madeinatlantis LONDON TRAVEL GUIDE ABOUT ST. PAUL'S "Can you tell me, sir, what is this large building?" asked a civil fellow-traveller of mine on the top of an omnibus; and as soon as I had got over a shook of mild surprise, I was able to let him know that we were passing St. Paul's Cathedral. No Londoner would be so ill-informed, for the dome of St. Paul's makes indeed a City landmark, its crown reared to a level with the brow of Hampstead Heath. Yet St. Paul's is no longer so familiar to the citizens as when in every sense it was the centre of London life. On special occasions it draws together huge congregations from all over the metropolis, as for ceremonies of national thanksgiving, or when a roistering multitude gathers about it to hail the first stroke of the New Year; nor do its ordinary services waste their sweetness on a stony void. But to most Londoners this is a monument rather than a fane; and among the throng of Mammon worshippers that hurry by it, but a small proportion find time to enter the doors unless for a peep of curiosity. Hereabouts is the highest point of the City, as recorded on an old stone preserved in the rebuilt walls of Panyer Alley, leading from the east end of Paternoster Row into Newgate Street. It is supposed that a Roman temple stood on this site, succeeded by a Christian church. The first authentic church of St. Paul's dates from Ethelbert, in the beginning of the seventh century, built and rebuilt, till medieval art produced a Gothic Cathedral larger than the present one, topped by what was then the tallest spire of Christendom, and adorned, no doubt, with sumptuous ornament as with monuments that seem to have fallen into decay before they were swept away by the Great Fire. This Cathedral swallowed up the parish church of St. Faith's at the east end. Several times it had been destroyed or damaged by fire; and its spire was ruined by lightning in Elizabeth's reign, a disaster taken by zealots of the old faith for a judgment. St. Paul's had then come to be an open lounge as well as a place of worship. At certain pillars lawyers were wont to hold consultations with their clients. Ladies and their gallants kept assignations here. Porters carried loads through the church as a short cut. Servants stood waiting to be hired. One aisle, known as Duke Humphrey's Walk--from some memorial of that Duke of Gloucester, Henry IV.'s son, who was, however, buried at St. Albans--grew notorious as a haunt of bankrupts, beggars, and other penniless idlers; hence the proverb "to dine with Duke Humphrey," who need never want guests even in this richest city of the world. It was outside, at the north-east corner, that the famous Paul's Cross pulpit stood, about which Latimer drew crowds by his homely eloquence. "There is one that passeth all the other, and is the most diligent prelate and preacher in all England. And will ye know who it is I I will tell you. It is the devil. He is the most diligent preacher of all other; he is never out of his diocese; he is never from his cure; ye shall never find him unoccupied; he is ever in his parish; he keepeth residence at all times. . . . He is no lordly loiterer from his cure, but a busy ploughman, so that among all the prelates, and all the pack of them that have cure, the devil shall go for my money. For he still applieth his business. Therefore, ye unpreaching prelates, learn of the devil to be diligent in doing of your office. Learn of the devil. And if you will not learn of God nor good man, for shame, learn of the devil." This pulpit is now to be restored, as a matter of sentiment rather than of utility, one supposes, since there is not much room for an open-air congregation in the corner of the Churchyard where shops and offices wall in a gardened oasis of rest. Protestant preaching, it is to be feared, did not foster reverence for a sacred building. At that time St. Paul's seems to have been allowed to fall into sad disrepair. Under Charles I. began a restoration, soon interrupted by the Civil War, that let the Cathedral serve as a stable for troopers' horses. Then came the Great Fire, from the ashes of which arose Wren's masterpiece, begun 1675, and not completed till Queen Anne's reign, as commemorated at the entrance by a statue of that sovereign, restored in our time. Behind this, at the foot of the steps, an inscription marks the spot where the aged Queen Victoria offered the thanksgiving of her Diamond Jubilee. Wren's Cathedral blends some Gothic features with the classical style he had mainly in view for a nobly massive structure, whose dome but gathers fresh dignity from its grimy environment. Fancy how the white fretwork of Milan, or the colour of St. Mark's, would have borne the smoke of London! Had Wren had his way, he would no doubt have gained an opener space to display the proportions of his masterpiece, too much pressed upon by the hasty rebuilding of the City. In internal ornament, also, his design was starved, a reproach which our time labours to wipe away. At first, the effect of the interior must have been rather austere, and it was long before cold Georgian piety ceased to be suspicious of decoration. In vain the Royal Academy offered to consecrate its establishment by contributing religious paintings. The first statues introduced were those of Howard the philanthropist and Samuel Johnson, guarding the entrance to the Choir in classical scantness of costume, which has caused inconsiderate visitors to mistake them as St. Peter and St. Paul, the more readily for the emblematic prison-key put in Howard's hand. This was the statue on which Charles Lamb, "saving the reverence due to Holy Paul," would willingly have spat, because the reformer of prisons had recommended solitary confinement for runaway Blue-coat boys. Of the old monuments, the only one saved--apart from fragments preserved in the Crypt--was that of Dr. Donne, which now stands on the south side of the Chancel, opposite the bronze effigy of Dr. Mandell Creighton.		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