were toppled from the portico; while the pulpit and the intense heat of the air. The bells were melting, cross were entirely destroyed. The dragoons in and vast avalanches of stones were pouring from St. Paul's became so troublesome to the inhabitants the walls. Near the east end he found the body by their noisy brawling games and their rough of an old woman, who had cowered there, burned interruption of passengers, that in 1651 we find to a coal. Taswell also relates that the ashes of them forbidden to play at ninepins from six a.m. the books kept in St. Faith's were blown as far to nine p.m. as Eton and Windsor. When the Restoration came, sunshine again fell upon the ruins. Wren, that great genius, was called in. His report was not very favourable. The pillars were giving way; the whole work had been from the beginning ill designed and ill built; the tower was leaning. He proposed to have a rotunda, with cupola and lantern, to give the church light, "and incomparable more grace" than the lean shaft of a steeple could possibly afford. He closed his report by a eulogy on the portico of Inigo Jones, as "an absolute piece in itself." Some of the stone collected for St. Paul's went, it is said, to build Lord Clarendon's house, near Albemarle Street. On August 27, 1661, good Mr. Evelyn, one of the commissioners, describes meeting Wren, the Bishop and Dean of St. Paul's, &c., and resolving finally on a new foundation. But on Sunday, September 2, the Great Fire drew a red cancelling line over Wren's half-drawn plans. The old cathedral passed away, like Elijah, in flames. The fire broke out about ten o'clock on Saturday night at a bakehouse in Pudding Lane, near East Smithfield. On Sunday afternoon Pepys found all the goods carried that morning to Cannon Street now removing to Lombard Street. At St. Paul's Wharf he takes water, follows the king's party, and lands at Bankside. "In corners and upon steeples, and between churches and houses, as far as we could see up the city, a most horrid, bloody, malicious flame, not like the flame of an ordinary fire." On the 7th he saw St. Paul's Church with all the roof off, and the body of the choir fallen into St. Faith's. On Monday, the 3rd, Mr. Evelyn describes the whole north of the City on fire, the sky ablaze for ten miles round, and the scaffolds round St. Paul's in flames. On the 4th he saw the stones of St. Paul's flying like grenades, the melting lead running in streams down the streets, the very pavements too hot for the feet, and the approaches too blocked for any help to be applied. A Westminster boy named Taswell, quoted by Dean Milman from "Camden's Miscellany," vol. ii., p. 12, has also sketched the scene. On Monday, the 3rd, from Westminster he saw, about eight o'clock, the fire burst forth, and before nine he could read by the blaze a 16mo "Terence" which he had with him. The boy at once set out for St. Paul's, resting by the way upon Fleet Bridge, being almost faint with On the 7th (Friday) Evelyn again visited St. Paul's. The portico he found rent in pieces, the vast stones split asunder, and nothing remaining entire but the inscription on the architrave, not one letter of which was injured. Six acres of lead on the roof were all melted. The roof of St. Faith's had fallen in, and all the stores and books from Paternoster Row were consumed, burning for a week together. Singularly enough, the lead over the altar at the east end was untouched, and among the monuments the body of one bishop, Braybroke (Richard II.) remained entire. The old tombs nearly all perished; amongst them those of two Saxon kings, John of Gaunt, his wife Constance of Castile, poor St. Erkenwald, and scores of bishops, good and bad; Sir Nicholas Bacon, Elizabeth's Lord Keeper, and father of the great philosopher; the last of the true knights, the gallant Sir Philip Sidney; and Walsingham, that astute counsellor of Elizabeth. Then there was Sir Christopher Hatton, the dancing chancellor, whose proud monument crowded back Walsingham's and Sidney's. According to the old scoffing distich, 'Philip and Francis they have no tomb, For great Christopher takes all the room." Men of letters in old St. Paul's, says Dean Milman, there were few. The chief were Lily, the grammarian, second master of St. Paul's; and Linacre, the physician, the friend of Colet and Erasmus. Of artists there was at least one great manVandyck, who was buried near John of Gaunt. Among citizens, the chief was Sir William Hewet, whose daughter married Osborne, the apprentice who saved her from drowning, and who was the ancestor of the Dukes of Leeds. After the fire Bishop Sancroft preached in a patched-up part of the west end of the ruins. All hopes of restoration were soon abandoned, as Wren had, with his instinctive genius, predicted. Sancroft at once wrote to the great architect, "What you last whispered in my ear is now come to pass. A pillar has fallen, and the rest threatens to follow." The letter concludes thus: "You are so absolutely necessary to us, that we can do nothing, resolve on nothing, without you." There was plenty of zeal in London still; but, nevertheless, after all, nothing was done in the way of rebuilding till the year 1673. The Rebuilding of St. Paul's-Ill Treatment of its Architect-Cost of the Present Fabric-Royal Visitors-The First Grave in St. Paul'sMonuments in St. Paul's-Nelson's Funeral-Military Heroes in St. Paul's-The Duke of Wellington's Funeral-Other Great Men in St. Paul's-Proposals for the Completion and Decoration of the Building-Dimensions of St. Paul's-Plan of Construction-The Dome, Ball, and Cross-Mr. Horner and his Observatory-Two Narrow Escapes-Sir James Thornhill-Peregrine Falcons on St. Paul's-Nooks and Corners of the Cathedral-The Library, Trophy Room, and Clock-The Great Bell-The New Peal of Bells-Curious Story of a Monomaniac-The Poets and the Cathedral-Discovery of Ancient Foundations-St. Paul's Churchyard Gardens. TOWARDS the rebuilding of St. Paul's Cathedral, Charles II., generous as usual in promises, offered an annual contribution of £1,000; but this, however, never seems to have been paid. It, no doubt, went to pay Nell Gwynne's losses at the gambling-table, or to feed the Duchess of Portsmouth's lap-dogs. Some £1,700 in fines, however, were set apart for the new building. The Primate Sheldon gave £2,000. Many of the bishops contributed largely, and there were parochial collections all over England. But the bulk of the money was obtained from the City duty on coals, which, as Dean Milman remarks, in time had their revenge by destroying the stone-work of the Cathedral. It was only by a fortunate accident that Wren became the builder; for Charles II., whose tastes and vices were all French, had in vain invited over Perrault, the designer of one of the fronts of the Louvre. The great architect, Wren, was the son of a Dean of Windsor, and nephew of a Bishop of Norwich whom Cromwell had imprisoned for his Romish tendencies. From a boy Wren had shown a genius for scientific discovery. He distinguished himself in almost every branch of knowledge, and to his fruitful brain we are indebted for some fiftytwo suggestive discoveries. He now. hoped to rebuild London on a magnificent scale; but it was not to be. Even in the plans for the new cathedral Wren was from the beginning thwarted and impeded. Ignorance, envy, jealousy, and selfishness met him at every line he drew. He made two designs-the first a Greek, the second a Latin cross. The Greek cross the clergy considered as unsuitable for a cathedral. The model for it, which is still preserved in the Cathedral, was for some time on view at the South Kensington Museum, having been lent for that purpose by the Dean and Chapter. The interior of the first design is by many considered superior to the present interior. The present recesses along the aisles of the nave, tradition says, were insisted on by James II., who thought they would be useful as side chapels when masses were once more introduced. June, 1675, but there was no public ceremonial. Soon after the great geometrician had drawn the circle for the beautiful dome, he sent a workman for a stone to mark the exact centre. The man returned with a fragment of a tombstone, on which was the one ominous word, as every one observed, "Resurgam!" The ruins of old St. Paul's were stubborn. When they tried to blow up the tower, a passer-by was killed, and Wren, with his usual ingenuity, resorted successfully to the old Roman battering-ram, which soon cleared a way. “I build for eternity," said Wren, with the true confidence of genius, as he searched for a firm foundation. Below the Norman, Saxon, and Roman graves he dug and probed till he could find the most reliable stratum. Below the loam was sand; under the sand a layer of fresh-water shells; under these were sand, gravel, and London clay. At the north-east corner of the dome Wren was vexed by coming upon a pit dug by the Roman potters in search of clay. He, however, began from the solid earth a strong pier of masonry, and above turned a short arch to the former foundation. He also slanted the new building more to the north-east than its predecessor, in order to widen the street south of St. Paul's. Well begun is half done. The Cathedral grew fast, and in two-and-twenty years from the laying of the first stone the choir was opened for Divine service. The master mason who helped to lay the first stone assisted in fixing the last in the lantern. A great day was chosen for the opening of St. Paul's. December 2nd, 1697, was the thanksgiving day for the Peace of Ryswick-the treaty which humbled France, and seated William firmly and permanently on the English throne. The king, much against his will, was persuaded to stay at home by his courtiers, who dreaded armed Jacobites among the 300,000 people who would throng the streets. Worthy Bishop Compton, who, dressed as a trooper, had guarded the Princess Anne in her flight from her father, preached that inspiring day on the text, "I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the Lord." From then till now the daily voice of prayer and praise The first stone was laid by Wren on the 21st has never ceased in St. Paul's. In 1718 a violent pamphlet appeared, written, it was supposed, by one of the commissioners. It accused Wren's head workmen of pilfering timber and cracking the bells. Wren proved the charges to be malicious and untrue. The commissioners now insisted on adding a stone balustrade all round St. Paul's, in spite of Wren's protests. He condemned the addition as "contrary to the principles of architecture, and as breaking into the harmony of the whole design;" but, he said, "ladies think nothing well without an edging.” Queen Anne, during her eventful reign, went perhaps in vexation at its misplacement. The seven times to St. Paul's in solemn procession, to paltry statue of Queen Anne, in the churchyard, commemorate victories over France or Spain. The was by Bird, and cost £1,130, exclusive of the first of these (1702) was a jubilee for Marlborough's marble, which the Queen provided. The carvings in triumph in the Low Countries and Rooke's de- the choir, by Grinling Gibbons, cost £1,337 7s. 5d. struction of the Spanish fleet at Vigo. The Queen On some of the exterior sculpture Cibber worked. sat on a raised and canopied throne; the Duke of Marlborough, as Groom of the Stole, on a stool behind her. The Lords and Commons, who had arrived in procession, were arranged in the choir. The brave old Whig Bishop of Exeter, Sir Jonathan Trelawny ("And shall Trelawny die?"), preached the sermon. Guns at the Tower, on the river, and in St. James's Park, were fired at the Te Deum, and when the Queen started and returned. In 1704, the victory of Blenheim was celebrated; in 1705, the forcing of the French lines at Tirlemont; in 1706, the battle of Ramillies and Lord Peterborough's successes in Spain; in 1707, more triumphs; in 1708, the battle of Oudenarde; and last of all, in 1713, the Peace of Utrecht, when the Queen was unable to attend. On this last day the charity children of London, 4,000 in number, first attended outside the church. St. Paul's was already, to all intents and purposes, completed. The dome was ringed with its golden gallery, and crowned with its glittering cross. In 1710, Wren's son and the body of Freemasons had laid the highest stone of the lantern of the cupola. But now commenced the bitterest mortifications of Wren's life. The commissioners had dwindled down to Dean Godolphin and six or seven civilians from Doctors' Commons. Wren's old friends were dead. His foes compelled him to pile the organ on the screen, though he had intended it to be under the north-west arch of the choir, where it was placed later. Wren wished to use mosaic for internal decoration; they pronounced it too costly, and they took the painting of the cupola out of Wren's hands, and gave it to Hogarth's father-in-law, Sir James Thornhill. They complained of wilful delay in the work, and accused Wren or his assistant of corruption; they also withheld part of his salary till the work was completed. Wren covered the cupola with lead, at a cost of £2,500; the committee were for copper, at £3,050. About the iron railing for the churchyard there was also wrangling. Wren wished a low fence, to leave the vestibule and the steps free and open. The commissioners thought Wren's design mean and weak, and chose the heavy and cumbrous iron-work, which spoilt the view of the west front, and was only removed in 1874. The new organ, by Father Bernard Smith, which cost £2,000, was shorn of its full size by Wren, The next year, the commissioners went a step further. Wren, then eighty-six years old, and in his forty-ninth year of office, was dismissed without apology from his post of Surveyor of Public Works. The German Court, hostile to all who had served the Stuarts, appointed in his place a poor pretender, named Benson. This charlatannow only remembered by a line in the "Dunciad,” which ridicules the singular vanity of a man who erected a monument to Milton in Westminster Abbey, and crowded the marble with his own titles —was afterwards dismissed from his surveyorship with ignominy, but had yet influence enough at Court to escape prosecution and obtain several valuable sinecures. Wren retired to his house at Hampton Court, and there sought consolation in philosophical and religious studies. Once a year, says Horace Walpole, the good old man was carried to St. Paul's, to contemplate the glorious chef-d'œuvre of his genius. Steele, in the Tatler, refers to Wren's vexations, and attributes them to his modesty and bashfulness. The total sum expended on the building of St. Paul's Cathedral, according to Dean Milman, was £736,752 2s. 31d.; a small residue from the coal duty was all that was left for future repairs. To this Dean Clark added about £500, part of the profits arising from an Essex estate, the gift of an old Saxon king, leased from the Dean and Chapter. The charge of the fabric was vested not in the Dean and Chapter, but in the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, and the Lord Mayor for the time being. These trustees elect the surveyor and audit the accounts. On the accession of George I. (1715), the new king, princes, and princesses went in state to St. Paul's. Seventy years elapsed before an English king again entered Wren's cathedral. In April, St. Paul's.] NELSON'S FUNERAL IN ST. PAUL'S. 1789, George III. went thither to thank God for his temporary recovery from insanity. Queen Charlotte, the Prince of Wales, and the Duke of York were present, and both Houses of Parliament. Bishop Porteus preached the sermon, and 6,000 charity children joined in the service. In 1797 King George came again to attend a thanksgiving for Lord Duncan's and Lord Howe's naval victories; French, Spanish, and Dutch flags waved above the procession, and Sir Horatio Nelson was there among other heroes. The first grave sunk in St. Paul's was fittingly that of Wren, its builder. He lies in the place of honour, the extreme east of the crypt. The black marble slab is railed in, and the light from a small window-grating falls upon the venerated name. Sir Christopher died in 1723, aged ninety-one. The fine inscription, "Si monumentum requiris, circumspice," written probably by his son, or by Mylne, the builder of Blackfriars Bridge, was formerly in front of the organ-gallery, but is now placed over the north-western entrance. The clergy of St. Paul's were for a long time jealous of allowing any monument in the cathedral. Dean Newton wished for one, but that was afterwards erected in St. Mary-le-Bow. A better man than the vain, place-hunting dean was the first so honoured. The earliest statue admitted was that of the benevolent Howard, who had mitigated suffering and sorrow in all the prisons of Europe; he stands at the corner of the dome facing that half-stripped athlete, Dr. Johnson; and the two are generally taken by country visitors for St. Peter and St. Paul. He who with Goldsmith had wandered through the Abbey, wondering if one day their names might not be recorded there, found a grave in Westminster, and, thanks to Reynolds, the first place of honour. Sir Joshua himself, as one of our greatest painters, took the third place, that Hogarth should have occupied ; and the fourth was awarded to that great Oriental scholar, Sir William Jones. The clerical opposition was now broken through, for the world felt that the Abbey was full enough, and that St. Paul's required adorning. Henceforward St. Paul's was chiefly set apart for naval and military heroes whom the city could best appreciate, while the poets, great writers, and statesmen were honoured in the Abbey, and laid among the old historic dead. From the beginning our sculptors resorted to pagan emblems and pagan allegorical figures; the result is that St. Paul's resembles a Pantheon of the Lower Empire, and is a hospital of third-rate art. The first naval conqueror so honoured was Rodney; Rossi received £6,000 for his cold and clumsy design: 251 Lord Howe's statue followed; and next that of Lord Duncan, the hero of Camperdown. It is a simple statue by Westmacott, with a seaman and his wife and child on the pedestal. For Lord St. Vincent Bailey produced a colossal statue and the usual scribbling, History and a trumpeting Victory. Then came Nelson's brothers in arms-men of lesser mark; but the nation was grateful, and the Government was anxious to justify its wars by its victories. St. Paul's was growing less particular, and now opened its arms to the best men it could get. Many of Nelson's captains preceded him on the red road to death-Westcott, who fell at Aboukir ; Mosse and Riou, who fell before Copenhagen, a far from stainless victory. Riou was the brave man whom Campbell immortalised in his fiery "Battle of the Baltic." Riou lies "Full many a fathom deep, By thy wild and stormy steep, Then at last, in 1806, came a hero worthy, indeed, of such a building-Nelson himself. At what a moment had Nelson expired!—at the close of a victory that had annihilated the fleets of France and Spain, and secured to Britain the empire of the seas. The whole nation that day shed tears of "pride and of sorrow." The Prince of Wales and all his brothers led the procession of nearly 8,000 soldiers, the chief mourner being Admiral Parker, whose name is connected with the Mutiny of the Nore. Nelson's coffin was formed out of a mast of the L'Orient-a vessel blown up at the battle of the Nile-presented to Nelson by his friend, the captain of the Swiftsure. The sarcophagus, singularly enough, had been designed by Michael Angelo's contemporary, Torreguiano, for Wolsey, in the days of his most insatiable pride, and had remained ever since in Wolsey's chapel at Windsor; Nelson's flag was to have been placed over the coffin, but as it was about to be lowered, the sailors who had borne it, as if by an irresistible impulse, stepped forward and tore it in pieces, for relics. Dean Milman, who, as a youth, was present, says, "I heard, or fancied I heard, the low wail of the sailors who encircled the remains of their admiral." Nelson's trusty companion, Lord Collingwood, who led the vanguard at Trafalgar, sleeps near his old captain, and Lord Northesk, who led the rear-guard, is buried opposite. A brass plate on the pavement under the dome marks the spot of Nelson's tomb. The monument to Nelson, inconveniently placed at the opening of the choir, is by one of our greatest sculptorsFlaxman. It is hardly worthy of the occasion, and the figures on the pedestal are puerile. Lord Lyons is the last admiral whose monument has 15,000 persons were present. The impressive been erected in St. Paul's. The military heroes have been contributed by various wars, just and unjust, successful and the reverse. There is that tough old veteran, Lord Heathfield, who drove off two angry nations from the scorched rock of Gibraltar; Sir Isaac Brock, who fell near Niagara; Sir Ralph Abercromby, who perished in Egypt; and Sir John Moore, who played so well a losing game at Corunna. Hosts of Wellington's soldiers lie in St. Paul's-brave men, who funeral procession, with the representatives of the various regiments, and the solemn bursts of the "Dead March in Saul" at measured intervals, can never be forgotten by those who were present. The pall was borne by the general officers who had fought by the side of Wellington, and the cathedral was illuminated for the occasion. The service was read by Dean Milman, who had been, as we have before mentioned, a spectator of Nelson's funeral. So perfectly adapted for sound is St. Paul's, that THE REBUILDING OF ST. PAUL'S. FROM AN ORIGINAL DRAWING IN THE POSSESSION OF J. G. CRACE, ESQ. sacrificed their lives at Talavera, Vimiera, Ciudad | though the walls were muffled with black cloth, the Rodrigo, Salamanca, Vittoria, and Bayonne. Nor has our proud and just nation disdained to honour even equally gallant men who were defeated. There are monuments in St. Paul's to the vanquished at Bergen-op-Zoom, New Orleans, and Baltimore. That climax of victory, Waterloo, brought Ponsonby and Picton to St. Paul's. Picton lies in the vestibule of the Wellington chapel. Thirty-seven years after Waterloo, in the fulness of his years, Wellington was deservedly honoured by a tomb in St. Paul's. It was impossible to lay him beside Nelson, so the eastern chapel of the crypt was appropriated for his sarcophagus. From 12,000 to Dean's voice could be heard distinctly, even up in the western gallery. A monument to the "iron Duke," consisting of a recumbent effigy surmounted by a canopy adorned with military trophies, from the designs of the late Mr. Stevens, was completed in 1878. After Nelson and Wellington, the lesser names seem to dwindle down. Yet among the great, pure, and good, we may mention, there are some Crimean memorials. There also is the monument of Cornwallis, that good Governor-General of India; those of the two Napiers, the historian and the conqueror of Scinde, true knights both; that |