Lord Derby made another, and an even better speech, by
way of appeal for the restoration of Chester Cathedral, on the follow- ing day (Tuesday), at St. George's Hall, Liverpool. It seems that Chester Cathedral has just been discovered to be in a state -of decay which renders repairs on a large scale needful. The cost of the repairs absolutely necessary for safety would be £25,000, -and if art as well as safety were to be consulted, the cost -would be £50,000. The Ecclesiastical Commission had made a grant of £10,000, and the public would have to supply the rest. Lord Derby maintained that the protection of a building like -Chester Cathedral against decay was a duty which they owed to the whole of England, and not merely to the local residents who might possibly use it for the purposes of worship. National monuments which, once destroyed could never be replaced, but -which, if carefully preserved, might teach men much that they -wished to know for centuries to come, were held in trust by each generation for all posterity. The -proposal to pull down one of the Pyramids for the sake of the materials, would be justly regarded as a destruction of one of the great possessions of the human race. The middle ages had left us two characteristic buildings, the -feudal castle and the cathedral, of neither of which many speci- mens remained, and those specimens should be carefully guarded. -" As inheritors of the past they should feel they were trustees for the future." That was spoken more like an Earl of Derby than -him who was so recently Lord Stanley. It has almost the effect .of light passing through a grand coloured window on to the cold ..stone of a cathedral, when the ancestral traditions of a great -House give so rich a glow to the cold simplicity of a utilitarian statesman's mind.
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