It is now many months since some four hundred and fifty of our readers, including a great many renowned English and foreign scholars, sent us their signatures in support of our petition to the Bishop of London in which we expressed the hope that the nineteen city churches threatened with destruction might be left intact. Until then little or nothing had been said of the importance of the churches as works of art, and it was on the plea of their aesthetic value that our petition was based. A short time ago the Bishop of London courteously informed us that the matter would be further discussed at the then approaching London Diocesan Conference, and there, on November 28th, it was resolved to ask the New Sees Committee of the National Church Assembly to recommend the appointment of a strong committee to investigate the problem of the reorganisation of the diocese of London, bearing in mind the requirements of the whole of the Metropolitan area.

In the course of the discussion the Rev. G. W. Hudson Shaw, rector of S. Botolph's, Bishopsgate, remarked among other things that the recent commission had made a great mistake in putting forward the disastrous proposal that nineteen city churches should be pulled down. At the same meeting the Bishop of London, in supporting the motion, said that the proposal to pull down the nineteen churches had aroused such very strong indignation that he had not been able to give effect to it. He himself had a strong feeling against pulling down any consecrated church unless he was forced to do it. But something had been done. The church of S. Katherine Coleman [a building of no merit constructed about 1740 by one Horne] was being pulled down and the money used for the erection of a church in Stoke Newington. He thought they could carry the aesthetic and architectural beauty argument too far. What they had to consider was what God wanted, not what they thought. He had been practically offered half a million pounds for the site of All Hallows, in Lombard Street [By Wren], but when he approached the patrons [The Dean and Chapter of Canterbury] they refused to allow him to take any steps at all. Persistent cries of "No" greeted the Bishop's reference to the removal of some churches considered to have no esthetic value. 

We hope that some of these words of the Bishop and his colleagues will make it clear to our readers that whatever the outcome, it has been worthwhile to sign the petition. The opinion is freely expressed in well-informed quarters that if no organised attempt had been made to impress upon churchmen the fact that hundreds of distinguished students of art feel deeply concerned about the churches, less would have been heard of their worth as art. 

In re-expressing the hope that the Church may succeed in finding a way out of the great difficulties which encompass the fate of these irreplaceable masterpieces, may we make one further suggestion? Could one of Wren's churches not be turned into a permanent museum of some of the treasures of art scattered throughout the churches of England and in private hands? Every year there is held an exhibition at the Church Congress which reveals the enormous wealth of the Church in old plate, etc, and there would be no difficulty in persuading owners to lend or present some of their possessions to an authorised museum of this kind. 

It would be a source of perpetual delight to Churchmen; it would form a fresh link between the Church and the public who are perhaps more interested in the ancient applied art of England than in any other form of artistic expression; it would be a great boon to students of plate, textiles, carvings, glass, and many other species of art whose development is bound up with church history; it would get over the difficulty of desecrating the building either by allowing it to get into undesirable hands or, worse still, by mutilating or destroying it.