Mr. Frederic Harrison made a very eloquent speech on the
protection of ancient buildings at the tenth annual meeting of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, in the old hall of Staple Inn, on Wednesday. He insisted that "every building that had a definite public history, and had been dedi- cated to the public use, was a national institution,—a sacred possession, like the Great Charter or the Domesday Book ; and wantonly to destroy one of them ought to be made a public crime "It was monstrous that any body of men in a single generation should claim the right in the name of property, or office, or their present convenience, to destroy in a moment the continuous work of centuries,—to rob their own descendant, of their common birthright." And he went on to protest against the "greatest profanation of a sacred building" that had taken place in the present century. He referred to the feet that "the Abbey, the most venerable of all our sacred edifices, has been turned into a huge erection of galleries and scaffolding, which will make it look like a cross between a race-coarse stand and a concert-room." Mr. Frederic Harrison is certainly unique. We do not ourselves admire the grotesque transformation of the Abbey, temporary as we hope it may be. But why it should offend so much more profoundly the one thinker who tells us that all the associations which make the Abbey most sacred are founded on dreams and illusions, it is diffioult to understand. It would seem that the less men believe in the divine object of worship, the more sacredness they attach to the feelings which go astray in search of that object.
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