with the great public schools of England, or adequately supply the
blank in our educational system created by their spoliation and
abolition. Here, too, wise reform might have spared and remodelled what
misguided zeal, allied with unprincipled greed, destroyed.

With the ruination and impoverishment of the cathedrals, an element in
the Church's life inseparable from them, and most salutary and useful,
ceased to be. The bishops' deprivation of an authority they had too
often disgraced and misused, vested the government of the Church in the
presbyterate; and the national sentiment approved of the change. But
there was no necessity for upsetting the whole cathedral system, and
rooting out the whole cathedral staff, because the bishop was turned
adrift. Had the Canonries been spared, an immense boon would have been
secured for the Reformed Church. Had the stipends attached to them not
been alienated, the Church would have possessed, at all its most
important centres, a staff of clergymen chosen for their ability and
worth, for their learning and power of government and organisation,
aiding the minister in his work, or enriching the theological literature
of their time. With them might have been associated younger men, either
under their supervision as candidates for the ministry, or as
probationers acquiring practical knowledge of its duties and
requirements. The cathedral would have stood out, in its city, great or
small, as the Mother Church--holding forth the model of devout ritual,
of earnest and learned teaching, of zealous work. How vastly superior
its influence would have been, spiritually, intellectually, socially, to
that of struggling _quoad sacra_ churches, with their ill-paid clergy,
or "missions" in charge of worse-paid probationers, it is, I think,
needless to point out. But the possibility of such an institution passed
away when the cathedrals were desecrated, and their revenues were
"grippit"--to use Knox's phrase--by the ungodly robbers of the Church.

I have written these few pages to serve as an introduction to what
follows, from the hand of my friend, Mr. Butler. The Committee of the
Guild asked me to prepare a volume on the most notable of our ancient
churches; and finding that other engagements stood in the way of my
doing so, I recommended that the work should be entrusted to Mr. Butler,
of whose ability to do it well I felt confident. Having read what he has
written, I find my confidence was not misp