r of the ancient style of
architecture. If cathedrals, where it might be imagined that some
remains of ecclesiastical taste would chiefly linger, thus suffered,
even when under the supervision of the chief architects of the period,
what would have happened if, at such a time, a sudden zeal for Church
restoration had invaded the country clergy?

We may be thankful, on the whole, that it was an age of whitewash.
Carter, writing of Westminster Abbey, records one thing with hearty
gratitude. It had not been whitewashed. It was the one religious
structure in the kingdom which showed its original finishing, and 'those
modest hues which the native appearance of the stone so pleasantly
bestows.'[859] Everywhere else the dauber's brush had been at work. He
spoke of it with indignation. 'I make little scruple in declaring that
this job work, which is carried on in every part of the kingdom, is a
mean makeshift to give a delusive appearance of repair and cleanliness
to the walls, when in general this wash is resorted to to hide neglected
or perpetrated fractures.'[860] The stone fretwork of the Lady Chapel at
Hereford,[861] the valuable wall-paintings at Salisbury,[862] the carved
work of Grinling Gibbons at St. James', Westminster,[863] shared, for
example, the general fate, and were smothered in lime. Horace Walpole,
laughing at the City of London for employing one whom he thought a very
indifferent craftsman to write their history, said he supposed that
presently, instead of having books published with the imprimatur of an
university, they would be 'printed as churches are whitewashed--John
Smith and Thomas Johnson, Churchwardens.'[864] How few churches are
there that were not earlier or later in the last century emblazoned with
some such like scroll! But if whitewash conceals, it also preserves; it
hides beauties to which one generation is blind, that it may disclose
them the more fresh and uninjured to another which has learnt to
appreciate them.

When it is said that the churches were kept in such tolerable repair
that at all events they did not fall, it would appear that in many cases
little more than this could be truthfully added. Ely Minster remains
standing, but more by good chance, if Defoe is to be trusted, than from
any sufficient care on the part of its guardians. 'Some of it totters,'
he wrote, 'so much with every gale of wind, looks so like decay, and
seems so near it, that whenever it does fall, all that 'tis li