APPROACHING London, or pausing on the last hill-top to look back on its wide expanse, we feel that the graceful and majestic dome of St. Paul's is the centre of the City-the nucleus about which its masses congregate-the stately Queen, round which tower, monument, and spire stand ranked as attendant handmaidens. Whether we stand on Battersea Rise on a summer evening, with the Abbey towers of Westminster showing their distinct outlines through pure air, while the distant city is veiled by the pall of smoke which the light breeze is inclining towards the ocean, while the stately dome ascends where the regions of definite form and dim amorphous haze fade into each other, its golden cross gleaming through a slumberous golden light-or whether from the heights of Hampstead, when in the silence of the dewy morning we could imagine nothing was awake but the sun and ourselves, we behold the mighty structure by the deceptive influence of the clear air and sidelong light projected into startling nearness or whether from the hill of Greenwich we see the huge mass swathed in mist, now dim and scarce distinguishable, now lost to view and again re-appearing, dark and threatening, like some Highland mountain amid its congenial vapours from every point of view, under every change of atmospheric influence, the dome of St. Paul's remains the prominent and characteristic feature of London, viewed from a distance. Nor does its power over the fascinated eye and imagination cease when we mingle with the spring-tide of human existence, hurried in incessant ebb and flow along the multitudinous and labyrinthine streets of the metropolis. Ever and anon we are aware of the mighty pile seen through VOL. II. B some street vista, or appearing over the house-tops as if close at hand. It is ever present, ever beautiful, ever imposing. No more perfect picture, in point of form, arrangement, or colour, can be imagined, than that which presents itself as we pass along Fleet Street, on a bracing autumn morning, while the sun is yet struggling through an embrowned haze, in the winding ascent of Ludgate Street, crowned by this majestic dome. The Cathedral church combines all the elements of grandeur and beauty. Of colossal size, its summit mingles with the clouds, and at times appears to shift with the thin mists that float past it. The impression made by its graceful outline is heightened by the finish of all its parts, indicating a compactness of structure which gives promise of an eternally youthful appearSeated high in the centre of London, St. Paul's might well appear to a fantastic mood, one of those talismanic structures, of which we read in Arabian tales-the seat of the magical influence which has drawn together and upholds the aggregation of stately structures, the heaped-up wealth to and from which the money business of the whole world is attracted and diverges as from its centre of circulation, and the concentrated spirit of human passion which thrills and quivers so intensely around it. ance. pro Nor is it altogether a vain fancy that attributes an organic unity to London, of which St. Paul's may be considered the binding key-stone: the mind which jected a new city to be erected upon the ruins left by the Great Fire, made this the central point from which he extended his streets on all sides. Before the destruction of the old city he had pictured to himself a stately structure, something like the present, that might be erected on the site of old St. Paul's; and when the fire had left London a tabula rasa, he traced his plan as a framework in which to set this jewel of his imagination. That plan was not adoptedneither the new Cathedral of St. Paul's nor the new City of London are what Wren designed they should be; yet, though the pertinacity with which his contemporaries clung to their preconceived opinions, or defended their little properties, to a great extent baffled his project, still we can trace its lineaments imperfectly stamped upon the rebellious and obdurate material. What was done was done under his superintendence and control-not only St. Paul's, but most of the churches and halls in the City, were his work-and thus he was enabled to call into existence a sufficient number of the parts of the great whole he had contemplated to indicate an outline of his design, and impress something of a uniformity of character upon the new city. This circumstance confers an epic interest upon the rebuilding of London, of which St. Paul's is always the centre. And this consideration it is that has induced us to devote a whole paper to the "Building of St. Paul's," a story of great designs partially accomplished-of perseverance triumphing over intrigue, after a struggle of forty-four long years-tantæ molis erat Romanam condere gentem. The first point to be made good is our assertion that the idea of giving to St. Paul's a figure nearly resembling that which it now has, had occurred to Wren previous to the Great Fire of London, and that his plan for the rebuilding of the city, if it was not suggested by that idea, was intimately connected with it. One of the principal objects which occupied the mind of Charles II. on his restoration seems to have been the repairing of St. Paul's Cathedral, sadly dilapidated during the civil wars. A commission was accordingly issued for : upholding and repairing the structure, of which Wren and Evelyn were appointed members. Wren, with the approbation of Evelyn, committed to writing an account of the condition in which he found the cathedral, and proposals for the necessary alterations, which, along with a number of explanatory drawings and designs, were laid before the King. In his memoir we find the germ of the present St. Paul's. He sets out with laying great stress upon the size of the building :- "It is a pile both for ornament and use; for all the occasion either of a quire, consistory, chapter-house, library, court of arches, preaching auditory, might have been supplied in less room, with less expense and yet more beauty; but then it had wanted of the grandeur which exceeds all little curiosity; this being the effect of wit only, the other the monument of power and mighty zeal in our ancestors to public works in these times, when the city had neither a fifth part of the people nor a tenth part of the wealth it now boasts of." He then proceeds to point out the defects of the original construction of the building, rendering mere patchwork repairs inadvisable, and the artistical faults of the pile. "The middle part is most defective in beauty and firmness without and within for the tower leans manifestly by the settling of one of the ancient pillars that supported it. Four new arches were, therefore, of late years, incorporated within the old ones, which had straitened and hindered both the room and the clear thorough view of the nave, in that part where it had been more graceful to have been rather wider than the rest. The excessive length of the building is no otherwise commendable but because it yields a pleasing perspective by the combined optical diminution of the columns; and if this be cut off by columns ranging within their fellows, the grace that would be acquired by their length is totally lost." After some further details he proceeds :-" I cannot propose a better remedy than, by cutting off the inner columns of the cross, to reduce the middle part into a spacious dome or rotunda, with a cupola or hemispherical roof; and upon the cupola (for the outward ornament) a lantern with a spring top, to rise proportionably, though not to that unnecessary height of the former spire of timber and lead burnt by lightning. By this means the deformities of the unequal intercolumniations will be taken away; the church, which is much too narrow for the height, rendered spacious in the middle, which may be a very proper place for a vast auditory; the outward appearance of the church will seem to swell in the middle, by degrees, from a large basis rising into a rotunda bearing a cupola, and then ending in a lantern, and this with incomparable more grace in the remoter aspect than it is possible for the bare shaft of a steeple to afford." He then enlarges upon the practical details of time, expense, and materials, of which only this striking passage need be quoted :-" It will be requisite that a large and exact model be made, which will also have this use,-that, if the work should happen to be interrupted or retarded, posterity may proceed where the work was left off, pursuing still the same design. And as the portico built by Inigo Jones, being an entire and excellent piece, gave great reputation to the work in the first repairs, and occasioned fair contributions; so to begin now with the dome may probably prove the best advice, being an absolute piece of itself, and what will most likely be finished in our time, and what will make by far the most splendid appearance; may be of present use for the auditory, will make up all the outward repairs perfect, and become an ornament to his Majesty's most |