There is an entire absence of true feeling and of any real
inspiration of devotional art. The design is conventional, the pattern
uniform. The work is often scamped and hurried, very different from
the old method of building. We note the contrast. The medieval
builders were never in a hurry to finish their work. The old fanes
took centuries to build; each generation doing its share, chancel or
nave, aisle or window, each trying to make the church as perfect as
the art of man could achieve. We shall see how much of this sound and
laborious work has vanished, a prey to restoration and ignorant
renovation. We shall see the house-breaker at work in rural hamlet and
in country town. Vanishing London we shall leave severely alone. Its
story has been already told in a large and comely volume by my friend
Mr. Philip Norman. Besides, is there anything that has not vanished,
having been doomed to destruction by the march of progress, now that
Crosby Hall has gone the way of life in the Great City? A few old
halls of the City companies remain, but most of them have given way to
modern palaces; a few City churches, very few, that escaped the Great
Fire, and every now and again we hear threatenings against the
masterpieces of Wren, and another City church has followed in the wake
of all the other London buildings on which the destroyer has laid his
hand.
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