COUNTRY CHURCH VISITING
SIR,--,-It was a pleasure to read Mr. Piper's article on " Country Church Visiting " in your issue of December 8th. The majority of guide-books are still written by persons who, aesthetically, are under the influence of Ruskin and other Gothic revivalists, and whose attitude to mediaeval architecture is wholly uncritical. England has masterpieces in the pointed style ; it also has a very large number of tasteless, uninspired erections, obviously put up by job builders.
Perhaps the war may provide an opportunitY for some person of taste, who, forced through the removal of his busi- ness Fir school to live in the country for several years, will spend that time in visiting the buildings in his neighbour- hood, and write about them in a manner which can be read
by his contemporaries without disgust. He will praise Gothic churches if he finds any which rise above the commonplace— an exceedingly unlikely supposition—describe with discrimina- tion any seventeenth- or eighteenth-century structures which may exist, and draw the attention of his readers to any nineteenth- or twentieth-century buildings which merit attention.
Such books are even now not unknown (Mr. Piper himself has set an example in the past, but they are still in a minority).
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