Celia Fiennes wrote, over two hundred years ago, that the “great Church wᶜʰ is dedicated to St. Albans is much out of repaire. I see the places in the pavement hat was worn like holes for kneeling by the devotes of yᵉ Religion and his votery’s as they tell you, but the whole Church is so worn away that it mourns for some Charitable person to help repaire it.” That person was forthcoming in the fulness of time, in that ferocious controversialist and amateur architect, Lord Grimthorpe, who “restored” the Cathedral at his own expense. As a result, it mourns, and others mourn for it, more than ever. Enormous sums of money have been expended upon the vast building, amounting to over £160,000. Of this amount £40,000, raised by public subscription, went upon the works executed between 1870 and 1879. The remaining £120,000 or more was spent by Lord Grimthorpe in playing at being an architect. [Sidenote: _NEW WAYS WITH AN OLD ABBEY_] The Abbey had, indeed, been gradually falling into decay for many years, and, about the middle of the nineteenth century, had at last become quite ruinous. In 1833, some reparations had been made to the tower, but these were slight, and work was only seriously begun in 1856, following a faculty granted to a committee which, calling itself “national,” was nevertheless impotent to raise more than £30,000. Some slight accretions were made to this fund as the result of the added interest upon the Abbey being made the Cathedral Church of a new diocese, in 1875; but these were soon engulfed in the mere work of securing the sinking foundations. Sir Gilbert Scott was then called in to undertake the work, and instantly shored up the great tower, then on the point of falling. Until 1833, it had been crowned with a dwarf timber and leaden spire, but this had been removed, and the ring of eight bells had, three years earlier, been silenced, for fear of bringing the heavy mass down. Great cracks had appeared in the walls of the transepts, being slowly ground to powder by the settling of the tower, and the interior of the building was always filled with an impalpable dust, from the same cause. Still the tower sank slowly, and it was seen that the four great piers at the crossing, which had hitherto supported it, were at last failing. The real marvel was that they had not failed before, for a singular discovery was made at this time, at the base of the south-west pier, by which it was proved that at some distant period—probably about that of the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII.—an attempt had been made to wreck the place. A kind of cavern, some six feet wide, had been excavated in the foundation and strutted with timbering which had evidently been placed there for the two-fold purpose of protecting the excavators, and of firing it when the undermining process had been completed. Why this brutal idea had been abandoned, when so near completion, must be left