Summary

Licensing

	This work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 100 years or fewer. You must also include a United States public domain tag to indicate why this work is in the public domain in the United States.
	This file has been identified as being free of known restrictions under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights.

https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/PDMCreative Commons Public Domain Mark 1.0falsefalse

Transcription

THE “VANDAL RESTORERS” OF ST. PATRICK'S.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE FREEMAN.
183, Great Brunswick-street, Jan. 27th.

Sir—The only reply I am disposed to give to the Freeman's article of the 23rd inst., and Messrs. Murphy and Son's letter of yesterday is my letter, which has been the occasion of both. The readers of the Freeman's Journal (and they are, necessarily, a more extensive class than the readers of the Dublin Builder) can, without my letter, know only one side of the question. I have, therefore, to request that the Freeman, in a spirit of fair play, will publish my letter to the editor of the Dublin Builder. I shall then be content to allow those who interest themselves in such matters to form their own opinions on the restorations in question.—I am, Sir, your obedient servant, J. J. M'CARTHY.

[We publish the above extraordinary letter received from Mr. M'Carthy last night, and must say that we never remember to have heard of such a proposed mode of replying to refutations of statements as the republication of the refuted statements. Had Mr. M'Carthy adopted the usual course of sending his letter criticising our notice of the magnificent work undertaken by Mr. Guinness to this journal for publication we would at once have published it. But, instead of this, Mr. M'Carthy, without ever even intimating to us his intention of doing so, wrote a very uncandid and unsustainable letter to another journal, in which he undertool to criticise, but only succeeded in demonstrating that he was inspired rather by personal feeling than by knowledge of true art. It would have afforded us much amusement to have published Mr. M'Carthy's attack on the restorations of St. Patrick's, and experience of himself, had he sent it to us in the ordinary course; but really we must be excused if we decline to publish, not by way of a reply to a refutation of his pretence to art knowledge, an attempt to set aside the facts by which his fallacies were overthrown, but the veritable antique epistle of over two columns in length, which we have already dissected, perhaps rather less tenderly that was agreeable either to its author or to ourselves. It is gratifying however, to find that the only answer Mr. M'Carthy could concoct is a mere repetition of his refuted pretensions—refuted, too, by the evidence of his own witnesses. If Mr. M'Carthy has a reply to make to either our article or to Mr. Murphy's letter, we will cheerfully give space to his reply.—Ed. F. J.]