ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL,

LONDON.

"Since Zion's desolation, when that He
Forsook his former city, what could be,
Of earthly structures in his honor piled,
Of a sublimer aspect?-Majesty,

Power, glory, strength and beauty, all are ailed
In this eternal Ark of worship undefiled."

BYRON.

NUMEROUS as are the memorials of former times with which this vast metropolis abounds, there are few spots more intimately associated with that general progress of events which has led Britain from the state of a dependent Roman Colony to her present proud and pre-eminent situation amongst the nations, than that now occupied by the grandest building in the grandest city of the worldSt. Paul's Cathedral; and no Englishman who has paid the slightest attention to his country's history, who has thought over its gradual advancement in civilization, and its glorious promises for the future, can walk upon that site without a rush of recollections on his memory, carrying him back into the past, and inducing a multitude

of wholesome reflections on the causes which have conduced to present results.

On the same spot, whence is now dispensed the soulcheering doctrines of the reformed religion, the Pagan has offered up his sacrifices at the shrine of his fears and superstitions-the proselytes of the Church of Rome have told their beads and chaunted masses for the dead; and in this little spot too, the scene in which, when living, many of them have striven for Power! and Fame! now rest the bones of men-princes, warriors and philosophers -who have each played for a few moments, during period of at least twelve hundred years, a principal part in the grand drama of human life.

"The echoes of its vaults are eloquent!

The stones have voices; and the walls do live :
It is the house of memory."

MATURIN.

Introductory to an account of the present St. Paul's Cathedral, it will be necessary to take a general, although hasty review of the buildings which have previously occupied its site; and while so doing, we may make a few remarks on past events which have had influence on, or are in some degree associated therewith.

1

It is stated by authors who have written on the subject, that a Temple, consecrated to Diana, stood at one time in this place, and that this conclusion was arrived at from the tradition that, when digging for the ancient church, bones of oxen, horns of stags, and other remains of sacrifices were found; as was also, at another time, a figure of the goddess herself. No farther direct proof

1 Stow's "Survey of London." Strype's Edit. Vol. I. Book iii. p. 141; Dugdale's "Hist. of St. Paul's Cathedral," continued by Ellis; Malcolm's "Londinium Redivivum," Vol. III. p. 59, &c.

having been adduced, much controversy has occurred on this point, and Sir Christopher Wren, in a letter to the Bishop of Rochester, on the state of Westminster Abbey, writes as follows-'I must assert, that having changed all the foundations of old St. Paul's, and upon that occasion rummaged all the ground thereabouts, being very desirous to find some footstep of such a temple, I could not discover any; and therefore can give no credit to (the story of) Diana.' 1

Be this as it may, it appears certain that when Augustine was sent to England by Pope Gregory, to teach Christianity, he, preferring Canterbury to the metropolis, fixed the archiepiscopal seat at the former city,- created Mellitus the first bishop of London, and put that See under his governance: during the dominion of that prelate, about A. D. 610, Ethelbert, who had been converted to Christianity by Augustine, founded on this spot the cathedral church of St. Paul, endowed it with lands, and obtained various privileges from the Pope.

In the reign of William the Conqueror, who had. granted other privileges to the cathedral, and had decreed, by charter, that it should be as free as he himself desired

his soule to be in the day of judgement,' 2 it was destroyed by fire, as was also much of the city. Maurice, who was then bishop, immediately commenced a most extensive pile, the principal materials for which, according to Dugdale, he procured from the ruins of an old castle, called the Palatine Tower, near the little river Fleet; the undertaking, however, was so vast that, after labouring upon it for twenty years, and expending the greater part of his revenue, he effected but little towards its completion; nor did Richard de Beaumeis, his successor, although he 1 "Parentalia," p. 296. 2 As quoted in Stow's "Survey," ut sup.

spent upon it nearly an equal amount of time and money. This Beaumeis, we find, bought and pulled down many of the houses adjoining the church, added ground to the yard that surrounded it, and commenced a strong stone wall of inclosure, the completion of which was ordered by Edward II. some time afterwards, to prevent the occurrence of robberies and murders which frequently took place there; a reason which strikingly illustrates the disordered and rude state of those times.

1

Stow says that the building, commenced by Maurice, which was so wonderful for size that men judged it never would be finished, was erected upon arches, or vaults of stone; a manner of building, said to have been, until then, but little known in England. The stone, with the exception of the old materials, is said to have been brought from Caen, in Normandy.

Henry I. commanded that all vessels which entered the river Fleet, bearing materials for the erection of the new cathedral, should be free from toll and custom: after which circumstance there is scarcely any mention made of its progress; but we find that it was gradually advanced, and that the choir, not being thought sufficiently splendid for the other parts of the edifice, was pulled down, and rebuilt with a spire about the year 1240, and solemnly consecrated immediately afterwards.

The dimensions of this building seem to justify the surprise manifested by contemporaries. The length from east to west was 690 feet; the breadth 130 feet, and the height of the body of the church 150 feet. The tower measured from the level ground 260 feet, and the wooden spire, covered with lead, 274 feet; but, as in the 260

1 Stow, Malcolm, ut sup.

feet the height of the battlements which rose above the base of the wooden spire was included, the whole elevation did not exceed 520 feet. The extreme point of the spire to Salisbury cathedral is 404 feet from the ground.2

The ground-plan of the Cathedral, assumed the form of the Latin cross, i.e. the transepts were much shorter than the nave and choir: the interior was divided by two ranges of clustered columns throughout the

2 The spire of Strasburgh Cathedral is said to be 456 feet in height, and that of Vienna is 465 feet. Britton's "Cathedral Antiquities."-Salisbury, p. 72.

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The following dimensions, in feet, of English cathedrals, from Britton's Dictionary of the Architecture of the Middle Ages," p. 128, may afford data for comparison.