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ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL.'

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HE laudable attempt which has recently been made by public and private subscription to accomplish what may be justly called the 'Completion' of St. Paul's Cathedral, has created fresh interest for a building which, considering its site, its history, and its structural design, is perhaps the most popular in England, and one of the most celebrated in the world. On its artistic merits as a specimen of national architecture, opinions have differed, and probably will continue to differ as long as the sacred fane itself exists. But no one who is not a fanatic in religion, or a bigot in art, will venture to deny it a place among those monuments of past ages which deserve the respect, the admiration, and the jealous care of every nation whose property they

are.

That the proposal to embellish and decorate St. Paul's on a scale of richness which the consideration of cost has hitherto prevented should excite in our own day some discussion, and elicit conflicting expressions of taste, is not to be wondered at. What is surprising is that people should in many cases have ventured an opinion on the subject without having informed themselves more completely as to the structural history of the building, the original intentions of the architect, and other details, a knowledge of which is indispensable to the formation of any opinion at all. It has been Mr. Longman's effort to supply this information in a succinct and intelligible form; to enter more fully than has yet been done by any contemporary author into practical questions affecting the design of the building,

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to describe the various schemes for its decoration and their comparative cost, to give us an insight into Wren's individual taste, and show how it was influenced by external circumstances-to lay, in short, the case before us plainly, fairly, and without prejudice; leaving the reader to form his own opinion, and the proper authorities to deliver their own verdict. We say this advisedly, because, if Mr. Longman had not approached the subject in an impartial spirit, his position as Chairman of the Finance Committee for the Completion of St. Paul's might have lent undue influence to his opinion. As it is, he has offered little or no opinion; and though, from his concluding chapter, 'On the Future of St. Paul's,' we may infer that he is not opposed to Mr. Burges's scheme, his remarks on that head are modestly offered, and seem rather calculated to remove misconception, than to bias judg ment.

Mr. Longman's book is, by its title, nominally divided into three parts, respectively devoted to the three several Cathedrals which, since London had a name, have been raised on the site of St. Paul's. Of the first, erected in the seventh century, and dedicated by Ethelbert, King of Kent, nothing is known beyond the fact that it was destroyed by fire in 1087-8, and we are, therefore, not surprised to find it dismissed on the second page. In reality the volume is pretty equally divided between an account of Old St. Paul's and Wren's St. Paul's, their predecessor being merely mentioned, we suppose, elegantiæ gratia, or, in other words, to secure for the

A History of the Three Cathedrals dedicated to St. Paul, in London; with reference chiefly to their Structure and Architecture, and the Sources whence the necessary Funds were derived. By William Longman, F.S.A., Chairman of the Finance Committee for the Completion of St. Paul's. London: Longmans, Green, & Co. 1873.

title that mysterious charm which belongs to triplets of anything, from the subdivision of a charity sermon up to the alternative courses of a statesman's choice.

Although the second Cathedral seems to have been begun almost immediately after the destruction of the first, its erection extended over at least two centuries, and thus it shared the lot of many similar buildings in passing through and therefore illustrating successive phases of architectural taste. During this period its progress was retarded, not to mention other causes, by a fire in 1136, and by severe tempests.

It was completed towards the close of the 13th century, and in 1312 the pavement of the eastern portion was laid down. The spire, one of the loftiest in the world, rose to the grand height of 460 feet from the ground level.

The chief record, whether descriptive or pictorial, of this truly magnificent building, is to be found in the pages of Dugdale, but it is a record which requires the interpret ation of an expert. For not only are there occasional inaccuracies in the text, but the engravings themselves do not convey, except to a practised eye, an adequate idea of the building which they are supposed to represent. The reason of this is obvious enough. In the 17th century, when Dugdale's work was published, the study of Gothic architecture, except from an antiquarian point of view, had fallen into disrepute. The principles of its design were ignored. To the dilettante or the artist of that day, its examples seemed barbarous in composition, trivial in detail, and contemptible in decoration. In the delineation of medieval buildings, such features as groining, tracery, and mouldings must be understood before they can be properly represented, and in Dugdale's time no one cared to understand them.

Moreover, the building itself had become masked in parts by Italian detail. Here a classic loggia replaced the vaulted porch; there an Ionic column was substituted for a moulded shaft. Sometimes a colossal truss did duty for a flying buttress. Sometimes a crocketed pinnacle was knocked down to make room for a kind of obelisk. Many a fine old Norman window was surmounted by an Italian cornice. The steeple had fallen, but in Dugdale's pictorial restoration even the spire lights are fitted up with Renaissance dressings. Such was the condition of the Cathedral when Hollar began to illustrate it, and we need scarcely add that in such a condition no ordinary observer could judge of its pristine beauty. But even those parts which had been allowed to remain in their original condition were drawn with an ignorant hand. If we take for instance the interior view of the choir, and examine the cusping of the triforium arcade, or the tracery of the east window, we shall see at a glance that Hollar could have understood neither the one nor the other. His treatment of carved decoration is even worse. He either falsifies its appearance by clumsy draughtsmanship, or simply omits it altogether.

From such work as this it would have been impossible for anyone unacquainted with the technicalities of Gothic design to glean material for illustrations which should worthily represent Old St. Paul's in its original glory. Fortunately, however, Mr. Longman secured the services of an able interpreter. A few years ago the Royal Institute of British Architects offered a prize for drawings illustrating the restoration of the choir, to be based on Dugdale's work. This prize was gained by Mr. E. B. Ferrey, who carried his researches so far as to include other parts of the building The result was a set of drawings

(engraved in Mr. Longman's book) which recalls, we believe, for the first time, the true proportions of the building, and shows as fairly as could be expected the general character of its details, though perhaps some points may be still open to doubt.

According to Mr. Ferrey the full length of the building was 596 feet, or 66 feet longer than Winchester Cathedral, which is at present the longest in England: the breadth 104 and the internal height (to ridge of vaulting) 93 feet. The interior must have presented a splendid vista with its grand nave and choir, each of twelve bays, its amply porched transepts, and its vaulted roof. The bold fenestration of the Norman aisles had, indeed, by Hollar's time become filled up with debased tracery, but the grand rose window set over seven ample lights was still there; and those who talk now-a-days of the necessary gloom in a medieval building would do well to remember the flood of rays which the rising sun must have poured in upon the Lady-chapel and choir. The whole design of this portion, with its 'long drawn aisle' of lancet arches, its simple but elegant triforium and its clerestory pierced with geometrically traceried windows, belonged to the best and purest period of Gothic, and seems to have been as fine in general composition as it was chaste and artistic in detail.

In dealing with the exterior of the Cathedral, Mr. Longman is naturally puzzled by the question whether there were any western towers. We say naturally because on this point Stow definitely says, C At either corner of this west end is, also of the ancient building, a strong tower of stone made for bell towers; the one of them, to wit next to the palace, is called the Lowlardes Tower, and hath been used as the Bishop's prison, for such as were detected for opinions in religion contrary to the faith of

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the Church.' Now, when Inigo Jones remodelled the west end he erected or at least refaced two turrets which appear on either side of his famous Roman portico, but they certainly seem neither large nor important enough to be identified with Stow's description. Mr. Longman thinks they may have been built on the site of larger towers; but there is no evidence in support of this theory, and Mr. Ferrey himself has not attempted to adopt it in his restoration.

The lofty spire, which was of wood covered with lead, narrowly escaped destruction by fire in 1441; but it was doomed to fall in 1561, when a terrific storm burst over London, and the lightning was seen to flash into an aperture in the steeple. The fire burned downwards for four hours with irresistible force, the bells melted, the timber blazed, the stones crumbled and fell. The lead flowed down in sheets of flame; threatening but happily not damaging the organ. The fire ran along the roof east, west, north, and south, which fell in, filling the whole church with a mass of ruins.' The spire was never rebuilt, though it is shown in one of the plates of Dugdale's book. From the apex of its full height it widened gradually, and at an acute angle towards the parapet of the tower, which, pierced with long and gracefully proportioned windows, strengthened at angle and propped by flying buttresses, rose from the intersecting roofs of nave and transepts. To the left of the western front stood the little Norman church of St. Gregory, like a modest handmaid to its noble mistress; while in the internal angle formed by the south aisle and transept was planned a fair cloister, enclosing the octagonal | and richly decorated Chapter House, half ruined in Dugdale's time, but restored to its original form in Mr. Longman's book.

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The difficulty which Mr. Ferrey

must have encountered in preparing these drawings will be appreciated by anyone who reads the list of discrepancies and errors in Hollar's plates. We venture to think he might have added one more to the list. Hollar gives two distinct 'readings' of the tracery which filled the 'rose' window at the east end. In his interior view it consists of three rows of trefoiled circles converging towards a central 'wheel' light. In his exterior view the leading lines of tracery partake of an ogival form, and suggest a later period of design. Mr. Ferrey has adopted, and we think rightly, the earlier type; but it might perhaps have been worth while to note the difference, especially because the tracery which he has rejected happens to be on the larger and so far the more reliable scale of the two.

Mr. Longman has devoted an interesting chapter to the Curious Customs connected with Old St. Paul's,' which will be welcome to those of his readers who are unable to follow him minutely through his architectural description of the building. In these days of ecclesiastical sentiment, when our churches and cathedrals are preserved with the most jealous care, delivered to the custody of watchful vergers, inspected by visitors with reverence and admiration, restored and embellished by aid of private munificence, and kept so sprucely in repair that the Prouts and Robertses of our time are fain to find their subjects elsewhere across the Channelin these, outwardly at least, devotional and church-loving days, we read with astonishment the indignities to which the metropolitan Cathedral was subject in the sixteenth century.

St. Paul's appears to have been a lounge for men of fashion, a rendezvous for men of business, the haunt of gossips and adventurers, the scene of brawls and assignations.

'The floor,' says Mr. Longman,

VOL. VIII.-NO. XLV. NEW SERIES.

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was laid out in walks, the South Alley for one purpose, the North for another; but the Middle Aisle' (i.e. the Nave) 'was the great place of gathering. It was called Paul's Walk; and there the hunters after news, the wits and the gallants, assembled themselves together. Greene the dramatist, in the introduction to his curious tract entitled Theeves falling out, True-men come by their Goods: or, The Bellman wanted a Clapper, says, "Walke in the middle of Paul's, and gentlemen's teeth walke not faster at ordinaries than there a whole day together about enquiry after news.'

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Again, according to Bishop Earle's Microcosmography, published in 1628, 'It is a heap of stones and men, with a vast confusion of languages; and, were the steeple not sanctified, nothing liker Babel. The noise in it is like that of bees, a strange humming or buzz mixed, of walking, tongues, and feet; it is a kind of still roar or loud whisper. It is the great exchange of all discourse, and no business whatsoever but is here stirring and afoot.'

If a merchant wanted to strike a bargain with a customer, an attorney to meet his client, a dandy to show off his last new suit, or a bonvivant to take a constitutional stroll before dinner, each and all turned into 'Paul's,' as it was then briefly and not very reverently named, with as much indifference as if it were the Exchange, the Mall, or Westminster Hall. One entrance, known as the 'Si Quis' door, was posted with notices of things lost, servants' advertisements, and what not.

Porters, dray-men, fishmongers, butchers, and fruiterers did not hesitate to carry their goods through the Cathedral. The Chantry was used for stores and lumber. A glazier set up his workshop in one of the chapels. A baker hollowed out a buttress as an oven for his pies. One vault was occupied by a carpenter, another by a

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wine merchant. The noisy trade of trunk-making was carried on in the cloisters, and street cads were allowed to ascend the tower for the purpose of pelting passers-by with stones.

At an earlier date, rope-dancing had been allowed on the battlements; and Mr. Longman quotes Dr. Rimbault, the editor of Maroccus Extaticus, in support of a strange story about a performing horse who is supposed to have mounted the steeple (!) in 1600.

Mr. Longman conjectures with good reason that much of this desecration was due to the recoil from religious sentiment which followed the Reformation; but he might have added the fact that it is probably only in our own day that the reactionary feeling of reverence for sacred buildings has become complete and thorough. We believe

we

are correct in stating that within the memory of old Londoners Westminster Abbey was used as a thoroughfare, and that porters rested there with their loads. It is certain that many can recollect when the boys of Westminster School played at hockey in the cloisters, and used the enclosure as an arena for the settlement of their disputes, with a ring, 'backers,' blankets, and all the appurtenances of a pugilistic encounter. Happily, this outrageous violation of decorum has long since ceased.

At the present time there are, perhaps, no churches in the world so reverently treated as our own. But then there are two sides to the question. The British Protestant is shocked at the behaviour of beggars who whine and spit and openly beg alms in many a Continental church as they kneel at their devotions. But then it must be confessed that they do pray, and fervently too, sometimes. Do we ever see any beggars in our own churches? Imagine the feelings of the beadle at-say St. George's

Church, Hanover Square, if a cripple in rags and on crutches were to hobble up to the door! It is hardly too much to say that such a thing would be impossible. And yet in some of the noblest churches in the world, in the Domkirche at Aix, in St. Mark's at Venice, in St. Peter's at Rome, the incident is happening daily, and creates no surprise. Where are the halt and the maimed, where are even the decent, hardworking poor, in these trim and well-ordered London churches of ours? Is it, or is it not, necessary that they should come to church at all? and, if it be so, who is responsible for their absence?

Again, from an artistic point of view, we look with astonishment at many a Continental church patched up without being restored, compassed about with small shops and tenements, hung inside with strange and sometimes gaudy trappings, its porches sometimes used as a kind of bazaar for the sale of rosaries, devotional souvenirs, and knick-knacks. We compare this state of things with the quiet, staid appearance of our own Cathedral Close, from which every vestige of the external world (except perhaps the Dean's carriage) is excluded, where the walls are free from lichen, the turf cropped as close as a croquet lawn, where the verger with his oft-told tale of monuments and dimensions is always bland, and the seats (at least on week days) never overcrowded. And yet somehow or other there is a want of vitality, of interest, of religious vis in the place. It is eminently respectable, but also a trifle dull. If reverence be inspired, it is by associations with the past rather than by conditions of the present. And the artist who brings his sketch-book finds that, what with modern restorations and the Chapter's rigid sense of propriety, he cannot find a good subject for his brush. It is all too neat and trim.

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