Rome.

"He had better have stayed at home, for both he and his horse (which was shod with silver) were burnt for witchcraft." (Ben Jonson's Epigrams.) Shakspeare alludes to “the dancing horse” (Love's Labour Lost); and in a tract called Maroccus Ertaticus, qto., 1595, there is a rude woodcut of the unfortunate juggler and his famous gelding.-Cunningham's Handbook.

Several attempts were made to restore the Cathedral; and money, Stow says, was collected for rebuilding the steeple; but no effectual step for the repairs was taken until 1633, when Inigo Jones, to remove the desecration from the nave to the exterior, built, it is stated at the expense of Charles I., at the west end, a Corinthian portico of eight columns, with a balustrade in panels, upon which he intended to have placed ten statues: this portico was 200 feet long, 40 feet high, and 50 feet deep; but its classic design, affixed to a Gothic church, must be condemned, unless it be considered as an instalment of a new cathedral. Laud was then Bishop of London. The sum collected was 101,3301.; and the repairs progressed until about one-third of the money was expended, in 1642, when they were stopped by the contests between Charles and his people: the funds in hand were seized to pay the soldiers of the Commonwealth, and Old St. Paul's was made a horse-quarter for troops.

Shortly after the Restoration, the repairs were resumed under Sir John Denham ; and “that miracle of a youth," Wren, drew plans for the entire renovation. A commission was appointed, but before the funds were raised, the whole edifice was destroyed in the Great Fire:

"The daring flames peep'd in, and saw from far
The awful beauties of the sacred quire;

But since it was profan'd by civil war,
Heav'n thought it fit to have it purg'd by fire."

Evelyn thus records the catastrophe:

Dryden's Annus Mirabilis.

"I was infinitely concerned to find that goodly church, St. Paul's, now a sad ruin, and that beautiful portico (for structure, comparable to any in Europe) now rent in pieces, flakes of vast stone split asunder, but nothing remaining entire but the inscriptions, showing by whom it was built, which had not one letter defaced. It was astonishing to see what immense stones the heat had in a manner calcined, so that all the ornaments flew off, even to the very roof, where a sheet of lead covering a great space was totally melted. The lead over the altar at the east end was untouched, and among the monuments the body of one bishop remained entire."

According to Dugdale, this was the corpse of Bishop Braybrooke, which had been inhumed 260 years, being "so dried up, the flesh, sinews, and skin cleaving fast to the bones, that being set upon the feet it stood as still as a plank, the skin being tough like leather, and not at all inclined to putrefaction, which some attributed to the sanctity of the person offering much money.”

In the Great Fire the church was reduced to a heap of ruins; and books valued at 150,000l., which had been placed in St. Faith's (the crypt) for safety by the stationers of Paternoster-row, were entirely destroyed. After the Fire, Wren removed part of the thick walls by gunpowder, but most he levelled with a battering-ram; some of the stone was used to build parish churches, and some to pave the neighbouring streets. Tradition tells that Serjeants' Inn, Fleet-street, being then ecclesiastical property, was not forgotten in the distribution of the remains of Old St. Paul's; and there remained to our day a large number of blocks of Purbeck stone, believed to have formed part of the old Cathedral.

The west end of the old church was not taken down till 1686. In the same year a great quantity of old alabaster was beaten into powder for making cement. Those fragments were, doubtless, monumental effigies or other ornaments of the old church. In 1688 the tower was pulled down, and 162 corpses taken from its cemetery and reburied at the west end of the old foundation, at 6d. each.

NEA

ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL.

EARLY eight years elapsed after the Great Fire ere the ruins of the old Cathedral were cleared from the site. Meanwhile, Wren was instructed "to contrive a fabric of moderate bulk, but of good proportion; a convenient quire, with a vestibule and porticoes, and a dome conspicuous above the houses." A design was accordingly prepared, octagonal in plan, with a central dome and cupolettas, and affording a vast

number of picturesque combinations, as shown in the model, preserved to this day. It is of wood, and some 10 feet in height to the summit of the dome; it is thus large enough to walk bodily into it. Wren aimed at a design antique and well studied, conformable to the best style of the Greek and Roman architecture. The model is accurately wrought, and carved with all its proper ornaments, consisting of one order, the Corinthian only. The model, after the finishing of the new fabric, was deposited over the Morning Prayer Chapel, on the north side. Wren's model had neither side aisles nor oratories, though they were afterwards added, because as Spence, in his Anecdotes, imagines, the Duke of York (James II.) considered side aisles would be an absolute necessity in a cathedral where he hoped the Romish ritual would soon be practised. These innovations sadly marred the uniformity of the original design, and when decided upon, drew tears of vexation from the architect. He was paid 160 guineas only for the model. The Surveyor next devised "a cathedral form, so altered as to reconcile, as near as possible, the Gothic to a better manner of architecture;" which being

temple to Diana having once occupied this spot. The accompanying ground-plan shows the relative positions of the Old and New Cathedrals.

The first stone of the new church was laid June 21, 1675, by the architect and his lodge of Freemasons; and the trowel and mallet then used are preserved in the Lodge of Antiquity, of which Wren was master. The mallet has a silver plate let into the head; and it bears this inscription:

"By Order of the M. W. the Grand Master,
His Royal Highness the Duke of Sussex, &c., &c.,
and W. Master of the Lodge of Antiquity,

and with the Concurrence of the Brethren of the
Lodge, this plate has been engraved and affixed
to this MALLET. A.L. 5831, A.D. 1827.
To commemorate that this, being the same Mallet with which
HIS MAJESTY KING CHARLES THE SECOND
levelled the foundation Stone of

ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL, A.L. 5677, A.D. 1673,
was presented to the Old Lodge of St. Paul's,
now the Lodge of Antiquity,

acting by immemorial Constitution.

BY BROTHER SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN, R.W.D.G.M.,
Worshipful Master of the Lodge,

and Architect of that Edifice.'

Portland stone had been selected, principally on account of the large scantlings procurable from those quarries, and yet no blocks of more than four feet in diameter could be procured. This led to the choice of two orders of architecture, with an attic story like that of St. Peter's at Rome, that the just proportions of the cornice might be preserved.

In commencing the works, Wren accidentally set out the dimensions of the dome upon a piece of a gravestone inscribed Resurgam (I shall rise again); which propitious circumstance is commemorated in a Phoenix rising from the flames, with the motto Resurgam, sculptured by Cibber in the pediment over the southern portico. In 1678 Wren set out the piers and pendentives of the dome.

During the building, the Commissioners, with Sir Christopher Wren, issued the following very er order :

-Whereas, among labourers, &c., that ungodly custom of swearing is too frequently heard, to the dishonour of God and contempt of authority; and to the end, therefore, that such impiety may be terly banished from these works intended for the service of God and the honour of religion, it is ered that customary swearing shall be sufficient crime to dismiss any labourer that comes to the al; and the clerk of the works, upon sufficient proof, shall dismiss them accordingly. And if any master, working by task, shall not upon admonition, refrain this profanation among his apprentices, ervants, and labourers, it shall be construed his fault, and he shall be liable to be censured by the Lammissioners. Dated 26th September, 1695."

By 1685, the walls of the choir and its side aisles, and the north and south semicircular porticoes, were finished; the piers of the dome were also brought up to the same height. On Dec. 2, 1697, the choir was opened on the day of Thanksgiving for the peace of Ryswick, when Bishop Burnet preached before King William. On Feb. 1, 1699, the Morning Prayer Chapel, at the north-west angle, was opened; and in 1710 the son of the architect laid the last stone-the highest slab on the top of the lantern.

There is a strange story of a conspiracy against Queen Anne, who was to have been crushed to death in St. Paul's; the screws of some part of the building being loosened beforehand for the purpose, and intended to be removed when she should come to the Cathedral, and thus overwhelm her in the fall.

Notices of this imaginary plot will be found in Boyer's Annals of Queen Anne, Nov. 9, 1710, and in Oldmixon's Hist. of England, p. 452. The latter states, that "Mr. Secretary St. John had not been long in office before he gave proofs of his fitness for it, by inserting an advertisement in the Gazette of some evil-designing persons having unscrewed the timbers of the west roof of the cathedral. pon this foundation, Mrs. Abigail Masham affirmed that the screws were taken away that the catheral might tumble upon the heads of the Court on the Thanksgiving-day, when it was supposed her Majesty would have gone thither. But upon inquiry, it appeared that the missing of the iron pins was ewing to the neglect of some workmen, who thought the timber sufficiently fastened without them; and the foolishness, as well as malice, of this advertisement made people more merry than angry." Thus, the whole edifice was finished in thirty-five years; under one architect, Sir Christopher Wren; one master-mason, Mr. Thomas Strong; and while one Bishop, Dr. Henry Compton, occupied the see. For his services, Wren obtained, with difficulty, 2001. per annum! "and for this," said the Duchess of Marlborough, "he was content to be dragged up in a basket three or four times a week." The fund raised for the rebuilding amounted, in ten years, to 216,000l.; a new duty laid on coals for this purpose produced 5000l. a year; and the King contributed 10,000l. annually.

Exterior.-St. Paul's occupies very nearly the site of the old Cathedral, in the centre and most elevated part of the City; though its highest point, the cross, is 36 feet lower than the Castle Tavern, on Hampstead Heath. The plan of the Cathedral is a Latin cross, and bears a general resemblance to that of St. Peter's. Its length, from the east to the west wall, is 500 feet; north to south, 250 feet; width, 125 feet, except at the western end, where two towers, and chapels beyond, make this, the principal front, facing Ludgate-hill, about 180 feet in width. The chapels are, the Morning Prayer, north; and the Consistory Court, south.

The exterior generally is of two orders, 100 feet in height-the upper Composite,

and the lower Corinthian; and the surface of the church is Portland stone, rusticated or grooved throughout. At the east end is a semicircular recess, containing the altar. At the west end, a noble flight of steps ascends to a double portico of coupled columns, twelve in the lower, Corinthian; and eight in the upper, Composite; terminated by a pediment, in the tympanum of which (64 feet long and 17 feet high) is the Conversion of St. Paul, sculptured in pretty high relief by Bird; on the apex is colossal figure of St. Paul, and on the right and left, St. Peter and St. James. Beneath the lower portico are the doors, and above them a sculptured group, in white marble, of St. Paul preaching to the Bereans. This double portico has been much censured: Wren pleaded that he could not obtain stone of sufficient height for the shafts of one grand portico; "but," says Mr. Joseph Gwilt, "it would have been far better to have had the columns in many pieces, and even with vertical joints, than to have placed one portico above another." At the extremities of this front rise, 220 feet, two campanile towers, terminating in open lanterns, "covered with domes formed by curves of contrary flexure, and not very purely composed, though, perhaps, in character with the general façade." (Gwilt.) Each dome has a gilt pine-apple at the apex: the south tower contains the clock, and the north is a belfry; and in the west faces are statues of the four Evangelists. At the northern and southern ends of the transepts, the lower order, Corinthian, is continued into porticoes of six fluted columns, standing, in plan, on the segment of a circle, and crowned with a semi-dome. In the upper order are two pediments, the south sculptured with the Phoenix, and the north with the royal arms and regalia; and on each side are five statues of the Apostles. The main building is surmounted with a balustrade, not in Wren's design, the obtrusion of which by the Commissioners caused the architect to say: "I never designed a balustrade; ladies think nothing well without an edging."

The Cathedral was scientifically secured from lightning, according to the suggestion of the Royal Society, in 1769. The seven iron scrolls supporting the ball and cross are connected with other rods (used merely as conductors), which unite them with several large bars descending obliquely to the stone-work of the lantern, and connected by an iron ring with four other iron bars to the lead covering of the great cupola, a distance of forty-eight feet; thence the communication is continued by the rainwater pipes to the lead-covered roof, and thence by lead water-pipes which pass into the earth; thus completing the entire communication from the cross to the ground, partly through iron and partly through lead. On the clock-tower a bar of iron connects the pine-apple at the top with the iron staircase, and thence with the lead on the roof of the church. The bell-tower is similarly protected. By these means the metal used in the building is made available as conductors; the metal employed merely for that purpose being exceedingly small in quantity.—(Times, Sept. 8, 1842, abridged.)

The height to the top of the cross is thrice the height of the roof, or 365 feet from the ground, 356 from the floor of the church, and 375 from that of the crypts. In most accounts the height is stated 404 feet, which may be taken from the bottom of the foundations, or the level of the Thames. In height it stands third, exceeding the Pantheon by 70 feet; about equalling St. Sophia, but falling short of the Florence cupola by 50 feet, and of St. Peter's by 150.-Weale's London, p. 186.

The following account of the constructive details is from Mr. Joseph Gwilt's Encyclopædia of Architecture :—

"The entrances from the transepts lead into vestibules, cach communicating with the centre, and its aisles formed between two massive piers and the walls at the intersections of the transepts with the choir and nave. The eight piers are joined by arches springing from one to the other, so as to form an octagon at their springing points; and the angles between the arches, instead of rising vertically, sail over as they rise and form pendentives, which lead, at their top, into a circle on the plan. Above this a wall rises in the form of a truncated cone, which, at the height of 168 feet from the pavement, terminates in a horizontal cornice, from which the interior dome springs. Its diameter is 100 feet, and it is 60 feet in height, in the form of a paraboloid. Its thickness is 18 inches, and it is constructed of brickwork. From the haunches of this dome, 200 feet above the pavement of the church, another cone of brickwork commences, 85 feet high, and 94 feet diameter at the bottom. This cone is pierced with apertures, as well for the purpose of diminishing its weight as for distributing light between it and the outer dome. At the top it is gathered into a dome, in the form of a hyperboloid, pierced near the vertex with an aperture 12 feet in diameter. The top of this cone is 285 feet from the pavement, and carries a lantern 55 feet high, terminating in a dome, whereon a ball and (aveline) cross is raised. The last-named cone is provided with corbels, sufficient in number to receive the hammer-beams of the external dome, which is of oak, and its base 220 feet from the pavement,-its summit being level with the top of the cone. In form it is nearly hemispherical, and generated by radii 57 feet in length, whose centres are in a horizontal diameter, passing through its base. The cone and the interior dome are restrained in their lateral thrust on the supports by four tiers of strong iron chains (weighing 95 cwt. 3 qrs. 23 lbs.), placed in grooves prepared for their reception, and run with lead. The lowest of these is inserted in the masonry round their common base, and the other three at different heights on the exterior of the cone. Externally, the intervals of the columns and pilasters are occupied by windows and niches, with horizontal and semicircular heads, and crowned with pediments.

"Over the intersection of the nave and transepts for the external work, and for a height of 25 feet above the roof of the church, a cylindrical wall rises, whose diameter is 146 feet. Between it and the lower conical wall was a space, but at intervals they are connected by cross walls. This cylinder is quite plain, but perforated by two courses of rectangular apertures. On it stands a peristyle of thirty columns of the Corinthian order, 40 feet high, including bases and capitals, with a plain entablature crowned by a balustrade. In this peristyle, every fourth intercolumniation is filled up solid, with a niche, and connexion is provided between it and the wall of the lower cone. Vertically over the base of that cone, above the peristyle, rises another cylindrical wall, appearing above the balustrade. It is grnamented with pilasters, between which are two tiers of rectangular windows. From this wall the external dome springs. The lantern receives no support from it. It is merely ornamental, differing entirely in that respect from the dome of St. Peter's. Externally the dome is of wood, covered with lead; at its summit is The Golden Gallery (with gilt railing), where the lantern commences.

"The interior of the nave and choir are each designed with three arches longitudinally springing from piers, strengthened, as well as decorated, on their inner faces by an entablature, whose cornice reigns throughout the nave and church. Above this entablature, and breaking with it over each pilaster, is a tall attic, from projections on which spring semicircular arches which are formed into arcs doubleaux. Between the last, pendentives are formed, terminated by horizontal cornices. Small cupolas of less height than their semi-diameter, are formed above these cornices. In the upright plane space on the walls above the main arches of the nave, choir, and transepts, a clerestory is obtained over the attic order, whose form is generated by the rising of the pendentives."

Mr. Wightwick, in a paper read to the Institute of British Architects, says :

"It was by command of the Popish Duke of York, that the north and south chapels, near the western end, were added, to the reduction of the nave aisles, and the lamentable injury of the return fronts of the two towers, which therefore lost in apparent elevation, by becoming commingled with pieces of projecting façade on the north and south sides. Thus were produced the only defects in the longitudinal fronts of the church. The independence of the towers is destroyed; their vertical emphasis obliterated; and a pair of excrescences is the consequence which it were well to cut away. All that could be done to diminish the evil was accomplished; but no informed eye can view the perspective of the Cathedral from the north-west or south-west, without seeing how no architect, who only admitted a variety of uniformities,' could have intentionally formed a distinct component in an exterior of otherwise uniform parts, by a tower having only one wing, and that, too, flush with its face! With this exception, the general mass of the cathedral is faultless, i.e., as the result of a conciliation between the architect's feeling for the Roman style, and his compelled obedience to the shape prescribed. With this consideration the grand building under notice must be judged. This it is which excuses the application of the upper order as a mere screen to conceal the clerestory and flying buttresses; for it must be admitted that uninterrupted altitude of the bulk, in the same plane, is absolutely necessary to the substructure of the majestic dome, which is indeed the very crown of England's architectural glory. The four projections which fill out the angles formed by the intersecting lines of the cross, finely buttress up the mountain of masonry above; and the beautiful semicircular porticoes of the transepts still further carry out the sentiment of stability.

As to the dome in itself, it stands supreme on earth. The simple stylobate of its tambour; its uninterrupted peristyle, charmingly varied by occasionally solid intervening masonry, so artfully masking the buttress-work as to combine at once an appearance of elegant lightness with the visible means of confident security; all these, with each subsequently ascending feature of the composition, leave us to wonder how criticism can have ever spoken in qualified terms of Wren's artistic proficiency.

"The western front must be criticised as illustrating, in great measure, a Gothic idea Romanized. Instead of twin spires (as at Lichfield), we have two pyramidal piles of Italian detail; instead of the high-pointed gable between, we have the classic pediment, as lofty as may be; the coupled columns and plasters answer to the Gothic buttresses; and a minute richness and number of parts, with picturesque breaks in the entablatures (though against the architect's expressed principles), are introduced in compliance with the general aspect and vertical expression of the Gothic façade.”

The ascent to the Whispering Gallery is by 260 steps; to the outer, or highest Golden Gallery, 560 steps: and to the Ball, 616 steps.

The Library, in the gallery over the southern aisle, was formed by Bishop Compton, whose portrait it contams. Here are about 7000 volumes, besides some manuscripts belonging to Old St. Paul's. The room has some fine brackets, and pilasters with flowers, exquisitely carved by Gibbons; and the floor consists of 2300 pieces of oak, parquetted, or inlaid without nails or pegs. At the end of this gallery is a Geometrical Staircase, of 110 steps, built by Wren, for private access to the Library. In crossing thence to the northern gallery, a fine view is gained of the entire vista of the Cathedral from west to east. You then reach the Model Room, where are Wren's first design for St. Paul's, and some of the tattered flags formerly suspended beneath the dome. Returning to the southern gallery, a staircase leads to the south-western campanile tower, where is the Clock Room.

The Clock is remarkable for the magnitude of its wheels, and fineness of works, and cost 3007. It was made by Langley Bradley in 1708: it has two dial-plates, one south, the other west; each is 51 feet in circumference, and the hour-numerals are 2 feet 2 inches in height. The minute-hands are 9 feet 8 inches long, and weigh 75 lbs. each; and the hour-hands are 5 feet 9 inches long, and weigh 44 lbs. each. The pendulum is 16 feet long, and the bob weighs 180 lbs. ; yet it is suspended by a spring no thicker than a shilling: its beat is 2 seconds-a dead beat, 30 to a minute, instead of 60.