Punch (73.1877)

September 8, 1877.] PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

PROTECTION v. RESTORATION.

r

e walls liad mouths as well as ears
" Save us from my friends" might
be the cry of many an ancient build-
in?. Next to wanton Destruction, their
most deadly enemy has been wilful Res-
toration—the Restoration that consists in
pulling down all that testifies to the time
between the original erection of the
building and the present day. Old build-
ings interest most of us, as a rule, more
through their associations than _ their
architecture. And even reproduction of
the original architecture is, in most
cases, felt to be dearly purchased by
removal of the association-peg3.
We read the history of Church or
Castle in its "incongruities
—the Early English body-
grafted on the Romanesque
head, and supported on one
Decorated and one Debased
lower-extremity. Old Time
looked in on us through those
Flamboyant eye-holes 1 in a
Norman face, and winked at
his own revenges in the
shape of Jacobean doorways
or Queen-Anne woodwork on Gothic walls. And what if, as
Wokdswokth says, "A Juggler's balls old Time about him tost P"
There was life in even the wildest of the old Boy's vagaries, and
he never jumped over a style without leaving you something to
learn, if only in the measurement of his footprints.

But your scientific restorer won't stand any of old Time's non-
sense. He shuts him in the stocks of style, and denies him the right
of even making his mark, much less leaving his record on those old
erections, which from " dead/', walls he made living by his hand-
writing.

At last Restoration has gone such lengths in destruction of all
traces of the_ past in our Cathedrals and Churches that those who
love to question the past, and take an interest in its record^ have
been roused to protest, by forming a society for "the Protection of
Ancient Buildings," not against old Time, but his enemy, the new
Trim. This Society numbers, among its members, many of our
most distinguished artists, and lovers of Art, and has for its Secre-
tary one of our foremost poets.

Here is their explanation of the need which has brought such a
Society into being :—

" No doubt," they say, " within the last fifty years a new interest, almost
like another sense, has arisen in ancient buildings; and they have become
the subject of one of the most interesting of studies, and of an enthusiasm
religious, historical, artistic, which is one of the undoubted gains of our
time : yet we think, that if the present treatment of them be continued, our
descendants will find them useless for study and chilling to enthusiasm. We
think that those last fifty years of knowledge and attention have done more
for their destruction than all the foregoing centuries of revolution, violence,
and contempt.

" For Architecture, long decaying, died out, as a popular art at least, just
as the knowledge of mediteval art was born. So that the civilised world of
the nineteenth century has no style of its own amidst its wide knowledge of
the styles of other centuries. From this lack and this gain ai-ose in men's
minds the strange idea of the Eestoration of ancient buildings; a strange and
a most fatal idea, which by its very name implies that it is possible to strip
from a building this, that, and the other part of its history—of its life that is,
and then to stay the hand at some arbitrary point, and leave it still historical,
living, and even as it once was."

Most people who have shivered under the chill struck by some
brand-new and intensely old building fresh from the hand of the
Restorer, must have felt the sense of emptiness which follows
the removal of alterations, every one of which was alive with the
spirit of the time in which it.was made, and the substitution of
the modern antiquity due to the Restorer's more or less genius
guided by his more or less knowledge.

The Society do not hesitate to say,

" Of all the Eestorations yet undertaken the worst have meant the reck-
less stripping a building of some of its most interesting material features ;
while the be3t have their exact analogy in the Restoration of an old picture,
where the partly perished work of the ancient craftsmaster has been made
neat and smooth by the tricky hand of eiijiae unoriginal and thoughtle3 hack
of to-day."

Not that the Society would let time and weather work their will
on venerable walls. They call upon those who have to deal with
them

'---"to put Protection in the place of Restoration, to stave off decay by

daily care, to prop a perilous wall or mend a leaky roof by such means as
are obviously meant for support or covering, and sliow no pretence of other
art, and otherwise to resist all tampering with either the fabric or ornament
of the building as it stands; if it has become inconvenient for its present
use, to raise another building rather than alter or enlarge the old one ; in
fine, to treat our ancient buildings as monuments of a bygone art, created by
bygone manners, that modern art cannot meddle with without destroying."

And they conclude, as Punch concludes with them,

"Thus, and thus only, shall we escape the reproach of our learning being
turned into a snare to us; thus, and thus only, can we protect our ancient
buildings, and hand them down instructive and venerable to those that come
after us."

A MENAGERIE ON THE MOVE.
A Protest from a Timid T. G.

"A Curious Freight.—The Chatham and Dover Railway Company has,
through its Continental Manager, Captain Godbotvd, arranged to deliver at
the Alexandra Palace, within twenty-four hours of its collection in Paris, the
caravan of Nubian animals now being exhibited at the Jardin d'Acclimata-
tion in that city. The collection, which includes seventeen racing drome-
daries, eight giraffes, three rhinoceri, five elephants, buffaloes, and goats,
hunting dogs and ostriches, will be transported under the care of the fourteen
Nubian hunters who captured the animals."

Bless my bones! What next, I wonder ! Surely this must be a
lark.

Dessay this 'ere sort o' thing was very well in Noah's Ark,
Where the beasts was on behaviour—leastways, I should hope they
were,—

But the Zoo a-going by rail! It's jest enough to raise one's.hair.

Never liked them Iron-Road3, Sir I too much row and risk for me.
But this notion simply is the horridest I ever see.
Wasn't busts and spills and smashes dangers quite enough, but
what

They must add the chance of being crunched or swallowed to the
lot?

Well boxed up ? Oh, don't tell me! Why jest suppose there came
a smash;

ill the beasts as wasn't killed for liberty 'ud make a dash.
Whereupon—oh! g-r-r-r! it's gruesome. What a very lively go,
Bolting down a ten-mile cutting followed by a buffalo!

Special train ? Oh, very likely. But there's others on the line,
And this Jamrach lot might chance to be in front or rear of mine.
I confess my very marrer chills at picturing me or Ma.uy
Faced by a Rhinoceros or hunted by a Dromedary.

Nubian hunters too. How nice! Great thick-lipped darkies, I
suppose,

Nearly na-leastways, with ^little in the way of Christian

clothes.

Almost worse than t' other warmints ; don't like Ostriges and such,
But a bare black Nimrod brandishing his spear,—oh Moses! it's
too much!

J don't ride by rail no more if this 'ere sort o' thing prewails :
I should always be a looking out for claws and teeth and tails.
Couldn't take my forty winks but I'd expect to wake and see
A tiger hooking Mary off, a sarpint making eyes at me.

Dissent and Disestablishment.

The Ritualistic extravagances in All Hallow's, Southward,
alleged to have been introduced by the Rev. 0. W. Berkeley,
Vicar of the District, are denounced in an address to the Bishop of
Rochester, voted the other night at a public meeting, in a report of
which it is related of Mr. Berkeley that:

" His preaching included the necessity of Disestablishment, the Real Pre-
sence, Purgatory, and Prayers for the Dead."

The necessity of Disestablishment is an addition to Roman doc-
trine, apparently of Mr. Berkeley's own. Ritualistic parsons do
not generally preach it. But Disestablishment, although not a
point of those_ Clerical Dissenters' preaching, is, if they are per-
mitted to persist in their fooleries, very likely to be the result of
their practice.

Unseasonable and Seasonable.

Hot Politician {whorvants to have an argument, stopping a friend
just as he is getting into a cab). I say, are you for the Turks ?

Sporting Friend {ivith gun-case). Blow the Turks ! I'm for the
Moors! [Drives off to Huston Square.

vol. lxxttt.

K