SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN then, or ever to expect, was a pittance of two hundred a-year. A moiety of this driblet was for some time actually suspended, till the building should be finished; and for the arrears of it he was forced to petition the government of Queen Anne, and then only obtained them under circumstances of the most unhandsome delay. Wren, however, was a philosopher and a patriot; and if he underwent the mortification attendant on philosophers and patriots, for offending the self-love of the shallow, he knew how to act up to the spirit of those venerable names, in the interior of a mind as elevated and well-composed as his own architecture. Some pangs he felt, because he was a man of humanity, and could not disdain his fellowcreatures; but he was more troubled for the losses of the art than his own. He is said actually to have shed tears when compelled to deform his cathedral with the side aisles-some say in compliance with the will of the Duke of York, afterwards James the Second, who anticipated the use of them for the restoration of the old Catholic chapels. Money he despised, except for the demands of his family, consenting to receive a hundred a-year for rebuilding such of the city churches (a considerable number) as were destroyed by the fire! And when finally ousted from his office of surveyor-general, he said with the ancient sage, "Well, I must philosophise a little sooner than I intended." (Nunc me jubet fortuna expeditius philosophari). The Duchess of Marlborough, in resisting the claims of one of her Blenheim surveyors, said, "that Sir C. Wren was content to be dragged up in a basket three times a-week to the top of St. Paul's, at a great hazard, for £200 a year." But, as a writer of his life has remarked, she was perhaps "little capable of drawing any nice distinction between the feelings of the hired surveyor of Blenheim, and those of our architect, in the contemplation of the rising of the fabric which his vast genius was calling into existence: her notions led her to estimate the matter by the simple process of the rule of WREN'S MONUMENT three direct; and on this principle she had good reason to complain of the surveyor." 1 The same writer tells us that Wren's principal enjoyment during the remainder of his life, consisted in his being "carried once a year to see his great work;" "the beginning and completion of which," observes Walpole, "was an event which, one could not wonder, left such an impression of content on the mind of the good old man, that it seemed to recall a memory almost deadened to every other use." The epitaph upon him by his son, which Mr Mylne, the architect of Blackfriars bridge, caused to be rescued from the vaults underneath the church, where it was ludicrously inapplicable, and placed in gold letters over the choir, has a real sublimity in it, though defaced by one of those plays upon words, which were the taste of the times in the architect's youth, and which his family perhaps had learnt to admire. We cannot preserve the pun in English, unless, perhaps, by some such rendering as, "Here found a grave the founder of this church;" or "Underneath is founded the tomb," etc. The rest is admirable : "Who lived to the age of upwards of ninety years, The reader does look around, and the whole interior of the cathedral, which is finer than the outside, seems like a magnificent vault over his single body. The effect is 1 Life of Sir Christopher Wren in the Library of Useful Knowledge No. 24, p. 27. IRREVERENT REMARKS ON very grand, especially if the organ is playing. A similar one, as far as the music is concerned, is observable when we contemplate the statues of Nelson and others. The grand repose of the church, in the first instance, gives them a mortal dignity, which the organ seems to waken up and revive, as if, in the midst of the "Pomp and threatening harmony," 1 their spirits almost looked out of their stony and sightless eyeballs. Johnson's ponderous figure looks down upon us with something of sourness in the expression; and in the presence of Howard we feel as if pomp itself were in attendance on humanity. It is a pity that the sculpture of the monuments in general is not worthy of these emotions, and tends to undo them. A poor statue of Queen Anne, in whose reign the church was finished, stands in the middle of the front area, with the figures of Great Britain, France, Ireland, and America, round the base. Garth, who was a Whig, and angry with the councils which had dismissed his hero Marlborough, wrote some bitter lines upon it, which must have had double effect, coming from so good-natured a man. Near the vast bulk of that stupendous frame, 1 Wordsworth. THE STATUE OF QUEEN ANNE For thee she sheath'd the terrors of her sword, Many irreverent remarks were also made by the coarser wits of the day, in reference to the position of her Majesty, with her back to the church and her face to a brandyshop, which was then kept in that part of the churchyard. The calumny was worthy of the coarseness. Anne, who was not a very clever woman, had a difficult task to perform; and though we differ with her politics, we cannot, even at this distance of time, help expressing our disgust at personalities like these, especially against a female. CHAPTER II ST. PAUL'S AND THE NEIGHBOURHOOD We remember, in our boyhood, a romantic story of a church that stood under St. Paul's. We conceived of it, as of a real good-sized church actually standing under the other; but how it came there nobody could imagine. It was some ghostly edification of providence, not lightly to be inquired into; but as its name was St. Faith's, we conjectured that the mystery had something to do with religious belief. The mysteries of art do not remain with us for life, like those of Nature. Our phenomenon amounted to this: "The church of St. Faith," says Brayley, "was originally a distinct building, standing near the east end of St. Paul's; but when the old cathedral was enlarged, between the years 1256 and 1312, it was taken down, and an extensive part of the vaults was appropriated to the use of the parishioners of St. Faith's, in lieu of the demolished fabric. This was afterwards called the church of St. Faith in the Crypts (Ecclesia Sanctæ Fidei in Cryptis) and, according to a representation made to the Dean and Chapter, in the year 1735, it measured 180 feet in length and 80 in breadth. After the fire of London, the parish of St. Faith was joined to that of St. Augustine; and on the rebuilding of the cathedral, a portion of the churchyard belonging to the former was taken to enlarge the avenue round the east end of St. Paul's, and the remainder was inclosed within the cathedral railing." 1 1 Brayley, vol. ii., p. 303. |