THE CHAPTER-HOUSE, WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

New Zealander, Volume XVIII, Issue 1725, 20 September 1862, Page 4

THE CHAPTER-HOUSE, WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

[From the " Evening Mail," June 21]

The fate of this beautiful building is still undecided. Hardly have Domesday-book and other invaluable records been removed from it on account of its insecurity from fire; hardly have the public been permitted to look somewhat, more freely at its beautiful proportions, and couut its many mutilations; hardly has the world of taste been allowed to breathe over the proposal to restore it in a worthy way, than a fresh danger, an old enemy with a new lace, puts in an appearance against it. There are, it seems, a minor class of public records, —some stale specifications of patents, some musty Admiralty accounts, perhaps relating to the construction of the Ark. or of ships of 1200 tons and 74 guns; some returns probably, of the accuracy of our erring old friend, Brown Bess; some things, in short, remarkable neither for antiquity nor for usefulness—that require public lodging. Mr. Hardy, the vigilant guardian of the Rolls, content with the real treasures of the Chapter-house, will have none of this official rubbish. Every one cries "No child of "mine," and so it is proposed to stow it away temporarily in the Chap-ter-house. Well, we all know what "temporarily means in this constitutional country. It usually means a state of things that will last all" your life lung ana longer too; something, in short, that will see you out, and not you it. We have a wholesome dread, therefore, of the word " temporarily," and to us it is almost svnonvmous with " everlasting." If this rubbish once gets into the Chapter-house it will stay there for ever, for it is a great mistake to think that rubbish ever rots. So let the authorities, of whom we believe Mr. Cowper is the chief, look to it that the Chapter-house, tbc glory of architectural art, and a very gem of construcand grace, be not made a mere receptacle for rubbish; and, above all things, let the public look to Mr. Cowper, and cry shame upon him if he does not find some other place" for this official lumber, and if he comes between the taste or the nation and its object. Let us think, then, of some other place fit for such records of a minor class, where the dust may fall softly on them year after year till it quite covers them up, and they "are, if possible, stil! more forgotten than they already are. Nor have we long to think, for we do remember a certain Victoria Tower, which was built for this very purpose of containing public records. There can be no mistake about it, or as to the money it cost. There it is, some 300 feet and odd high by some 70 or 80 feet square. There it is—empty. We should like to know what official bug-bear hinders it from being put to the use for which it is built, except that somehow nothing in England is ever put to the use for which it was intended. St. James s Palace was a lasar-house. In Whitehall we have a Banqueting House turned into a Chapel; a Queens mews was made into a Record-office, and now a "Vie- 1 toria Tower into nothing. It is not old enough to be haunted, and we will venture to say that it is some miserable economy of fittings, some few pounds of work still to be done, which renders what has cost more than £IOO,OOO wholly useless. So pray, good Mr. Cowper, do something for us, and save the Chap-ter-house of Westminster Abbey from further desecration. There are the old fittings; move them over the way to the Victoria Tower and let us see the Chapterhouse as it really is,—grand and graceful, after the ill-treatment of centuries. Let us add. that the memorial to the Government in favor of the restoration of the. Chapter-house has been most numerously and influentially signed. Among the names are those of the Archbi'shop of York, the Duke of Bncclcucb, the Marquises of Bristol and Camden, the Earls of Shrewtburv, Devon, Stanhope, and Ellesmere, the Bishops of Oxford and St. David's, Lords Lyttelton, Ashburton, Taunton, Stratford do Redcliffe, and LJanover, Sir Henry Holland, Sir Charles Trevelyan, Sir Charles Eastlake, the Dean of Christchurcb, the Master of Trinitv, Mr. The, M.P., Mr. Mowbray, M.l-, Professor "Willis, Mr. Decimus Burton, Doc* aiisu'U, atld manyothf-rs,