At the sitting of the Wesleyan Conference at Manchester on
Wednesday Mr. Perks announced that the Committee of the Twentieth Century Fund (of which £1,041,000 has been either received or promised before the close of the year) had decided to purchase the Westminster Aquarium as a site for "central Church purposes." On that site would be erected a building of a monumental character, containing a great ball to seat three thousand persons, a lesser hall to hold a thousand people, and a great library. We most heartily congratulate the Society on the success of their efforts, and are delighted to think that they have secured a site which will enable them to erect their central building at the very heart of England and near the building—Westminster Abbey—in which the associa- tions of the whole Anglo-Saxon race centre. The position is worthy of the services rendered to the Motherland by John Wesley and his followers. The Wesleyans are, indeed, essen- tially an Imperial body—they cover the whole field of Empire —and it is fitting that they should have a site fraught with Imperial associations, and at the very place " where the Abbey makes us we." We trust that the Society will have good luck with their buildings, for in truth habent sua fata is as true of buildings as of books. On the whole, we hope that the building will be Gothic in character and that it will have a tower or spire,—it ought not to look like a public office.
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