THE DESTRUCTION OF THE CITY CHURCHES.
[To ME EDITOR or THE " 8PRCIATOR."1 Stir.,--Anglican eoclesiastics as a rule have no regard whatever for the dignified beauty which attaches itself to the buildings -of the Wren period.
Just .before the war the English Chaplain in Botterdam, with the consent of the Colonial and Continental Church Society and of the Bishop of Northern Europe, caused the magnificent church of St. Mary in Rotterdam, the ground for which -had been given in perpetuity to the English Colony there in the reign of Queen Anne, was probably built by Wren, and was intimately connected with the Duke of Marlborough and all the great people of Queen Anne's reign, to be wantonly destroyed without any sufficient reason whatever.
Fortunately, owing to the public-spirited action of Mr. Arthur Benson and of .Mr. H. E. Luxmore, all the interior fittings of the church were brought over to England. The organ was given by the latter to Eton, and the pulpit to Lincoln Minster and the other fittings to Cambridge by the former, where they are the glory of the Hall in Selwyn College and of the Church of St. Giles in that city.
As a writer on the subject most truly remarks, what an out- cry there would have been had one of these churches been destroyed by bombs during the war, and now the Church Authorities propose at one fell swoop to destroy nineteen!
The beauty of Wren's architecture cannot be disputed by any one, excepting the ignorant, but in regard to these con- secrated buildings, no one appears, except indirectly, to have alluded to the sites as hallowed by being the resting-places of the Blessed Dead.
We are at the present moment disputing over the memorials to-our fallen in. the war. Are we to expect that in 400 years' time the authorities will be busying themselves with throwing away their remains, because the sites of their burial-places have become too valuable to be retained for their sacred purpose?
The Secretary to the Royal Institute of British Architects has remarked that every one would scout the suggestion of selling our ancient manuscripts and pictures; but the eoclesiastics are constantly, without authority, disposing of such things as valuable church plate, music, &c., without even obtaining a Faculty for doing so, and not long ago an Elizabethan chalice was parted with for £4 and a flagon was sold at a Red Cross sale for £700, while the registers in many of our parish churches are in a most deplorable condition and our church- yards wildernesses, showing that some portion at least of the aoclesiastieal community are not doing their duty.
If this incomparable act of vandalism is perpetrated with the .authority and consent of their ecclesiastical superiors, is it likely that any of the priceless treasures now in our various 'churches or the buriaLplaces of the -Blessed Dead of former generations will receive any consideration at the hands of ecclesiastical communities; although those long dead deserve just as much consideration as those who died yesterday, and however humble, are deserving of equal respect?—I am,
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