with the very grave one of ill-distributed light. Nothing can atone for the fact that the dome, which ought to be the lightest, is the darkest part of the interior; an effect now sadly exaggerated by the lower parts having been cleaned, while all above the central circular cornice remains lined with dust and smoke, a dark undistinguishable cavity. The defect, however, is radical and irremediable; and it seems to us that its avoidance would have been worth any sacrifice of external beauty. So, indeed, the architects of St. Peter's and its dormer windows evidently thought. The only remedy, if any, would be some arrangement of reflectors; and if the windows of the rest of the edifice were deeply coloured, as in the early Gothic churches, perhaps the due proportion of light between the dome and other parts might be obtained. The technical defects of the interior exceed those of the exterior; and perhaps the greatest of them is the eking out the height of each pilaster by an ugly isolated bit of entablature, which is the more inexcusable from the number of ways in which it might easily have been avoided. With regard to the attic that takes the place of the Gothic triforium, it is doubtful whether its 19 feet adds anything to the effective height, which appears much the same as if the vaults sprung at once from the entablature. Of the two orders (that continue intermixed in the Palladian manner throughout), it is to be regretted that the principal is every way more enriched than the subordinate one; its pilasters being fluted and its mouldings carved, neither of which ornaments is possessed by the smaller order. This is directly contrary to the general practice of the Italian architects, founded on nature, which always bestows most ornament on the subordinate and weaker parts. The treatment of these two orders should have been just reversed, except the entablature of the small order, which is meanly and disproportionately small. The few columns used near the west end give an idea of the enchanting effects that would have resulted from an occasional use of such members (in the small order) elsewhere, as is done throughout St. Peter's. The four extremities of the interior are its finest parts. In the portion under the dome, the four segmental arches are obviously an after insertion, probably on account of some symptom of unequal settlement observed in one of the arches over them. Their introduction must ever be regretted, as a blemish to the integrity of the most important part of the edifice, apparently useless, and really useless to the equilibrium of the work as designed; consequently betraying a discrepancy between design and execution. The meeting and interpenetration of the mouldings of the eight main arches has been censured quite enough for so unimportant a point of detail. No one has shown how it could be avoided (retaining the present ground-plan) without introducing greater evils; and we are tempted to think it one of the very few points escaping Wren's notice till after the foundations were laid. The great architect had prepared schemes for consistently deco rating the bare surfaces, at least of the vaultings, if not of other parts; and the inner dome was to glow with the perennial freshness of mosaic painting, for which has been substituted stage scenery, appropriately inclosing the wretched counterfeit sculpture of Sir James Thornhill, both now happily unintelligible, from smoke and damp. The house or theatre painters seem to have taken possession of the chancel and apsis. The exterior of this fabric, no less than that of its Italian rival, is remarkable (as seen from its immediate vicinity) for deceptive smallFew spectators from the surrounding roads would believe the dimensions of any part, if stated to them. This defect (which some by singular sophistry have tried to prove a beauty) arises here chiefly from the want of a scale, owing to the fence preventing our seeing any human figures near the foot of the building, or even judging of the distance that separates us from it. The hiding of this space, and giving us scale-objects only close at hand, amounts to the furnishing of a false scale; and it is difficult to conceive any contrivance more effectual for diminishing the building, unless it be a concave lens. An equally injurious addition, however, was made by the puppy who supplanted Wren in the last few years of his long life (see Architects, Wren). A late writer on architecture has said, regarding the effect of scale or no scale on works of nature or art, that it takes very little to humble a mountain. A hut will do it sometimes." It takes still less to humble a cathedral, and this little, Wren's contemptible successor contrived to add, in his mock balustrade over the second cornice; a thing protested against by Wren without seeing it - how much more had he seen its barbarous design!-and, what is worse, a thing studiously contrived to give a false scale; for this is one of the very few architectural features (perhaps the only one), whose use requires a limited and almost invariable dimension, and it is therefore taken by every eye as a perfectly safe measure or scale. We know that a balustrade is meant to lean upon, and therefore, wherever we see one, we conclude it to be about 3 or 4 ft. high. A mock balustrade, nine feet high, never enters our calculations, so that when we see such an absurdity, on a building 90 ft. high, if we have other scales we are simply puzzled, but if, as in this case, we have none, the building is at once reduced to 30 or 40 ft. Hence it happens that the west front of St. Paul's is the only part whose magnitude has a chance of being appreciated; and here we have actually no scale at all, true or false; no balustrade, no living figures, and not only the foreground, but the flight of steps (the only scale-object the front itself contains), shut out from view by the fence. St. Stephen's, Walbrook, is considered the most original and beautiful of the fifty parochial churches rebuilt by Wren in consequence of the same immense fire. In many, perhaps most, of these structures, the doggedness of the authorities confined him rigidly to the Catholic routine of nave and aisles, and in these, of course, he could do little. The more licence he could obtain to deviate from this everlasting mimic basilica, the better he succeeded; and to say that this is the building in which the greatest deviation therefrom was allowed, is tantamount to pronouncing it his masterpiece. Though the exterior and belfry of this church have uncommon grace and decorum for that age, it is the interior that constitutes its fame. Though a simple cell enclosed by four walls, the tameness of that form wholly disappears behind the unique and varied arrangement of its sixteen columns. They reproduce and unite almost every beauty of plan to be found in all the cathedrals of Europe. Now they form the Latin cross, with its nave, transept, and chancel; anon they divide the whole space into five aisles, regularly diminishing from the centre to the sides; again we perceive, in the midst, a square apartment with recesses on all its sides—a square, nay, an octagon-no, a circle. It changes at every glance, as we view the entablature, or the arches above it, or the all-uniting dome. With the same harmonious variety, we have every form of ceiling brought together at once-flat, camerated, groined, pendentive, domical-yet no confusion. The fitness to its destination is perfect; every eye can see the minister, and every ear is within hearing distance of him, in every part of the service. It is the most beautiful of preaching-rooms; and though only a sketch, and executed only in counterfeit building, would, if carried out in Wren's spirit instead of his employers', form the most perfect of Protestant temples. St. James's, Piccadilly, is about the largest of Wren's churches, but at the same time the most meanly built, everything about it indicating such extreme parsimony, that he seems to have given up the exterior in despair, bestowing on it only a few of his favourite cherubs' heads. It has lately been improved by the addition of a cornice, which it much wanted. But the fact is, that Wren, who had travelled no further than France, had, for want of seeing the Italian works, no idea of astylar architecture. He could do little without columns or pilasters. His taste was also thoroughly English in regard to projections and recessions, which are always petty and shallow. The interior of this church has an unique form of ceiling, contrived to mask an ingenious roof, which rests solely on the columns (independently of the walls), and has served as a model for that of some modern ship-building sheds. Christ Church, Newgate Street (see p. 195), is very similar to the last, but with an elliptic central ceiling, and is one of the bestproportioned churches on the basilican plan, with galleries. St. Anne and Agnes, north of the Post Office; St. Martin's, Ludgate; St. Antholin's, Budge Row; and St. Swithin's, Cannon Street, are among those which display the greatest originality of plan. In nothing was the fertility of Wren's invention so strikingly displayed as in the belfries of his churches, which, being frequently the only parts visible at all from a right distance, received much K attention; and their extraordinary diversity of forms (as seen from either of the eastern bridges) has no parallel in any other city; and contrasts strangely with the monotonous repetition of two round temples and an attic, pervading the other parts of London, or the everlasting mock - EarlyEnglish pyramid that now succeeds them. Here, one self-taught man builds fifty things, strikingly different, and not one devoid of beauty; there, fifty architects cannot make two that may be distinguished by ordinary observers, nor one that is ever thought an ornament, though built for nothing else. ST. MARY-LE-BOW. The steeples of Wren |