d mind of the new primate. The whole
pathos of Juxon's position lay in fact in his perfect absorption in the
past. The books were reclaimed from their Cambridge Adullam. The chapel
was rescued from desecration, and the fine woodwork of screen and stalls
replaced as Laud had left them. The demolition of the hall left him a
more serious labour, and the way in which he entered on it brought
strikingly out Juxon's temper. He knew that he had but a few years to
live, and he set himself but one work to do before he died, the
replacing everything in the state in which the storm of the rebellion
had found it. He resolved therefore not only to rebuild the hall but to
rebuild it precisely as it had stood before it was destroyed. It was in
vain that he was besieged by the remonstrances of "classical"
architects, that he was sneered at even by Pepys as "old-fashioned";
times had changed and fashions had changed, but Juxon would recognize no
change at all. He died ere the building was finished, but even in death
his inflexible will provided that his plans should be adhered to. The
result has been a singularly happy one. It was not merely that the
Archbishop has left us one of the noblest examples of that strange yet
successful revival of Gothic feeling of which the staircase of Christ
Church Hall, erected at much about the same time, furnishes so exquisite
a specimen. It is that in his tenacity to the past he has preserved the
historic interest of his hall. Beneath the picturesque woodwork of the
roof, in the quiet light that breaks through the quaint mullions of its
windows, the student may still recall without a jar the figures which
make Lambeth memorable, figures such as those of Warham and Erasmus, of
Grocyn and Colet and More. Unhappily there was a darker side to this
conservatism. The Archbishops had returned like the Bourbons, forgetting
nothing and having learned hardly anything. If any man could have
learned the lesson of history it was Juxon's successor, the hard
sceptical Sheldon, and one of the jottings in Pepys' Diary shows us what
sort of lesson he had learned. Pepys had gone down the river at noon to
dine with the Archbishop in company with Sir Christopher Wren, "the
first time," as he notes, "that I ever was there, and I have long longed
for it." Only a few days before he had had a terrible disappointment,
for "Mr. Wren and I took boat, thinking to dine with my Lord of
Canterbury, but when we came to Lambeth the gate