There was a big statue of Wellington at Hyde Park Corner, where there is a little statue of him now; and the big statue stood upon the Arch until the Arch was taken down and set up further back in 1883. A great-uncle of mine writes to my maternal grandmother, 23 March 1847, “I have seen the Wellington Statue. It is not at all too large for the Arch, and is a noble thing indeed.” It was new then, and everyone was finding fault with it. It was much too big for the Arch, and it was not a noble thing; but the present statue of the Duke is an ignoble thing. If things are bad, by all means do away with them; but do not replace them by things that may be just as bad, though with another kind of badness. Look at the great west window in Exeter Cathedral: the new glass has not the same demerits as the old, but as a work of art it is every bit as bad, and it is much less interesting. While the new Cathedral at Westminster was being built, I went in several times to see it, and once I tested its acoustics very unexpectedly. The chancel steps had not been built, so I walked up a plank; and the plank came up like a see-saw when I reached the higher end. It jerked me off, and I said something suitable. And then my words ascended to the apse, and were rolled back along the nave and aisles like a thunderous Amen.--I remember three designs for that Cathedral. First it was to be a Gothic building, rivalling the Abbey. Then it was designed as a Basilica, rather like St Paul’s at Rome as rebuilt since the fire. And then came the Byzantine thing we know: like all Byzantine things, far better inside than out. An architect in London designed a house near here, and a specification was sent down from town: all walls to rest upon a concrete bed of specified size. The site was solid rock; and tons of granite were blasted out to make way for the concrete bed.--I happened to tell this to a ship-owner, and he remarked with some surprise, “I thought it was only Government officials who did that kind of thing.” And he told me of a ship of his that was employed in carrying troops. The regulations said that there must be (I think) eight feet clear height between the decks, and this ship of his had more, say ten. And temporary decks were built two feet above the permanent decks in order to reduce the height to eight.