e to
prayers in the Beauchamp chapel in the evening with flambeaux and
torches, excepting on Innocents' Day, when they went to their own
parish churches. In an interesting Guide to the Cathedral, now in the
British Museum, annotated in the last century by some visitor, we
find an entry concerning this chapel, "The ceiling is of Irish oak,
and never known to have spiders or cobwebs in it."

Much of the carved work in both these chantries was employed elsewhere
in the buildings. The plea put forward for their removal was founded
on a report by Francis Price thirty-six years before, wherein he
considered them unsafe. When the Hungerford Chantry was added one of
the outside buttresses of the Lady Chapel aisle was removed to make
room for it; the opening pierced through the main walls of the
cathedral into both the chapels were also sources of weakness. Wyatt
seized upon these facts, and with the precedent of Price's report,
declared the chapels unsafe, and also, which was no doubt his real
motive for action, that "their lack of uniformity" injured the
appearance of the buildings. Wyatt's ideal virtues were of the lowest
order, to obtain neatness and tidiness he was prepared to sacrifice
any and every thing, and the two chapels were obviously not in the
style of the cathedral, nor, unluckily (for had they been they might
yet be standing), precisely symmetrical in effect, so they were swept
away. These actions at Salisbury, and similar destruction at Lincoln,
Hereford, and elsewhere, have made Wyatt's name odious; but deserving
though he be of all blame, it must not be forgotten that restorers of
to-day, even at Salisbury, have effaced much interesting work of past
time on the same pretext: that it failed to accord with the rest of
the work to which it was obviously a late addition. This plea,
specious and even excellent in theory, has probably done more
irreparable injury to our ancient buildings than even the iconoclasts
of the Reformation. A shattered ruin may convey a clear idea of its
original state, while a smooth, pedantic restoration will obliterate
it entirely.

=The Stained Glass= throughout the whole building survives but in a
few instances, and these, with two exceptions, not in their original
places. Of its wholesale destruction we have sad evidence extant in a
letter, dated 1788, from John Berry, glazier, of Salisbury, to Mr.
Lloyd, of Conduit Street, London. It may be transcribed in full, to
show how reckles