Much the same may be said of figure _painting_ when used in connection with architecture. We ought only to employ those who are _really artists_, but these should train themselves especially for the subject; and if the architect could fit _himself_ for the work, so much the better, if he really does it well; though this can never become again the general practice. I have said a little in my last lecture on the study of the old examples and fragments of _painted glass_ which you fall in with; I would wish more formally and urgently to press this upon you. The foreign fever, from which we are but now recovering, has told most severely upon this class of art; for not only has English stained glass been neglected as our practical guide--not only has the study of it been almost wholly abandoned--but its very _conservation_ has been little cared for; and not only in the churches which contain beautiful fragments have they been contemptuously neglected as guides to the characters of new windows introduced, but they have been constantly and systematically _expelled_ from the windows in which they exist, and for which expressly they were designed, to make way for new glass, designed without any reference to their character. We have long been in the habit of abusing, and justly, the village glaziers who turn out the beautiful fragments of ancient glass which occupy the heads of lights and the openings of tracery, to make way for uniform quarry glazing; but our _glass painters_ are daily doing the same thing without remorse, and are the more inexcusable inasmuch as they cannot plead ignorance, and if they chose could make the design of their new windows a restoration of the old, and retain the old fragments in their proper places. It usually happens, however, that they _never see_ the windows for which they prepare the glass, and are culpably innocent of all knowledge of whether they or others in the church retain remnants of the works of those who are, or ought to be, their masters.[91] I have, in more than one instance, known that some of our best glass painters, when called on to introduce windows into our finest minsters, have completed their work without any knowledge of the fact that there remained exquisite remnants of the ancient and coeval glass belonging to windows corresponding with those they were supplying, and that of the finest periods of the art; and have consequently failed to assimilate their work to what was intended by the original builders. The clergy, too, are often greatly to blame in this. Their eagerness for _new_ glass often expels from their minds all care for the _old_. I have heard of a good-natured[92] archdeacon in one of the southern counties, who is ready to give to any friend specimens of the ancient glass he has supplanted by new in his “restored” church.