_Very closely allied with this question is another which is forcing itself upon us all with increasing urgency every month. When we begin to ask ourselves and one another to whom do our Village Churches belong? Who is bound to keep them from falling into ruin? Who has the right to sell the lead off the roof, or the books in the ancient Parish Library, or the bells in the steeple, or the very brasses in the pavement?--and all these things have been done and nobody been called to account--when, I say, we begin to ask these things and press for an answer, we may well be dismayed by the suspicion of how anomalous our position is. The Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings has been doing good work for us; it deserves more support than it has received, and needs many more subscribers before its influence can be brought to bear upon the ignorance and Vandalism, and right down rascality too, with which it so often finds itself in conflict. But the work of this society_, as things are, _can never be anything but palliative at the utmost. A local Philistine with a long purse and no more conscience or sentiment than a gorilla, may do almost what he pleases. It is dreadful to think what might be perpetrated in our country churches with impunity, and what_ would be _perpetrated too, if only the true state of the case were known. Here, too, there is need for the reform of the law. Who_ do _the churches belong to? Who are responsible for their protection from outrage and destruction? There are some country parishes where with a very little manipulation the inhabitants in Vestry assembled might be induced to vote anything; even to the using superfluous seats for boarding up all the windows on the north side to make themselves snug withal. What is to prevent their doing it? Who is to bell the cat?_