Mr. Ayrton is proud of his hatred of art, fortifies
himself in his blunders, piques himself on his clownish nicknames for the great monuments of the past. Asked on Monday by Mr. Lowther whether his attention had been called to the manner in which the decoration between the altar-rails of St. Stephen's Crypt had suffered from the smoke of the lamps placed at too great a height within the rails, replied it was true " that lamps had been put up to make the darkness of this Vault rather more visible," and "that perhaps the best thing would be to remove the lamps," which would remove the cause of the smoke, but also render the place invisible. Asked again if he would not order the lamps to be lowered, he replied that " to lower the lamps would be to diffuse the smoke more generally over the ceiling of the Vault." In the former discussion, Mr. Ayrton wanted to make out that the Crypt, or Vault, as he exults to call it, was a mortuary chapel, a point on which, we believe, he was wrong, but it ought to be, and perhaps may be, a mortuary vault for the interment of the administrative reputation of Mr. Ayrton.
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