Work of much anxious discrimination

Now the action and reaction of these two competing sets of impulses undoubtedly makes the protection of our ancient buildings a very complex and very difficult problem. Both sets are very powerful, both act in varying degrees, and the final compromise between the rival sets of claims is necessarily the work of much anxious discrimination. I venture to maintain that the complication and antagonism is such that no hard-and-fast doctrine can be laid down. Each case must stand on its merits. Each decision must be the laborious reconcilement of conflicting interests. Our cause has suffered from over-arbitrary dogmas and some affectation of contempt for the plain necessities of material existence. Every one outside the Tuileries laughed at Edmond About, when he told the Romans of to-day that the only thing left for them was ‘ to contemplate their ruins.’ I wish myself that they had contemplated their ruins a little longer, or had allowed us to contemplate them, instead of seeking to turn Rome into a third-rate Paris. But we shall be laughed at if we ever venture to tell the nineteenth century that it must con-template its ruins.

The trust imposed on the century is not to contemplate its ruins, but to protect its ancient buildings. Now that will be done if the century can learn to feel the true sacredness of ancient buildings, if it will admit that the building stands on the same footing with picture, statue, and poem, that it is unique, inimitable, irreplaceable; and, above all, has its own consecration of place, continuity, and record. Admit this first, and then we will consider the claims of the present, their convenience, and their means. But the burden of proof ought always to be pressed imperiously against those whose claim is to destroy, to convert, or to extend.

Ancient building

When every other means fail, when irresistible necessity is proved, it may be a sad duty to remove an ancient building, to add to it, or to incorporate it. But this can never justify what we now call restoring,’ a process which makes it as much like the original as Madame Tussaud’s figures are like the statesman or general they represent. It can never justify re-decoration — cutting out ancient art-work and replacing it by new work or machine work. It can never justify archaeological exercises — I mean the patching on to old buildings new pieces of our own invention, which we deliberately present as fabrications of the antique. These things are mere Wardour Street spurious bric-d-brac, no more like ancient buildings than a schoolboy’s iambics are like Yeschylus. How often do committees, dean and chapter, public offices, and even Parliament itself private turkey tours, treat our great national possessions as if they were mere copy books, on the face of which our modern architects were free to practise the art of composing imitations of the ancients. Such buildings become much like a Palimpsest manuscript; whereon, over a lost tragedy of Sophocles, some wretched monk has scribbled his barbarous prose. How often is the priceless original for ever lost beneath the later stuff!

In these remarks I have strictly confined myself to general principles: first, because I do not pretend to any special or technical knowledge which would entitle me to criticise particular works, but mainly because I believe our true part to be the maintenance of general principles. If we fall into discussions of detail we may lose hold of our main strength. We have to raise the discussion into a higher atmosphere than that of architectural anachronism. We cannot pitch our tone too high. It is not architectural anachronism which we have to check: it is the safety of our national records, our national self-respect, the spirit of religious reverence that we have to uphold. We have to do battle against forgery, irreverence, and desecration. Let us raise a voice against the idea that any work of art can ever, under any circumstances, be really ‘ restored; ’ against the idea that any ancient art-work can usefully be ‘imitated,’ against the idea that ancient monuments are a corpus vile whereon to practise antiquarian exercises; against the habit of forging spurious monuments, as the monks in the Middle Ages forged spurious charters; finally, against the idea that the convenience of to-day is always to outweigh the sacredness of the past.