424 ST. MARK’S, VENICE

was said by the various speakers, all without exception men of the most accurate judgment and true feeling, at the meeting held in Oxford. All that I think it necessary for you to lay, directly from myself, before the meeting you are about to hold, is the explicit statement of two facts of which I am more distinctly cognizant from my long residences in Italy at different periods, and in Venice during these last years, than any other person can be:-namely, the Infidel-(malignantly and scornfully Infidel and anti-religionist) aim of Italian ‘restoration’-and the totality of the destruction it involves, of whatever it touches.”

So again, in a second and despairing letter, he wrote:-

“You cannot be too strongly assured of the total destruction involved, in the restoration of St. Mark’s. ... Then the plague of it all is, What can you do? Nothing would be effectual, but the appointment of a Procurator of St. Mark’s, with an enormous salary, dependent on the church’s being let alone. What you can do by a meeting at Manchester, I have no notion. The only really practical thing that I can think of would be sending me lots of money to spend in getting all the drawings I can of the old thing before it goes. I don’t believe we can save it by any protests.”

See the Birmingham Daily Mail, November 27, 1879. The letters are here reprinted from Arrows of the Chace, 1880, vol. i. pp. 251-252.

The meeting in Oxford alluded to above was held in the Sheldonian Theatre on November 15, 1879. Amongst the principal speakers were the Dean of Christ Church (in the chair), Dr. Acland, the Professor of Fine Art (Mr. W.B. Richmond), Mr. Street, Mr. William Morris, and Mr. Burne-Jones.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]