66 an unreasoning animal obstinacy, whose rule was what has been shall be, whether now fit or not." The clergy insisted that the new building should resemble a cathedral; by which term they could or would understand nothing but the peculiarities of an English mediaval cathedral, as patched up and made to serve its new destination; for many cathedrals, even St. Peter's itself, resemble Wren's earlier designs much more than they do the present edifice. Many a deep study had to be wasted, many a beautiful invention abandoned, before he could descend to a design sufficiently tame and common-place to meet their notions. It seems they would oppose, as "unlike a cathedral," every plan that was shorter than 500 feet, every one whose central avenue was wider than 40 feet, or which was without a complete circuit of aisles. Neither would they admit, in any member, a proportion for which there was not Gothic precedent; nor could any customary part of the old churches, even to the triforium, be allowed to pass unrepresented. We believe they would have stifled the only remaining loophole for Wren's genius, by insisting even on the four central piers at the crossing, had there not fortunately been a precedent, and that an English one, for their omission, in Ely Cathedral. However, out of this, the sole concession he could wrest from dogged routine, he managed to make his work a new and unique one; and, what is far more important, one that might, at some future period, be made to serve the purposes of the reformed worship; not indeed with the decorum he had contemplated in his favourite designs, but without any very flagrant absurdity. He foresaw that a time must arrive when the common sense of his countrymen (to say nothing of taste or right feeling) would revolt at the idle mockery of a temple large enough to hold 20,000 people, barely affording an oratory for 200 in one of its recesses, and these deafened with the tramp of gazers in other parts of the vast useless carcase. Though that time has not even yet arrived, he made provision for it, as far as they would let him. He provided a clear central space, loftier and far grander than the rest of the edifice; large enough to serve conveniently for about 4000 worshippers, all within sight and hearing distance of two or three points; large enough, or at least important enough to be the evident nucleus or main body to which the other parts of the building are appendages; and lastly, if fitted as an auditory, nearly free from extraneous noise, because itself occupying the place whence the echo and resonance of footsteps almost entirely originates. It must be allowed, indeed, that even with the auditory in this its obvious place, and enlarged to the utmost extent that the best voice can reach, the eastern and western arms of the building would still be preposterously lengthy, the one for a chancel, and the other for a vestibule or antechurch; but this, as we have seen, he could not help. Being rigorously required to fill out the complete cathedral length of 500 ft., and give something corresponding in place and dimensions to every part and member of the Gothic model,-in a word, to make a fabric perfectly adapted to every requirement of the old worship,-he could not, at the same time, make it also perfectly and decorously available for the new. That he did so to such an extent as he has done, will be matter of no small admiration, whenever the building shall be adapted to this purpose; which it would be an insult to our readers to pretend that it now is. A model of one of Wren's earlier designs (we may with some reason suppose it his favourite) is extant, in a very mutilated state, in a loft over the north-west chapel of the nave, and is equally worthy of notice with the existing building itself, if not more so, as showing the great master's ingenuity in the higher branches of his art, which the executed fabric cannot be said to do, the general form and proportions being none of his, but settled, as we have seen, partly by Romish views, more by stubborn routine, and merely given him to construct and decorate as he best could. Against the fancied conservatism, but really unprecedented innovation, that required a building planned not for its own purpose, but to imitate those planned for a different purpose; against the spirit of plodding dulness that would have nothing but a copy of the average Gothic skeleton, stripped of all individualities, and dressed in a different style,-he fought hard and long, and yielded only inch by inch. He was hedged in by barriers of fancied rules, unknown to the medieval designers from whom they were professedly drawn, and having no parallel but in the art-banishing dogmas of nineteenth-century ecclesiologists. Yet all this, though it sadly curbed, did not paralyse the genius of Wren, which yet struggles forth at every possible opening, and might meet most of the criticism of his nation with the retort of the ancient artist, "What you admire is mine, what you condemn is your own." This vast work is the only one of its class begun and finished in one age; and, what is still more remarkable, under one bishop by one master-mason, and (except a few contemptible super-additions) by one architect. It was commenced in 1675, nine years after the fire, and finished in 1711. The plan annexed will show that it resembles an Anglo-Gothic church of the largest class, except only in the breadth and fewness of the severies or compartments. The usual four piers at the crossing are omitted, so as to throw the weight of the dome on eight surrounding piers (as at Ely Cathedral), and the re-entering angles are strengthened by four massive towers, three containing vestries, and one a staircase, all continued to the height of the clere-story walls, or about 100 ft. from the ground. To the west front, which was intended for the principal entrance, are added laterally, beyond the breadth of the building (as at Wells and Rouen), two bell-towers which rise with pyramidal summits, to double the height of the roofs; and behind or east of them, are two oblong chapels rising no higher than the aisles, but having rooms over them, corresponding to the clere-story. On the eight central arches are built two concentric circular walls, the outer supporting a complete colonnade, 140 ft. in diameter, admirably contrived to abut the inner, which carries the domes. These with their lantern, crowned by a gilt copper ball and cross, rise altogether to thrice the height of the roofs, or 365 ft. from the ground, 356 from the floor of the church, and 375 from that of the crypts*. Simple ratios prevail between all the leading dimensions, and especially the ratio of 1 to 2 between the breadth and height of openings, avenues, and spaces. Thus the windows are chiefly 12 ft. wide by 24 high; the aisles 19 ft. in clear width by 38 in clear height; the central avenues 41 by 84† (a deficiency of only one foot in breadth); the beautiful domed vestibule at the west end, 47 square by 94 high; and lastly, the central space, 108 in clear width, by 216 high. In clear diameter, this space is exceeded by that between the four piers of St. Sophia, 162 ft.; between those of St. Peter's, 157; the circular inclosure of the Pantheon, 144; the octagon (with four sides open) of Florence Cathedral, 138; and the crossing (with all sides open) of the mosque of Achmet, 130 ft. ‡ We cannot guess the origin of the 404 ft. copied into most accounts, unless it be taken from the bottom of the foundations, or the level of the Thames. The built structures (omitting framed ones) which exceed this in extreme height, are those at Strasburg, Rome, Landshut, Vienna, Salisbury, Chartres, Cremona, Freyburg, Antwerp, and Brussels. But all these, except St. Peter's and Salisbury, are built from the ground, not suspended on arches. The only central or lantern erections exceeding St. Paul's are these two, and perhaps Florence or Milan, between which two last and our dome there seems an intended equality. These avenues are (within a foot or two) half the width of those of St. Peter's, the widest, and half the height of those of Beauvais, the highest. The common mode of comparison, by the diameters of the domes themselves, is 1 In height, however, it stands third, exceeding the Pantheon by 70 ft.; about equalling St. Sophia, but falling short of the Florence cupola by 50 ft., and of St. Peter's by 150. To show what various proportions have been admired :—at the Pantheon, the clear height is equal to the breadth, and at Achmet's dome about the same; at St. Sophia, one-third greater; at Florence and St. Paul's, twice; and at St. Peter's two and a half times the breadth. (See comparative section, page 181.) Our view, projected from a point in the steeple of St. Martin's, Ludgate, with the houses omitted, will show the external form and decorations of the dome, incomparably the finest part; and the west front, which is next in merit. With regard to the rest of the exterior, it is to be observed that the aisles are included entirely in the height of the lower order of pilasters; and that the upper, which has empty niches instead of windows, is merely a wall or screen, erected, as some say, to hide the unclassical forms of flying buttresses, but we cannot attribute to Wren so very clumsy and disproportioned an expedient. He certainly had invention enough to have given those features a form harmonising with the style of the rest; and if not, no necessary features would be considered, except perhaps in the nineteenth century, to justify so gross an extravagance. Besides, the massiveness of this wall, about 9 ft. thick, precludes the idea of a mere screen, and seems to suggest that its chief motive may be to furnish a load like that of the Gothic pinnacles, but much heavier, to steady the piers below it against the thrust of the vaultings, without requiring very prominent buttresses. This mock story, which is the most objectionable thing in the fabric, swells out its exterior, and gives it a false magnitude, but at the same time a flatness and sameness very opposite to the play and variety that would have arisen from the view of the upper story receding behind the lower, as in Gothic buildings, and only coinciding with it at the sheer precipices of the end façades, which owe half their grandeur to the contrast with this broken precipice elsewhere. The same falsehood too (of raising the outer wall everywhere to the full height of the building), has induced the shallow criticism in every mouth, that there should have been but a single order 90 feet high, instead of two of 50 and 40 feet. Now this would, in the first place, have been a further deception, for the building is not, as Wren's own designs were, of one story, but of three, answering in every way to the Gothic aisles, triforium, and clere-story. Next, an order 90 feet high could not be, with any materials this country affords (and indeed never has been in any country), so erected as to be really what it affects to be. The present orders are real, like those of the ancient unfair, and places them in a very different order, thus: the Pantheon, 144 ft.; Florence, 142; St. Peter's, 139; St. Sophia, 115; St. Paul's, 100; Achmet's mosque, 92. But the real boldness and amount of available space is in the order given above. The palm still rests with St. Sophia, the work of the barbarous sixth century. |