Tower is defended from sacrilegious hands by the force of its associations, though as a work of art it is not to be compared to the Old Bailey. But while admitting the respect that is due to historical associations, these cannot be allowed to be the only, nor even the chief claims to a building's preservation. The sanctification of a building as noble architecture, merely because it is ancient, is folly as great as the undiscriminating contempt for another building on the sole ground that it is modern. We should allow neither dates nor associations to lead us into a quagmire of sentimental hysteria. Not that the Old Bailey was lacking in associations. Here were tried persons as variously eminent as William Lord Russell, the Earl of Shaftesbury, Horne Tooke, Richard Savage, Jonathan Wild and Jack Sheppard. Here Daniel Defoe commenced his Review, here Penn of Pennsylvania was confined, and here, in the prison he had emptied and set in flames, died Lord George Gordon. The latest of the prisons occupying this ancient site was not itself ancient. It was designed by George Dance the younger, and the first stone was laid by Alderman Beckford on May 31, 1770. For ten years the building operations slowly continued, but after the Gordon riots of 1780 the work was completed in the space of three years.

Let no one hitherto unfamiliar with its date of origin consider that for this reason the passing away of Newgate can be viewed with less regret. On the contrary, its comparative youth renders its wilful destruction the more detestable and atrocious. False sentiment alone bewails the loss of a link with Jack Sheppard, but all honest men may weep for the murdered memory of a great and unrecognised British architect.

F. R.