When these good and well-meaning people take it into their heads that an ancient ecclesiastical building is to be replaced by a modern structure in which “all the characteristic features of the original are to be reproduced and for the most part retained,” we ask ourselves with wide-open eyes of amazement and perplexity what is going to be reproduced? There is a sumptuous Norman doorway, there are abundant indications of the existences of a Norman church having existed on this spot--there are clear proofs that the Norman pillars have been recklessly cut away here to make room for a splendid thirteenth-century tomb, that the north aisle is an addition raised up at the sacrifice of the original north wall--that a chapel of no great artistic merit was added at another time, that the pitch of the roof was altered when the clerestory was added, that the chancel was rebuilt, flimsily, faultily, fantastically, just before the final rupture with Rome,--and yet that the remains of the superb sedilia which the seventeenth-century mob smashed to pieces were evidently removed from the earlier chancel by the fifteenth-century architects. There are signs, in fact, of the church never having been left undisturbed--that from generation to generation the rude forefathers of the hamlet were always doing something to their church, taking a pride in adding to or altering it, according to their notions. They never thought of _reproducing_ anything, but rightly or wrongly they were always aiming at _improving_ everything. You are going to restore, are you? _What_ are you going to restore? The Norman, the Early English, the Decorated, or the Perpendicular church? What are the characteristic features of the original? What is your notion of the original which you pretend to be about to restore? The problem that presents itself becomes more difficult, more complex, the longer you look at it--the problem, namely, _what_ you are going to restore. If my dear old grandmother should wish to be made “beautiful for ever”--_i.e._ to be restored--what condition of former loveliness shall we call back? There are some who paid homage to her beauty at eighteen, some who loved her at thirty, and some who almost adored her at threescore years and ten. Look at her portraits! Which shall we take? Nay! I love her as she is, say I, with the smile that plays about her venerable lips and the soft light in the gentle eyes. I love every furrow on her broad brow and would not have the thin grey hairs turned to masses of auburn. I would keep her for ever if I might, but I would no more dream of restoring her to what she was before I was born than I would replace her by something that she is not and never was.