Queen Anne, during her eventful reign, went seven times to St. Paul's in solemn procession, to commemorate victories over France or Spain. The first of these (1702) was a jubilee for Marlborough's triumph in the Low Countries and Rooke's destruction of the Spanish fleet at Vigo. The Queen sat on a raised and canopied throne; the Duke of Marlborough, as Groom of the Stole, on a stool behind her. The Lords and Commons, who had arrived in procession, were arranged in the choir. The brave old Whig Bishop of Exeter, Sir Jonathan Trelawny ("And shall Trelawny die?"), preached the sermon. Guns at the Tower, on the river, and in St. James's Park, were fired at the Te Deum, and when the Queen started and returned. In 1704, the victory of Blenheim was celebrated; in 1705, the forcing of the French lines at Tirlemont; in 1706, the battle of Ramillies and Lord Peterborough's successes in Spain; in 1707, more triumphs; in 1708, the battle of Oudenarde; and last of all, in 1713, the Peace of Utrecht, when the Queen was unable to attend. On this last day the charity children of London, 4,000 in number, first attended outside the church.

St. Paul's was already, to all intents and purposes, completed. The dome was ringed with its golden gallery, and crowned with its glittering cross. In 1710, Wren's son and the body of Freemasons had laid the highest stone of the lantern of the cupola. But now commenced the bitterest mortifications of Wren's life. The commissioners had dwindled down to Dean Godolphin and six or seven civilians from Doctors' Commons. Wren's old friends were dead. His foes compelled him to pile the organ on the screen, though he had intended it to be under the north-west arch of the choir, where it was placed later. Wren wished to use mosaic for internal decoration; they pronounced it too costly, and they took the painting of the cupola out of Wren's hands, and gave it to Hogarth's father-in-law, Sir James Thornhill. They complained of wilful delay in the work, and accused Wren or his assistant of corruption; they also withheld part of his salary till the work was completed. Wren covered the cupola with lead, at a cost of £2,500; the committee were for copper, at £3,050. About the iron railing for the churchyard there was also wrangling. Wren wished a low fence, to leave the vestibule and the steps free and open. The commissioners thought Wren's design mean and weak, and chose the heavy and cumbrous iron-work, which spoilt the view of the west front, and was only removed in 1874.

The new organ, by Father Bernard Smith, which cost £2,000, was shorn of its full size by Wren,

perhaps in vexation at its misplacement. The paltry statue of Queen Anne, in the churchyard, was by Bird, and cost £1,130, exclusive of the marble, which the Queen provided. The carvings in the choir, by Grinling Gibbons, cost £1,337 7s. 5d. On some of the exterior sculpture Cibber worked.

In 1718 a violent pamphlet appeared, written, it was supposed, by one of the commissioners. It accused Wren's head workmen of pilfering timber and cracking the bells. Wren proved the charges to be malicious and untrue. The commissioners now insisted on adding a stone balustrade all round St. Paul's, in spite of Wren's protests. He condemned the addition as "contrary to the principles of architecture, and as breaking into the harmony of the whole design;" but, he said, "ladies think nothing well without an edging.”

The next year, the commissioners went a step further. Wren, then eighty-six years old, and in his forty-ninth year of office, was dismissed without apology from his post of Surveyor of Public Works. The German Court, hostile to all who had served the Stuarts, appointed in his place a poor pretender, named Benson. This charlatan— now only remembered by a line in the "Dunciad," which ridicules the singular vanity of a man who erected a monument to Milton in Westminster Abbey, and crowded the marble with his own titles -was afterwards dismissed from his surveyorship with ignominy, but had yet influence enough at Court to escape prosecution and obtain several valuable sinecures. Wren retired to his house at Hampton Court, and there sought consolation in philosophical and religious studies. Once a year, says Horace Walpole, the good old man was carried to St. Paul's, to contemplate the glorious chef-d'œuvre of his genius. Steele, in the Tatler, refers to Wren's vexations, and attributes them to his modesty and bashfulness.

The total sum expended on the building of St. Paul's Cathedral, according to Dean Milman, was £736,752 25. 34d.; a small residue from the coal duty was all that was left for future repairs. To this Dean Clark added about £500, part of the profits arising from an Essex estate, the gift of an old Saxon king, leased from the Dean and Chapter. The charge of the fabric was vested not in the Dean and Chapter, but in the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, and the Lord Mayor for the time being. These trustees elect the surveyor and audit the accounts.

On the accession of George I. (1715), the new king, princes, and princesses went in state to St. Paul's. Seventy years elapsed before an English king again entered Wren's cathedral. In April,

1789, George III. went thither to thank God for his temporary recovery from insanity. Queen Charlotte, the Prince of Wales, and the Duke of York were present, and both Houses of Parliament. Bishop Porteus preached the sermon, and 6,000 charity children joined in the service. In 1797 King George came again to attend a thanksgiving for Lord Duncan's and Lord Howe's naval victories; French, Spanish, and Dutch flags waved above the procession, and Sir Horatio Nelson was there among other heroes.

The first grave sunk in St. Paul's was fittingly that of Wren, its builder. He lies in the place of honour, the extreme east of the crypt. The black marble slab is railed in, and the light from a small window-grating falls upon the venerated name. Sir Christopher died in 1723, aged ninety-one. The fine inscription, "Si monumentum requiris, circumspice," written probably by his son, or by Mylne, the builder of Blackfriars Bridge, was formerly in front of the organ-gallery, but is now placed over the north-western entrance.

The clergy of St. Paul's were for a long time jealous of allowing any monument in the cathedral. Dean Newton wished for one, but that was afterwards erected in St. Mary-le-Bow. A better man than the vain, place-hunting dean was the first so honoured. The earliest statue admitted was that of the benevolent Howard, who had mitigated suffering and sorrow in all the prisons of Europe; he stands at the corner of the dome facing that half-stripped athlete, Dr. Johnson; and the two are generally taken by country visitors for St. Peter and St. Paul. He who with Goldsmith had wandered through the Abbey, wondering if one day their names might not be recorded there, found a grave in Westminster, and, thanks to Reynolds, the first place of honour. Sir Joshua himself, as one of our greatest painters, took the third place, that Hogarth should have occupied ; and the fourth was awarded to that great Oriental scholar, Sir William Jones. The clerical opposition was now broken through, for the world felt that the Abbey was full enough, and that St. Paul's required adorning.

Henceforward St. Paul's was chiefly set apart for naval and military heroes whom the city could best appreciate, while the poets, great writers, and statesmen were honoured in the Abbey, and laid among the old historic dead. From the beginning our sculptors resorted to pagan emblems and pagan allegorical figures; the result is that St. Paul's resembles a Pantheon of the Lower Empire, and is a hospital of third-rate art. The first naval conqueror so honoured was Rodney; Rossi received £6,000 for his cold and clumsy design:

Lord Howe's statue followed; and next that of Lord Duncan, the hero of Camperdown. It is a simple statue by Westmacott, with a seaman and his wife and child on the pedestal. For Lord St. Vincent Bailey produced a colossal statue and the usual scribbling, History and a trumpeting Victory.

Then came Nelson's brothers in arms-men of lesser mark; but the nation was grateful, and the Government was anxious to justify its wars by its victories. St. Paul's was growing less particular, and now opened its arms to the best men it could get. Many of Nelson's captains preceded him on the red road to death-Westcott, who fell at Aboukir; Mosse and Riou, who fell before Copenhagen, a far from stainless victory. Riou was the brave man whom Campbell immortalised in his fiery "Battle of the Baltic." Riou lies

"Full many a fathom deep,

By thy wild and stormy steep,
Elsinore."

Then at last, in 1806, came a hero worthy, indeed, of such a building-Nelson himself. At what a moment had Nelson expired!-at the close of a victory that had annihilated the fleets of France and Spain, and secured to Britain the empire of the seas. The whole nation that day shed tears of "pride and of sorrow." The Prince of Wales and all his brothers led the procession of nearly 8,000 soldiers, the chief mourner being Admiral Parker, whose name is connected with the Mutiny of the Nore. Nelson's coffin was formed out of a mast of the L'Orient-a vessel blown up at the battle of the Nile-presented to Nelson by his friend, the captain of the Swiftsure. The sarcophagus, singularly enough, had been designed by Michael Angelo's contemporary, Torreguiano, for Wolsey, in the days of his most insatiable pride, and had remained ever since in Wolsey's chapel at Windsor ; Nelson's flag was to have been placed over the coffin, but as it was about to be lowered, the sailors who had borne it, as if by an irresistible impulse, stepped forward and tore it in pieces, for relics. Dean Milman, who, as a youth, was present, says, "I heard, or fancied I heard, the low wail of the sailors who encircled the remains of their admiral." Nelson's trusty companion, Lord Collingwood, who led the vanguard at Trafalgar, sleeps near his old captain, and Lord Northesk, who led the rear-guard, is buried opposite. A brass plate on the pavement under the dome marks the spot of Nelson's tomb. The monument to Nelson, inconveniently placed at the opening of the choir, is by one of our greatest sculptorsFlaxman. It is hardly worthy of the occasion, and the figures on the pedestal are puerile. Lord

been erected in St. Paul's.

The military heroes have been contributed by various wars, just and unjust, successful and the reverse. There is that tough old veteran, Lord Heathfield, who drove off two angry nations from the scorched rock of Gibraltar; Sir Isaac Brock, who fell near Niagara; Sir Ralph Abercromby, who perished in Egypt; and Sir John Moore, who played so well a losing game at Corunna. Hosts of Wellington's soldiers lie in St. Paul's-brave men, who

funeral procession, with the representatives of the various regiments, and the solemn bursts of the "Dead March in Saul" at measured intervals, can never be forgotten by those who were present. The pall was borne by the general officers who had fought by the side of Wellington, and the cathedral was illuminated for the occasion. The service was read by Dean Milman, who had been, as we have before mentioned, a spectator of Nelson's funeral. So perfectly adapted for sound is St. Paul's, that

sacrificed their lives at Talavera, Vimiera, Ciudad Rodrigo, Salamanca, Vittoria, and Bayonne. Nor has our proud and just nation disdained to honour even equally gallant men who were defeated. There are monuments in St. Paul's to the vanquished at Bergen-op-Zoom, New Orleans, and Baltimore.

That climax of victory, Waterloo, brought Ponsonby and Picton to St. Paul's. Picton lies in the vestibule of the Wellington chapel. Thirty-seven years after Waterloo, in the fulness of his years, Wellington was deservedly honoured by a tomb in St. Paul's. It was impossible to lay him beside Nelson, so the eastern chapel of the crypt was appropriated for his sarcophagus. From 12,000 to

though the walls were muffled with black cloth, the Dean's voice could be heard distinctly, even up in the western gallery. A monument to the "iron Duke," consisting of a recumbent effigy surmounted by a canopy adorned with military trophies, from the designs of the late Mr. Stevens, was completed in 1878.

After Nelson and Wellington, the lesser names seem to dwindle down. Yet among the great, pure, and good, we may mention, there are some Crimean memorials. There also is the monument of Cornwallis, that good Governor-General of India; those of the two Napiers, the historian and the conqueror of Scinde, true knights both; that

statue of Turner, by Bailey; and monuments to Dr. Babington, a London physician, and Sir Astley Cooper, the great surgeon. The ambitious monument to Viscount Melbourne, the Queen's first prime minister, by Baron Marochetti, stands in one of the alcoves of the nave; great gates of black marble represent the entrance to a tomb, guarded by two angels of white marble at the portals. More worthy than the gay Melbourne of the honour of a

Near him lies his successor as president, West, the Quaker painter; courtly Lawrence; Barry, whom Reynolds detested; rough, clever Opie; Dance; and eccentric Fuseli. In this goodly company, also, sleeps a greater than all of these-Joseph Mallord William Turner, the first landscape painter of the world. He had requested, when dying, to be buried as near to his old master, Reynolds, as possible. It is said that Turner, soured with the world, had

threatened to make his shroud out of his grand picture of "The Building of Carthage." In this spot also rest Robert Mylne and Charles Robert Cockerell, the eminent architects, Sir Edwin Landseer, George Cruikshank, and Dean Milman.

Only one robbery has occurred in modern times in St. Paul's. In December, 1810, the plate repository of the cathedral was broken open by thieves, with the connivance of, as is supposed, some official, and 1,761 ounces of plate, valued at above £2,000, were stolen. The thieves broke open nine doors to get at the treasure, which was never afterwards heard of. The spoil included the chased silver-gilt covers of the large (1640) Bible, chalices, plates, tankards, and candlesticks.

The cathedral, left colourless and blank by Wren, has never yet been finished. The Protestant choir remains in one corner, like a dry, shrivelled nut in a large shell. Like the proud snail in the fable, that took possession of the lobster-shell and starved there, we remained for more than a century complacently content with our unfurnished house. At length our tardy zeal awoke. In 1858 the Bishop of London wrote to the Dean and Chapter, urging a series of Sunday evening services, for the benefit of the floating masses of Londoners. Dean Milman replied, at once warming to the proposal, and suggesting also the decoration and completion of St. Paul's. The earnest appeal for "the noblest church, in its style, of Christian Europe, the masterpiece of Wren, the glory and pride of London," was at once responded to. A committee of the leading merchants and bankers was formed, including those great authorities, Sir Charles Barry, Mr. Cockerell, Mr. Tite, and Mr. Penrose. They at once resolved to gladden the eye with colour, without disturbing the solemn and harmonious simplicity. Paintings, mosaics, marble and gilding were requisite; the dome was to be relieved of Thornhill's lifeless grisailles; and above all, stainedglass windows were pronounced indispensable.

The dome had originally been filled by Thornhill with eight scenes from the life of St. Paul. He received for them the not very munificent but quite adequate sum of 40s. per square yard. They soon began to show symptoms of decay, and Mr. Parris, the painter, invented an apparatus by which they could easily be repaired, but no funds could then be found; yet when the paintings fell off in flakes, much money and labour was expended on the restoration, which has now proved useless. Mr. Penrose has shown that so ignorant was Sir James of perspective, that his painted architecture has actually the effect of making Wren's thirty-two pilasters seem to lean forward.

Much has already been done in St. Paul's. Two out of the eight large spandrel pictures round the dome are already executed. There are eventually to be four evangelists and four major prophets. Above the gilt rails of the whispering gallery an inscription on a mosaic and gold ground has been placed. A marble memorial pulpit has been put up. The screen has been removed, and the organ, greatly enlarged and improved, has been divided into two parts, which have been placed on either side of the choir, above the stalls; the dome is lighted with gas; the golden gallery, ball, and cross have been re-gilt. Ten stained-glass windows have been inserted, and among the donors have been the Drapers' and Goldsmiths' Companies; there are also memorial windows to the late Bishop Blomfield, W. Cotton, Esq., and Dean Mansel. The Grocers', Merchant Taylors', Goldsmiths', Mercers, and Fishmongers' Companies have generously gilt the vaults of the choir and the arches adjoining the dome. Some fifty or more windows still require stained glass. wall panels are to be in various places adorned with inlaid marbles. It is not intended that St. Paul's should try to rival St. Peter's at Rome in exube. rance of ornament, but it still requires a good deal of clothing. The great army of sable martyrs in marble have been at last washed white, and the fire-engines might now advantageously be used upon the exterior.

The

A few figures about the dimensions of St. Paul's will not be uninteresting. The cathedral is 2,292 feet in circumference, and the height from the nave pavement to the top of the cross is 365 feet. The height of St. Peter's at Rome being 432 feet, St. Paul's could stand inside St. Peter's. The western towers are 220 feet high. From east to west, St. Paul's is 500 feet long, while St. Peter's is 669 feet. The cupola is considered by many as more graceful than that of St. Peter's, "though in its connection with the church by an order higher than that below it there is a violation of the laws of the art." The external appearance of St. Paul's rivals, if not excels, that of St. Peter's, but the inside is much inferior. The double portico of St. Paul's has been greatly censured. The commissioners insisted on twelve columns, as emblematical of the twelve apostles, and Wren could not obtain stones of sufficient size; but, as Mr. Gwilt observes, it would have been better to have had joined pillars rather than a Composite heaped on a Corinthian portico. In the tympanum is the Conversion of St. Paul, sculptured in high relief by Bird; on the apex is a colossal figure of St. Paul, and on the right and left are St. Peter and St.