At this point prudence suggests that I should pause. The time has not come for putting forward more than an outline of a proposal which is sure to be denounced as revolutionary. It will be a great point gained if we can find acceptance for the principle advocated. We all do dearly love our own old ways of looking at things; we all do cling tenaciously to the prejudices which we inherited or which were stamped upon our minds in the nursery; we all do honestly detest being worried into changes which interfere with our habits of thought and action and compel us to enter upon some new course. Yet if it be once brought home to us that a great national heritage is being rapidly sacrificed, allowed to perish, or, worse, being wantonly destroyed for lack of that small measure of protection which life and property have a right to expect in every civilized community, I believe that the sense of a common danger will unite men in a generous forgetfulness of their favourite maxims and a shame at their own supineness, and awaken them to see the necessity for concerted action; and then the thing that needs doing will be done. There was a time in our history when the cry of “the Church in danger” provoked a strange frenzy among the people. The panic did not last very long, and not much came of it. But if another cry should be raised by gentle and simple and men of all creeds and parties, the cry of “the churches in danger!” I do not think little or nothing would come of _that_. That would be not the mere expression of a passing sentiment, but it would be a call to action; and when that cry does come to be raised, the public at large will not be satisfied with anything less than drastic measures, because the nation will have been roused to a consciousness of the value of their heritage; and when a great people begins to assert itself, it is not often that it is content with demanding only what it is morally justified in claiming. * * * * * NOTE. The following appeared in _The Pall Mall Gazette_ of August 15, 1889. If a more dreadful comment upon the above essay can be produced, I have not yet met with it:-- DISESTABLISHMENT BY DEMOLITION. Mr. Thackeray Turner, the secretary of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, requests us to publish the following appeal for an ancient church which is in imminent danger of destruction:--