It would be wearisome to follow Lord Grimthorpe in detail, in his new way with an old Abbey. With extraordinary passion and virulent contempt for public opinion, he swept away genuine Norman work, and in many places gave a brand-new appearance where had before been the bloom of antiquity. Controversy followed upon controversy, during the progress of these works, and Lord Grimthorpe went grimly on his way, replying to arguments with the personal abuse of which he was a better master than he was of architecture. His critics were “the usual howlers”; Street to him was “the immortal author of the worst great Gothic building in the world,” by which, of course, he meant the Law Courts; the foremost architects and antiquaries talked “ignorant nonsense,” and were persons who would “call everything destruction on which they have not got a percentage.” Here, indeed, be “words that sting, and thoughts that burn.” They are vehement, and they hurt, which was the object of them. Like Alan Breck, he was a “bonnie fighter,” even though, as an architect, he did not begin to exist. One of his worst atrocities was the hateful wash-tub done in stone, which serves for pulpit in the nave. His work is, indeed, only too evident all over the building, and he himself is represented in sculptured stone in a spandrel over one of the western porches; and is shown in the likeness of a recording angel, with a pen and a scroll upon which he is probably entering the sins of architects, or writing some new Evangel on matters architectural. But the sculptor, although the portrait is excellent, has made a mistake in representing him apparently at a loss for a word. Whether pleading a case in court, or abusing fellow-controversialists, his eloquence suffered from no such impediment. [Sidenote: _ST. ALBAN’s SHRINE_] But enough of Lord Grimthorpe and his doings. Let us see the “holy of holies” of this Cathedral: the Shrine of St. Alban, in its beautiful chapel, directly east of the great altar-screen. After the Shrine was destroyed, in the troubles attendant upon the Reformation, none expected it to be ever seen again. It disappeared utterly, and only the worn pavement, where the pilgrims had knelt, showed where it had stood. All around were signs that this had been no lightly regarded Shrine; and to this day the mid-fifteenth-century Watching Loft remains, in which the Feretrarius, or Relic Keeper, and his monastic brethren kept guard night and day. It was in 1866 that, during some alterations to the Lady Chapel, many pieces of carved Purbeck marble were found, built up with bricks and rubble into some sixteenth-century work. It was readily guessed that they were portions of the vanished Shrine, and in 1872, when Sir Gilbert Scott was at work in the south choir-aisle, an immense quantity of carved fragments were discovered. A further quest led to the recovery of nearly the whole of the marble Shrine; and it now stands, pieced together, in its ancient place.