whether these refining studies do not share the success of a new garment. It is common to hear charming enthusiasm expressed for music by persons who talk persistently through Bach or Beethoven, sometimes of their admiration-admiration for what they will not listen to! First impressions of Turner's "Liber Studiorum" have been mistaken for faded photographs by those who a minute before discoursed eloquently of their zeal for high art, yet could not see the beautiful when in front of its loftiest forms I

It is the same with Architecture; only that, to its sorrow, it has something practical to lose. Just as formerly there was utter neglect, now there is a restless æstheticism, longing to make itself heard. City dean and rural vicar alike burn to do something. The Wrens or Wyatts of the period are consulted as to what can be "done with our church." Funds are collected far and near, a great dust is raised, and the usual result follows in the partial or total destruction of some fine old relic, under the guardian name of "Restoration."

The great fault of nineteenth-century restoration is doing too much.

Enormous sums are spent, and enormous work is done. Starting often with the idea of merely doing such repairs as, in their opinion, decay has rendered necessary, the restorers are drawn on to more extensive alterations, sometimes to additions. Then the temptation comes"While we are about it, while the dust is raised, let us make our work complete: let us make God's house honourable "a pious work, surely, which means more money for decorations, tiles, rood-screen, reredos (to eclipse that at Ely, Exeter, or elsewhere), and so forth. And after all this is accomplished, we must have

a great new organ, the largest ecclesiastical one, perchance, in England; and my lord who presents it to the cathedral, say at Worcester, cares nothing for the noble transept-almost the church's history in stone—which he completely blots out with it; neither for the finest crypt in the kingdom, which this same organ's waterworks obliterate by one-third and the Dean and Chapter care nothing either, for if his lordship gives all this money, who shall doubt the soundness of the taste? The Dean, himself, gives a reredos-heavy, and of many marbles-which blocks out the grand perspective of the church. A rood-screen is designed which is to be lighter than the one at Hereford, and, like the wicket gate of Paradise, all angels and gold -but without much of heaven. Somebody makes a fine new pulpit for the nave, marble, and marble apostles, and the vergers proudly point it out long before the poor old work around, which, indeed, is only grand. And, for the pavement of the nave, his lordship, at great cost, brings all the way from Italy a gift of marble slabs, alternate black and white-just the thing for the sunny South, but looking, perhaps, a trifle cold in a dim Northern cathedral.

Simplicity, as an artistic quality, is little appreciated by our modern restorers. The beauty of plain stone is quite disregarded; the old masonry is made to glare with colour; and the argument is adduced, and considered convincing, that it was the custom of the ancient builders to cover their walls with similar decoration.

This is a specimen of the presumption of modern architecture. For be it remembered that, in the first place, the extent of mural decoration in medieval churches is only guessed and secondly, if absolutely proved, it would be no warrant for us in the nineteenth century to make the dangerous experiment of imitating what we do not understand. A glance at the mural decoration yet remaining in old

buildings will show how little we know of the art of colouring on stone. Yet we are as bold as if we had the authority of David to grapple with the giant.

The examples of this rampant temerity are, unhappily, unnumbered. Clothe Shakespeare with the stripes of a pantaloon, and you have the indecorous effect of St. Cross at Winchester. How little veneration for the art of the past must the man have had who could throw such a paint-pot at such a statue! And what sort of guardians of the public treasure were the men who let him do it! The fine old church of St. George of Bocherville, in Normandy, is an almost worse example; the whole of the magnificently simple Norman work being treated with bands of brightest vermilion on a ground of whitest white. The chapel at the western end of St. Mary Redcliffe, Bristol, is another instance of this paint-pot restoration.

The Cathedral of Worcester, only lately completed, is a less violent, but none the less instructive, instance of modern decoration. Its choir, one of the finest specimens of Early art in the country, has been literally stuffed with furniture, and studded with gold. (So hot is this rage for gilding, that even King John's broken nose has not escaped a golden plaster, which mars what dignity the chisel had supplied, and usually provokes laughter.) At Worcester, as at Ely, and in so many churches, we may see that sign of a corrupted art, the ambition to "add another hue unto the rainbow." The vaulting is ablaze with gold and colour; the general effect of all this being to spoil the graceful harmony which was the choir's glory; the particular evil being the pulling down of its height, the usual result of over-colouring roofs. The vault decoration of the choir aisles is still more inappropriate, consisting of sprinkled monograms, resembling (only more unlovely) the conspicuous spots on a leopard's back. Even Sir Gilbert Scott confessed that this was the work of a clerk, and not

to his liking. Yet the fate of a great cathedral is allowed to depend upon a fluke like this!

The figure bosses of the nave vaulting in the same church, and treated by the same architect, are embellished with bright vermilion, gold, and green-a favourite combination in the mural decoration of the day. Imagine a winged saint, suspended from the roof, looking down on you with a bright vermilion countenance! Even at their great height they have a ghastly look, half cynical, yet comically grave, as though resenting their purgatory of paint. But the good fortune lies in there being few of them.

In Gloucester Cathedral the very vergers regretfully point out how the height of their choir has been diminished by the same process. One of the side chapels in this cathedral, though the work of a man of culture, only evidences the same thing-our utter ignorance of the application of colour to stone.

Let not the argument be misunderstood. The right, the duty, of modern art to exercise its powers in every department of architecture is not contested; but let modern art occupy itself with modern subjects; let not the great relics of the Past be made mediums for the imperfect practice of the Present.

And modern art itself is a loser. In contrasting the old and new work in an ancient church, one is struck with the prettiness of the modern mind-a prettiness, too, as inappropriate as if we were to pin a butterfly upon the back of an elephant. The butterfly is a beautiful object, but its place is not on the back of an elephant. The harmony in nature is what so delights us. There is always appropriateness. Who would stick a daisy on the petals of a tulip Both are beautiful, but not together. A modern pulpit of Derbyshire marble, with elaborate details of saints and gilding, is very pretty in itself-fit for an Exhibition, where it sometimes appears; and it looks in its

right place in a modern church, where richness of detail is aimed at rather than any lofty general conception.

The modern reredos is of the same sort: not like the old English design, light, perforated, and not too high where distance lay beyond; but tall, cumbersome, gaudy with coloured marbles and gold, hiding everything beyond, thinking only of itself and nothing of what surrounds it, utterly inappropriate, and out of harmony with the building it inhabits. Exceptions to the old treatment of this and other details are common enough, but they do not furnish an argument; being due to some special cause, which, generally at a later period, influenced the design. The occasional blocking off of the Lady Chapel for special parish service, is an instance.

As with the other details of Church decoration, so with the encaustic tiles and stained glass. The colour is at fault -it may be better said, the feeling. Manufactories for encaustic tiles and stained glass abound in the country; but, with more or less variety in the talent displayed, there is this distinctive feature in them all-a total want of adaptability to end, the presence of which is the most charming quality, and one which is never absent, in the old specimens of these arts.

Copies, very much more exact than their originals-the drawing on which was often of careless execution—are made of existing old tiles: all that modern science can accomplish is bestowed upon their manufacture: and yet, when we see them in an old church, we only wish they formed part of a modern villa decoration, for which they are so much better suited. Compare an old tile of Malvern or of Westminster-soft in colour, free in design-with its modern im itation-hot, sharp, very exactly drawn-and the difference is plain. It is no mere effect of age; for, as in the stained glass, the colour of the old work is really brighter while it is softer; but there is a coolness and appropriate