ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL.
THE best expression of Protestant Ecclesiastical art in England, and
perhaps in the world, is manifested in St. Paul's Cathedral, London. It
is a stupendous temple rather than a church, and the religious effect
is lost in the interior by the number of tombs erected to admirals,
generals, colonels, and other military and naval heroes.
When Nelson ordered the decks of the Victory cleared for action at
Trafalgar, he cried out to his lieutenant, Hardy:
"Now for a peerage or Westminster Abbey."
But Nelson lies in St. Paul's, and the tomb of England's greatest
soldier--Wellington, is quite near his, under the same lofty nave.
All the great Cathedrals and Abbies of England were built before the
Reformation, and, consequently, St. Paul's is the best and truest proof
of Protestant art in England.
[Sidenote: WHEN ERECTED AND THE ARCHITECT.]
The yearly revenues of this Cathedral are £23,422. This does not
include the salaries of the Bishop of London, the Dean of St. Paul's,
four Canons, a Precentor, a Chancellor, Treasurer, Archdeacon of
London, Archdeacon of Middlesex, 29 Canons who do nothing but draw
their salaries, a Divinity Lecturer, a Sub-Dean, 12 Minor Canons,
among whom are a Succentor, Sacrist, Gospeller, Epistolar, Librarian,
Almoner, and Warden, a Commissary, a Registrar and Chapter Clerk, a
Deputy Registrar, a Receiver and Steward, six Vicars, a Choral, and an
Organist; five Bishops' Chaplains, an Examining Chaplain, a Chancellor
of the Diocese, a Secretary to the Bishop of London, and a Registrar
to the Bishop of London at the Cathedral. Altogether about eighty
ecclesiastics who receive salaries from the Cathedral, besides a swarm
of vergers, choristers, and servants of all kinds the salaries of whom
amount to at least £50,000 a year.
[Illustration: ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL.]
Sir Christopher Wren was the architect of St. Paul's, and the first
stone of the new Cathedral was laid on the site of the old St.
Paul's (which had been destroyed by fire in 1666), in June 1671, and
thirty-nine years afterward, the last stone was laid at the top of the
lantern in 1710, by the son of Sir Christopher Wren, who had succeeded
his father as the architect.
As St. Peter's at Rome is considered to be the chief temple of Catholic
Christendom, so is St. Paul's entitled to hold the first place in
Protestant Christendom. The whole expense of rebuilding St. Paul's
was £736,752 2s. 3d. for the Cathedral, and £11,202 0s. 6d. for the
stone wall and railings around the Cathedral. The architect received
a beggarly £200 a year during its construction, for his services. The
same architect afterwards designed fifty churches to take the place of
those burnt down in the Great Fire, and they are all standing to-day, I
believe.
The dimensions of St. Paul's as compared with St. Peter's at Rome, are
as follows:
St. Paul's. St. Peter's.
Feet. Feet.
Length within 500 669
Breadth at entrance 100 226
Front without 180 395
Breadth at cross 223 442
Cupola clear 108 139
Cupola and lantern high 330 432
Church high 110 146
Pillars in front 40 91
Superficial area 84,025 227,069
The diameter of the gilt ball is 6 feet 2 inches; the weight 5,600
lbs., and will contain eight persons; the weight of the cross is 3,360
lbs.
The ground on which the present Cathedral stands has, from time
immemorial, been sacred to Divine Worship. There was a Christian church
here as early as the Second century, built, as it is supposed, by the
Romans, which was destroyed during the persecutions of Diocletian, and
again rebuilt, and in the Sixth century it was desecrated by the Pagan
Saxons, who celebrated their Heathenish mysteries in the church.
It was afterwards richly endowed with lordships by Athelstan, Edgar,
Ethelred, Canute, and Edward the Confessor. The Norman barons, when
they came, made a raid on the property of the church as they did upon
everything they saw in England, and the Saxon priests, half frightened
to death by such violence, had their property returned them by Duke
William, who gave it a charter on his coronation day, cursing all those
who should molest the property of St. Paul's, and blessing those who
should augment its revenues.
[Sidenote: DESTRUCTION OF OLD ST. PAUL'S.]
The enumeration of the jewels, and precious stones, and gold and silver
ornaments presented to St. Paul's by its various pious benefactors,
takes up twenty-eight pages of Dugdale's Monasticon.
The dimensions of Old St. Paul's in the year 1315 were:
Feet.
Length 690
Breadth 130
Height of nave 102
Length of nave 150
The height of the gilt ball on the top of the dome, (which was large
enough to hold ten bushels of corn inside) from the ground, was 520
feet and it supported a cross, which made the entire height to the top
of the cross, 534 feet. The area occupied by the edifice of Old St.
Paul's was three and a half acres, one and one-half rood and 6 perches.
The walls of the present Cathedral are 1,500 feet in circuit, and
enclose five-eighths of an acre, or about one-fifth of the space of the
old St. Paul's. In fine, the present Cathedral is in every way inferior
to the old one, and in some places it is very tawdy in decoration,
while the Old St. Paul's was in many respects a finer cathedral than
St. Peter's, and twenty feet deeper.
In 1561 the steeple of Old St. Paul's was burnt down, a few years after
Queen Elizabeth ascended the throne, and it was subsequently decided
to rebuild the Cathedral, and Inigo Jones, a far superior architect
to Wren, was chosen for the task. In 1633, Archbishop Laud laid the
first stone of Inigo Jones's Cathedral, which was destroyed by fire in
1666. In 1643 the building was finished at an expense of £100,000. This
Cathedral was architecturally and in every way superior to that built
afterward by Wren, but was as much inferior to the old Cathedral of the
Middle Ages, which Wren sought to improve upon.
It is believed that modern European Freemasonry was first founded
among the workmen who were employed in rebuilding St. Paul's, from the
fact of a number of the stone masons meeting together during the work
in a social fashion, and from this casual association it is stated
that the Lodge of Antiquity, of which Sir Christopher Wren was Master,
originated, the occasion being the laying of the highest or lantern
stone of the Cathedral in 1710--and it is stated that from this Lodge
of Antiquity all the other Lodges of modern Europe have sprung.
The Cathedral contains monuments to Nelson, who is buried in a wooden
coffin taken from the mainmast of the French Admiral's ship captured at
the battle of the Nile the very same ship in which the boy Casabianca,
the Admiral's son, "stood on the burning deck, whence all but him had
fled." Nelson lies close to Wellington, and other illustrious men. His
coffin is enclosed in a sarcophagus made by order of Cardinal Wolsey
for Henry VIII.
Wellington is buried in the crypt of the Cathedral, in a sarcophagus
made of Cornish porphyry, and near him is his old subordinate, the
Irish Sir Thomas Picton, who commanded the Fighting Fifth Division at
Waterloo. Queen Anne, who used to come to St. Paul's in great state
and procession to thank God for the victories won for her by the Duke
of Marlborough, and whom she afterwards betrayed--has a bronze statue
erected in the pediment of the Cathedral.
Besides these worthies, the tombs of Collingwood, Nelson's friend,
Wren, Rennie, the builder of London Bridge, and Mylne, of Waterloo
Bridge, Dr. Samuel Johnson, who expected to be buried in Westminster
Abbey, and was disappointed, like many others, Sir William Jones, Sir
Astley Cooper, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Turner, the greatest colorist
England has ever produced, Fuseli, Barry, Sir Thomas Lawrence, Opie,
West and other famous painters, John, of Gaunt, Vandyke, Dr. Donne, Sir
C. Hatton, Dean Colet, founder of St. Paul's School, and Sir Nicholas
Bacon are buried in the crypt under St. Faith's--the parish church of
St. Paul's--which is quite contiguous to the latter.
There are monuments to Bishop Heber, Lord Cornwallis, Nelson, Reynolds,
Johnson, Sir John Moore, Elliott, who defended Gibraltar, Lord Howe,
Rodney, Ponsonby, Admiral Dundas, and a large number beside of their
country's defenders in the Cathedral.
[Sidenote: PRICES OF ADMISSION.]
To speak plainly the interior does not look like a church of God at
all. It is simply a huge Pantheon, with monumental effigies, and slabs
indicating the virtues, heroism, gallantry and acts in battle of
innumerable soldiers and sailors who have fought for Britain in times
gone by. The vast Rotunda and the gigantic Dome do not give the idea of
a church, and the pillars and cornices have little in their aspect to
make a spectator feel that he stands in the presence of the Almighty.
Yet the monuments and the vastness of the Cathedral are worthy of
inspection, though the exterior of the Cathedral is far more imposing
than the interior, owing to the fact that the real height of the walls
of the body of the edifice is marked by a double row of pillars, which
are ranged on top of each other, giving to the spectator an impression
that the Cathedral walls to the roof, exclusive of the dome and cupola,
are twice as high as they are in reality.
The following are the charges to see the different places in the
Cathedral:--to the body of the church, 2d.; to the Whispering Gallery
and the outside galleries around the dome, 6d.; to the Library, the
Model Room, the Geometrical Staircase in the south turret, and the
Great Bell, which weighs 12,000 pounds, 1s.; to the Ball at the top,
1s. 6d.; to the clock, 2d., and to the vaults 1s., in all 4s. 4d. from
each visitor; which is nothing less than a downright robbery. This is
playing Barnum with a vengeance.
It was the great bell of St. Paul's which a soldier on the ramparts at
Windsor, twenty miles away, heard striking thirteen strokes one night,
instead of twelve. He was tried for sleeping on his post, found guilty,
and sentenced to death, and would have suffered had it not been for his
stout heart, and his persistent assertion that he heard the bell strike
thirteen instead of twelve strokes. It was proved that the bell did
strike thirteen on the night in question, by the mistake of the ringer,
and thus the soldier was exonerated.
It was for this same bell that Henry VIII. and a dissolute nobleman
named Partridge, rattled the dice one night; and finally Henry lost the
stake. Partridge having won, died in the same year in an unfortunate
manner, just before he had made up his impious mind to have the bell
melted down. This was looked upon as a judgment of God, for in those
days judgments of God were of common occurrence.
The grandest sight ever seen under the dome of St. Paul's was the
funeral of Nelson, which took place January 9, 1806. The body was
brought through the streets from Whitehall Stairs, with the King,
Lord Mayor, the Lords of the Admiralty, the Princes of the Blood, the
nobles, prelates and civic companies following, through densely packed
streets, which were almost impassable, for all England was there in
heart, if not in body. The bands played the "Dead March in Saul" during
the afternoon, and minute guns were fired from the Tower and along
the wharves as the body passed. Hardy, Nelson's post-captain, and
forty-eight sailors, who had seen the hero die, surrounded the corpse,
and when the body was taken from the hearse into the vast Cathedral, a
clear space was formed amid all that great sea of faces by the Highland
soldiers of Abercromby, who had been with Nelson in Egypt and at
Aboukir. Above was the immense dome, and from its dark and impenetrable
depths depended a huge octagonal lantern, encircled by innumerable
lamps.
Then came the words from the lips of the prelate who officiated:
"I am the Resurrection and the Life, and he who believeth in me
though he were dead, yet shall he rise again," the mighty organ
bursting forth--and out of all that vast multitude went forth a great,
tremendous sob as the body was lowered into the grave enshrouded by the
oak which came from the enemies' ship, and Nelson's flag, which he had
borne at his masthead in victory so often was also about to be lowered,
when suddenly the forty-eight sailors of his vessel, some of whom had
carried his lifeless body from the deck to the cockpit--as if moved by
one impulse, closed around the grave, rent the flag in pieces, each man
securing a piece of the sacred emblem upon his person, as a testament
of the greatest hero England ever saw, or ever will see again.