ordered by the Common Prayer, or in other respects interfere with the Church’s due proclaiming of her Divine mission to the nineteenth century. The reaction against over-restoration is now happily setting in, but a word of caution is also necessary lest that cry should be adopted as the cloak of a lazy indifferentism, or be used as an excuse for regarding the parish church as a local museum illustrative of byegone times, to be carefully dusted and nothing more. Where much new work, or any considerable extent of refitting, seem absolutely necessary, it is best to hasten slowly, and to do a little well rather than to aim at a speedy general effect. Thus, if one of our old grey churches requires fresh seating, how much better to fill a single aisle or one bay of the nave with sound and effectively carved oak, and only repair the remainder, rather than to accomplish the whole in sticky pine. The best material and the best art should surely be used in God’s service, and not reserved to feed our pride or minister to our comfort in private dwellings. It has often been noticed how far better the work of redeeming the interior of our churches from that state of dirt and neglect that had degraded some at least below the level of the very barns upon the glebe, has been carried out where money has come in slowly, and at intervals, rather than where some munificent patron has readily found the funds to enter upon a big contract. Religious Houses. If the parish includes within its boundaries the remains or the site of any abbey, priory, hospital, monastic cell, or other religious building otherwise than the parish church, the history and description of such places must of course be separately undertaken. And let not the local historian consider it is needless for him to explore into a subject that has probably been treated of with greater or less detail in the original edition of Dugdale’s “_Monasticon_,” or with more precision in the expanded English edition. The English abbeys or priories, whose history can be said to have been exhaustively written, could certainly be counted on the fingers of both hands.