Bonner's party. "A punishment for papal sacrilege," roared the Protestants. In vain Dean Nowell, the Sunday after, at the Cross, reminded the Roman Catholics that in Stephen's time, the church had been burned, and that in Richard the Second's time (the time of redundant faith), an earthquake had shivered down the spire. "A wonder it has been spared so long,' still cried the zealots on both sides, and gloried in the ruin of God's temple.

Protestant zeal was not tardy, the queen gave one thousand marks in gold, and one thousand marks' worth of forest-timber. The clergy raised fourteen hundred and sixty pounds. A false roof was soon erected, and in November of the same year the lord mayor, aldermen, and all the crafts, with eighty torch-bearers, came and heard a suitable sermon. The steeple, however, as Dean Milman mentions, was never again restored, in spite of the irascible queen's protests. Queen Mary had, in her hot zeal, done her best to purify St. Paul's of many abuses, especially to prevent brewers, fishhucksters, and fruit-sellers carrying casks and baskets through the church, and carriers and drovers leading mules, horses, and beasts through the cathedral aisle with as little reverence as English tourists, who Ing their portmanteaus through German cathedrals. Her sister Elizabeth, following the same path, threatened two months' imprisonment to any one who dared or offered to draw his rapier, or fire his hand-gun or "dag" within the precinct of St. Paul's, and also warned off all who chaffered and bargained during the time of divine service. Yet so inconsistent is human nature, that although the very year of the fire a pillory was set up in the church, and a brawler's ears cut off, the disgrace still continued. Servants thronged to St. Paul's to be hired. Hungry and thirsty sponges hung about Duke Humphrey's tomb, waiting for a job or an invitation, stabbers came there to watch their victims, advertisements were posted up in the middle aisle, and hungry men-about-town paced up and down, bantering and laughing till the ordinary dinners were ready in Paternosterrow and Fleet-street.

Just before Bishop Sandys's election (1570), John Felton, a daring fanatic, had the hardihood to nail a copy of the pope's bull against the queen on the bishop's gates, before which he was very soon hanged. One extant anecdote of Elizabeth especially connects her with St. Paul's. One day Dean Nowell placed in her pew in the church

a German prayer-book full of illuminated pictures of the saints. Long and loudly the queen chided the rash dean for not knowing that she had an aversion to such idolatry. On another occasion the dean denounced from the pulpit, as full of superstition, a book, which had lately been dedicated to the queen, till the queen in a bitter voice called from her closet, "Leave those ungodly digressions, Mr. Dean, and return to the text," which nearly frightened the reverend gentleman out of his day's appetite.

Then came that glorious time when eleven Spanish flags, wrested from the shattered Armada, waved from the battlements of St. Paul's, as the queen, followed by her council, nobles, and judges, rode up to the cathedral in a chariot drawn by four white horses. Over the preacher on that triumphant day fluttered an idolatrous Spanish flag, representing the Virgin with the child in her arms. In this reign the choristers of St. Paul's performed plays in their singing-school. The first state lotteries in England were at the same period drawn in a shed at the west door of St. Paul's.

There was blood again shed at St. Paul's in King James's time. Four of the gunpowder plot fanatics were hung, drawn, and quartered outside the west door of St. Paul's, while Guy Faux and four others suffered at Westminster. A few months later, Garnet, the Jesuit confessor of these desperate men, perished also in St. Paul's Churchyard. King James, visiting St. Paul's to see the ruins of the old spire, headed a subscription for its restoration. Inigo Jones and other commissioners pronounced twenty-two thousand pounds to be requisite for that purpose, and the stone collected for the repairs the Duke of Buckingham afterwards begged for his palace, now gone, though the water-gate still stands in a Strand by-street.

With Charles the First, the zeal of Laud, Bishop of London, soon revived the dormant plans of James. Inigo Jones was building a palace at Whitehall, and he was chosen to restore St. Paul's. The king, himself a man of some taste, was so pleased with Inigo Jones's classical portico, that he undertook to pay for it out of his own purse. Laud gave twelve hundred pounds towards the fund, and it was proposed to shut all shops in Lombard-street and Cheapside, except the goldsmiths', to make the avenue to St. Paul's more splendid. Shops and houses crowding the west front were

recklessly pulled down, and the church of St. Gregory, abutting on the south-west corner of St. Paul's, quickly removed. Inigo Jones, who had been, according to Milman, born near St. Paul's, went zealously to work. He cut away the old Gothic carving wherever decayed. His design, though patchy, was splendid; his west front, supported by four florid Corinthian pillars, one hundred and sixty-one feet long, one hundred and sixty-two feet high, was remembered by Wren. Above the pillars were the statues of ten princely benefactors. The portico was to be an ambulatory for idlers. Laud scraped together obnoxious ecclesiastical fines to pay the builders, while a princely citizen, Sir Paul Pindar, a silk mercer, whose house still exists in Bishopsgate, built a costly screen, and spent four thousand pounds in repairing the south transept. But when the axe fell at Whitehall the building at St. Paul's ceased. The parliament, driven hard for money, seized the seventeen thousand pounds of subscriptions, and paid Colonel Jephson's Puritan regiment with the price of the tower scaffolding, the removal of which quickly brought down part of the south transept. They burned the copes of St. Paul's to extract the gold, and sent the money to the Irish Protestant poor. They clapped Cavalier prisoners from Colchester into the deanery, and sold the silver vessels to buy gunpowder. A Puritan lecturer preached in a corner of the building. There is a tradition that Cromwell intended to sell the cathedral to the Jews. The royal statues over the portico were thrown contemptuously down, the portico was parcelled out into seamstresses' shops, the body of the church became a cavalry barrack, and the Puritan dragoons annoyed passers-by, by stopping and questioning them, and playing nine- pins at unreasonable hours. The churchyard cross was also pulled down.

Soon after the Restoration, Wren was called in to see the half-ruined cathedral. The carved stalls in the choir, with the organ, had been kicked to pieces by the Puritan troopers, or chopped up for bivouac fires by Cromwell's Ironsides; the preaching place of Doctor Burgess, the orthodox, who, too quote Hudibras,

Proved his faith by blows and knocks, was now enlarged, but the rest of the church remained disordered and desolate. Wren's report was gloomy enough. The cathedral had never been well built. There was not abutment enough to resist the weight of the now ruined roof. The great pillars, eleven

feet in diameter, were bent outwards at least six inches. Moreover, the pillars themselves proved mere tubes filled with rubbish and mortar, and the outward coat of freestone was rent with age, and mouldered with the saltpetre it contained, which worked through the plaster. Wren advised that the inside of St. Paul's should be cased with large stone in the Roman manner, as Inigo Jones had flagged the exterior, and that the roof should be a thin and light shell of stone, or brick stuccoed, as in many Roman buildings. The tower was leaning, and the three buttresses left were so irregular that they were "incorrigible." One of Wren's remedies was to cut off the inner cornices of the cross, so as to reduce the middle space into a dome with a cupola and a lantern. 'This," said the wise little man, "would give the church, which was at present much too narrow for its height, incomparable more grace in the remoter aspect than it is possible for the lean shaft of a steeple to afford." Wren's report closes with what Milman very truly calls a generous homage to Inigo Jones's beautiful portico, which his successor calls "an absolute piece in itself." On August the 27th, 1666 (six years after the Restoration), Evelyn mentions going with Wren and other of his brother commissioners to survey the old ruinous church. Some of the party were of opinion that the walls had been purposely built to bulge outwards, and were desirous to repair the church only on its own foundations, but Wren, Evelyn, and the rest rejected this poor economy, and resolved to alter the mean shape, "and build it with a noble cupola, a form not as yet known in London, but of wonderful grace." The plans and estimates were that very day ordered, and Wren set to work, gravely measuring with rule and compass.

That was August the 27th; at ten P.M. on Saturday, September the first, the Great Fire broke out, and dashed a red cancelling line across Wren's plans. Early on Sunday morning Pepys, who lived in Seethinglane, near the Tower, went out, hearing the alarm, and found the lord mayor in Cannon-street, begging people in vain to pull down houses and check the spreading and most threatening flames, but nobody obeyed, so Pepys calmly rolled home to bed. After dinner that same day Pepys again went to St. Paul's, and found the danger increasing. Goods brought for safety that morning to Cannon-street were now being carted off to Lombard-street. On Tuesday, the 4th, Evelyn saw the flames snatch hold of the scaffolds round St.

Paul's; ten thousand houses were in flames; two miles of buildings were alight; and the clouds of smoke trailed fifty miles away. People were too frightened even to try to save the cathedral. The stones burst like hand-grenades; the molten lead ran in cascades; the very pavement grew red hot. A certain Taswell, at that time a Westminster boy, saw, at eight P.M. on the Tuesday, the flames break out on the top of St. Paul's, and in an hour's time, standing near Westminster, could see to read a small Terence by the glare. The crypt of St. Paul's (the church of St. Faith) had been stuffed with books, and every aperture closed, but the fire soon burnt down to them. Taswell saw the bells melt and the great stones roll down. Near the east end of St. Faith's, he found the yellow shrivelled body of an old woman who had crept there for safety, and had been burnt to death. This was almost the only person who perished in the great fire. The boy, putting on a sword and helmet he had picked up among the ruins, passed safely through the dangerous region, though he saw engines near him on fire and deserted by the firemen. The ashes from the books in St. Faith's were blown as far as Eton.

On the Friday Evelyn again came to London Bridge to see St. Paul's. But alas, the beautiful portico was now rent in pieces, vast stones were split into flakes, and nothing was remaining but the inscription on the architraves, of which not one letter was defaced. Six acres of lead on the roof had melted clean away. The grand monuments, the stately columns, the rich friezes, the carved capitals, were calcined. Yet strangely enough the fire, like a monster whose appetite was at last satiated, had capriciously left the lead over the altar at the east end. Among the monuments of deans one only escaped, the curious effigy of Donne, the great preacher and poet of James the First's days, in his shroud, as the artist, by his own desire, modelled him. So passed away old St. Paul's.

A WATERING PLACE IN THE PYRENEES.

THE waters of Cauterets are certainly not what the French call les eaux pour rire. While more pretentious wateringplaces, such as Eaux Bonnes and Luchon, boast amusements various enough to necessitate four or five toilettes daily, this little mountain village offers no such

attractions as promenades, balls, or concerts. But few people are deluded enough to come here with any view but that of excursionising, or of drinking the waters. As a rule the convives of the table d'hôtes have strong legs or weak throats, and depart as soon as their respective courses are accomplished. But, devoid of agréments as Cauterets indisputably is, we suspect that many, who, like ourselves, betake themselves hither with exclusively sanitary motives, prefer the quiet independent life here possible, nay inevitable, to one of more gaiety but less freedom.

Whereas elsewhere the towns cluster round the springs, the waters of Cauterets are at so considerable a height up the mountain sides, that the double expedition in search of the daily dose, goes a good way towards reconciling those who are not strong to primitive hours and habits. A five-miles' walk or ride daily has a decidedly tranquillising effect, and most people intent on their régime find sufficient variety in the drinking, bathing, in the table d'hôtes, and in strolling about the village and mountains. Then, after a winter at Pau, inevitably leading to the discontent inseparable from keeping house in a foreign country, what luxury to be cheated at a fixed rate! to live for one brief month where one eats, drinks, and sleeps by tariff! For almost every one in the Pyrenees sojourns in hotels or pensions.

We have seen Cauterets at all times of the year, excepting winter; have been here early in what is called the "peasants' season," in the fashionable summer months, and have lingered on into the autumn. The price of the waters and baths is very small up to June, to accommodate the poor, who flock here in great numbers from all parts; then the tariff becomes higher, and rises still more for July visitors. The season cannot be said fairly to begin before July the 15th, up to which day but few hotels or shops open, and no diligences ply to and fro the springs. For those, however, who are strong enough to be independent of such means of locomotion, and are not afraid of the cold weather to which one is, of course, exposed in May, the dead season has its charms. The crowds of water-drinkers are very picturesque. On the road to the Raillère and Mahourat fountains there is, morning and evening, a procession of the poor, the maimed, the halt, and the blind; the old carefully led by the young, little children carried by parents, the feeble tenderly sup

ported by relatives. The procession as it wends its way up the hill of health to descend more blithely from the healing springs, recals the old picture of the crowds of decrepit folk going to be ground young again at the magic mill; and, indeed, the transformation wrought by the end of the season in numbers of the wan faces and feeble forms is little less than miraculous. Russet mixes with motley. Here comes a group from the Ossalois valley, the gigantic peaked hoods of their dark bernouses making them look like peripatetic extinguishers, while the tassels and pendent points of those knitted purselike caps identify their wearers as Barégeois. Old hags, whose thread of life must be nearly spun out, mutter and mumble as they saunter along, distaff in hand, reminding one of the fatal sisters-apparitions hideous and gaunt enough to suggest the witches in Macbeth. The bright coloured blouses and berrets of the young men, and the girls' dainty bizarre fichus, relieve the sombre hue of the ancients. Stately Spaniards, wrapped in striped blankets, stalk sulkily on, with their peculiar swinging gait, distancing the more dilatory Béarnais. But both now and later priests form one of the principal features of the place; some of the waters being a specific for weak voices, and 'priests' throats," as common a malady here as "clergy mens' throats" in England. The affection is, indeed, it is said, often greatly aggravated by the loud chanting of the funeral and other open-air services, often against strong wind and boisterous storm. One is tempted to exclaim with Front de Boeuf, "Surely the devil keeps holiday here, that, relieved from duty, the priests stroll thus wildly through, the country!" The good men positively swarm, drinking, gargling, or bathing in the different établissements, and in the intervals of business muttering over their breviaries as they pace the roads and lanes. For those among them who have country tastes, or whose friends live in the neighbourhood, this must be a veritable priests' paradise-free to geologise, botanise, or explore the mountains, reverend curés are seen, armed with hammers and sticks, making, petticoats tucked up, for some distant spot, where stony or flowery treasures are to be found. In the park they sit chatting with aged parents, brothers or sisters, enjoying for a few short weeks the pleasures of domestic life, to which they have so long been strangers.

The principal streets of Cauterets are built, or rather have grown at different times, something into the shape of a Y, the centre of the fork forming a small open space, where is the Bureau des Diligences, and whence the huge unwieldy vehicles start. In small side streets which radiate from the diminutive Place are humble lodging-houses, shops, &c. The different établissements are perched about, some near the town, but most in distant spots on the mountain sides, sufficiently difficult of access to the aged and rheumatic limbs which toil painfully along. Early in the year the fashionable part of Cauterets is like a city of the dead; the main streets are almost uninhabited; and it is curious to watch the little town gradually coming to life-opening, as it were, first one eye and then the other. From a state of utter darkness we suddenly find our evening path enlightened by lamps hoisted to chains suspended across the streets from house to house, or from rock to rock. The narrow footways are monopolised by cleanly householders, busily engaged in washing the winter's dust and scars off their dismounted doors and shutters in the sparkling water which runs down each side of the street in open channels. The utopian standard upheld in the proverb should be attained here, for a pedestrian is speedily made aware that every one cleans his own doorstep, inasmuch as he is at all hours hunted off the pathway by energetic besoms and ladles which alternately sputter his boots with dust and water. Here and there a hôtel or shop opens, and great is the excitement over the unpacking of the goods on their arrival from the plain-greater still when a carriage tears up the steep little street, whip cracking, bells jingling. The first comers are marked men, and of greater importance than they can ever again expect to be, for they are affectionately regarded and welcomed by the population of Cauterets as the swallows who are to bring the summer. When we in our hôtel muster five or six, we constitute the first table d'hôte serieuse, and are promoted to a dinner-bell, by no means a popular sound later in the year, for one of the torments of the place in the height of the season is the multitude of bells summoning the respective convives. Imagine a town of hôtels, each of which tries to outring its neighbours, all at nearly the same hour, varied by violent cracking of the whips of drivers, guides, and enterprising travellers entering the street! Then may be heard