Punch (77.1879)

November 22, 1879.]

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

231

THE ABSTRACT LORD MAYOR.

{From " The Nine " on the Ninth.)

Ho for London's majestic Lord Mayor!
Who abides evermore in the Chair,

Serene and sublime,

The Lord Mayor of all time,
The Ideal, the Abstract Lord Mayor!

Of Lord Mayors he's th' essential Lord Mayor,
From the time first such officers were,

Lord Mayor Absolute he,

From all accidents free,
Unconditioned and Abstract Lord Mayor!

In the Abstract he feasts on good fare,
With the Concrete beyond all compare,

Turtle-soup thick and clear,

An Entity dear
To even an Abstract Lord Mayor!

When his form to imagine we dare,
To our minds we don't pioture it spare ;

Large the waist round about,

As 'twixt portly and stout,
We conceive of the Abstract Lord Mayor!

Peers and Princes the common lot sbare;

Flesh and blood will succumb to life's wear;
But so long as Time flies,
The Lord Mayor never dies—

That is, not the Abstract Lord Mayor!

Abstract Kings may exist here and there,
But a fig for them people don't care.
Abstract Sultan and Pope
For their sway have no scope
Like the sphere of the Abstract Lord Mayor!

Upstanding, with all our heads bare,
Let us drink the Ineffable Pair ;

Here's a health to the Twain

As one monarch who reign—
The Concrete and the Abstract Lord Mayor !

Demand, and Supply.

No wonder there is the tremendous activity in trade in
Chemicals proclaimed at the Guildhall dinner, with the
demand for fireworks in high places ! There can be no
immediate fear of a change of Ministers, or the com-
merce in Chemicals would hardly be as brisk as Lord
Beaconsfield declares it is.

HAPPY THOUGHT!

Puzzled Frenchman. {Aside.) "Ha! un Interprkte ambulant! ! Quelle
bonne Idee! {To Sandivich-Man.) Pardon, Monsieur Tole, mais par oo

faut-il prendre, s'lL vous plait, pour arriver au MuSEE de soutte
quinzinqueton ? "

ST. MARK'S IN DANGER.

Venice is the wonder of the world; St. Mark's is the wonder of
Venice. For eight centuries that marvellous Byzantine temple has
been the glory of the Sea City, for its fair and fantastic art, within
and without, its arches, colonnades, and domes, its pillars and vaults,
its mosaics and marbles, its dusky splendour of venerable age, and
its perennial beauty of everlasting youth.

For eight centuries this Sea-sbrine has stood, unharmed in
essentials by men or elements. We see it, in a picture of Gentile
Bellini, as it was in the fifteenth century ; and such, in the main,
it is still, save for some modernisation of the mosaics.

Time has, indeed, made the fabric even more beautiful, spreading
a reverential veil over its fair face, and giving venerable and touch-
ing grace to all that has grown old in and about it without ceasing
to be beautiful.

. Some fifteen years ago irreverent and ill-guided hands first began
tinkering at the grand old pile, stripping off old marble to replace it
with new, so leaving what looked like an ugly patch on a fine old
face. On the south side they have been working even more recently,
and the rawness of recent carving jars harshly on the harmonious
beauty of the old work, where left as the tender touch of time has
left it. So much for St. Mark's without. Within, there has been
too much rash dealing with the old mosaics in the way of so-called
repair by rude hands, guided by ill-taught, if not irreverent, eyes,
little careful to match colour, even so far as was possible between
new work and old. In the Baptistery this mischief has gone
farthest, as far as the walls are concerned. But "restoration," falsely
so-called, has worked still more harm in the pavement of the north
aisle, striking the waves of marble into rigidity, and substituting

everywhere dead rule and line for free flow and curve instinct with
" Thus bad begins, but worse remains behind."

They are proposing now to go to work on the West Front!—they
are going "to strike at the face"-—as C^sar recommended his sol-
diers to do—to mar the beauty which past time has respected,"and
which of a surety, present time has no power to mend, _ however
much it may have to mar. These rampant " restorers" will have a
fine field. There will be mosaics to pick at in the vaults; surface
work in stone and marble to patch ; capitals to re-cut, and shafts to
repolish and replace; in short, there will be the old facade to freshen,
as you refresh the face of an ancient beauty, with rouge and pearl-
powder, and enamel. And very much what the old beauty's freshened
face is to the natural look of reverend and self-respecting age,
will the restored West Front of Saint Mark's be to that front as we
now see it in the grace of its ancient beauty.]

The whole civilised world is bound to protest. Cambridge has
already spoken out. Oxford has followed suit. Birmingham has
struck in, in the name of industrial England. The Society for
the Protection of Ancient Buildings has uplifted its voice in a memo-
rial to the Italian Minister of Works. Punch adds his roo-ti-too-it
to this chorus of consternation, and pleads earnestly, in support of
the Society, at least for delay and further consideration of the mat-
ter—believing, as the Society believe, that " any rebuilding of the
facade of St. Mark's Church, any renewal of its beautiM and vener-
able surface, will be an irreparable misfortune to Art"—that "if
there be any .unsoundness in the structure, it is within the power of
science to restore its stability, without removing a stone or altering
an inch of surface," that "if that surface be tampered with, all
will disappear for which the facade is now valued, nor will it ever
be possible to bring it back again."