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 note how readily an archæologist may determine the approximate date of an ancient building by its style, even, if needs be, by a small portion of its carvings; but what will the archæologists of centuries hence be able to make of our present jumble of all periods? a mixture of past forms from which the meaning and true spirit have fled. Indeed, a certain famous English architect once boasted, I have been told, that he made such an excellent copy of an Early English building, even to the working of the stones roughly, in reverent imitation of the original, that he gave it as his opinion that, in the course of a century or two, when the new building had become duly time-toned, weather-stained, and the stone-work crumbled a little here and there, no future antiquary would be able to distinguish it from a genuine Early English structure, unless possibly by its better state of preservation. Alas! the nineteenth century has no specially distinguishing style, save that of huge hotels and railway stations! Our most successful ecclesiastical edifices are but copies of various medieval examples. We can copy better than we can create! A new architectural style worthy of the century has yet to be invented, and it appears as though—in spite of much striving after—the century will pass away without such an achievement.

Then we made our way to the ruined abbey in the reverent spirit of an ancient pilgrim, although in the further spirit of this luxurious century our pilgrimage was performed with ease on wheels, and not laboriously on foot. The most picturesque and interesting part of this fane of ancient devotion is