these credulous worshippers, till he had established a permanent guard on the spot, and scourged and imprisoned numbers of both men and women. The present tower has been rebuilt, though on the model of the original, as seen in the following view.

The tower of St. Andrew's, Holborn, of the date of Henry VI., displays Wren's restoring hand in so unfavourable a light that we willingly pass to the interior, the architect's own composition, that we may admire the air of magnificence he has given to it. All the accessories tend to enhance this effect-the gildings, the paintings, the stained glass, which in the chancel reach to a high point of splendour. St. Andrew's may almost be called the poets' church, from the number of that glorious but unhappy fraternity that have been in one way or another connected with it, from the time of Webster, the author of the White Devil' and the Duchess of Malfy,' who was parish clerk, down to the late Henry Neele, interred here, after his suicide in a state of temporary insanity. Under the date of 1698, as Malcolm was informed, the parish register records the christening of the poet Savage, by direction of Earl Rivers, who, according to the mother-Lady Macclesfield's own confession of unfaithfulness to her husband, was the father. Disowned as he grew up by both his unnatural parents, unaware even who they were, till accident discovered them to him, suffering generally from poverty, and almost unceasingly from his own ill-regulated passions; there are few literary lives more truly melancholy than that of Savage. We need not wonder that (in Johnson's words), he was "very seldom provoked to laughter." One terrible event with him seemed ever to be the precursor of another, each increasing in intensity. The killing a man in a tavern broil leads to sentence of death, and that to a mother striving to intercept the pardon bestowed upon him, and the whole to the publication of "the Bastard," in which poetry was prostituted to the most awful purpose, perhaps, on record-that of holding a mother up to the reprobation and contempt of the world. Yet, if ever there was a man deserving pity, it was Savage; and he obtained more than that from one who was little

inclined, by habit or principle, to confound right and wrong. The friendship of Johnson and Savage is one of the most touching and beautiful things in literary history. If greater sufferings were needed than he experienced generally through life to expiate his faults, the circumstances of his death, in a jail at Bristol for debt, in 1743, may surely be deemed sufficient. As in one poet's history we have wandered by a melancholy path from St. Andrew's to Bristol, by that of another still more saddening, on account of the loftier nature concerned, we may return. Nine years after Savage's death in Bristol there was born in the same place one who, coming to London with the romantic notion that talents of a generally high order as a writer, and powers unsurpassed at the same age as a poet, should be sufficient to supply his moderate demands of food, clothing, and raiment; possessing at the same time too much pride to turn his muse into a lackey to dangle after patrons, found himself, after the most indefatigable exertions, literally starving. Suicide and the workhouse burying-ground of St. Andrew's complete his history, at the age of seventeen. The parish register of August 28, 1770, shows the following entry-"William Chatterton," the mistake, of course, regarding the name of a pauper being very excusable. The only thing that surprises us is the addition by a later hand, of the words "The Poet." Had not that fact better be forgotten at St. Andrew's?

With respect to the churches of St. Michael, Cornhill, and St. Dunstan, East, one of the most curious results of Wren's studies in combining the Italian and Gothic styles is exhibited in the history of the former, which had first a body erected in the Italian style to the fine old Gothic tower spared by the fire, and then, fifty years later, when the tower was pulled down, a reversal of the former process in the erection of a Gothic tower to the Italian body. Fabian was buried here. The tower of St. Dunstan's is an imitation of that of St. Nicholas at Newcastle, built in the fifteenth century, a circumstance that of course lessens the architect's merit in giving us so elegant and fairy-like a thing. Wren's biographer, Elwes, gives the following anecdote on the authority of an anonymous friend :-" When Sir Christopher Wren made the first attempt of building a steeple upon quadrangular columns in this country (St. Dunstan's in the East), he was convinced of the truth of his architectural principle; but as he had never before acted upon it, and as a failure would have been fatal to his reputation, and awful in its consequences to the neighbourhood of the edifice, he naturally felt intense anxiety when the superstructure was completed, in the removal of the supporters. The surrounding people shared largely in the solicitude. Sir Christopher himself went to London Bridge, and watched the proceedings through a lens. The ascent of a rocket proclaimed the stability of the steeple; and Sir Christopher himself would afterwards smile that he ever could, even for a moment, have doubted the truth of his mathematics."-J. J. Mr. Elwes says the first part of the story is evidently incorrect, and that Wren would hardly have attempted what he doubted; he then relates as evidence "on the contrary,” that the architect being informed one night that a dreadful hurricane had damaged all the steeples in London, at once replied, "Not St. Dunstan's, I am quite sure." The last story, however, rather supports than contradicts the first; the speech of the one is but the smile of the other put into words; and both may be referred to

a similar origin, some-misunderstood-peculiarities in the mode of erection; it is to be observed also, that doubts during experiments and after, are very different things. The body of the church built by Wren has now gone, it having been rebuilt in harmony with the steeple, by Mr. Laing, in the years 1817 to 1821. At the east end, a large and beautiful window has been preserved, which is understood to have been an exact copy of one Wren discovered in the re-building. Among the events which have been recorded as preserving the features of old times and customs, better than any regular descriptions could do, is one of some interest connected with St. Dunstan's, thus given in Stow's Chronicle:In the year 1417, and on the afternoon of Easter Sunday, a violent quarrel took place in this church between the ladies of the Lord Strange and Sir John Trussel, Knt., which involved the husbands and at length terminated in a general contest. Several persons were seriously wounded; and an unlucky fishmonger, named Thomas Petwarden, killed. The two great men, who chose a church for their field of battle, were seized, and committed to the Poultry Compter; and the Archbishop of Canterbury excommunicated them. On the 21st of April that prelate heard the particulars at St. Magnus Church, and, finding Lord Strange and his lady the aggressors, he cited them to appear before him, the Lord Mayor, and others, on the 1st of May, at St. Paul's, and there submit to penance, which was inflicted by compelling all their servants to march before the rector of St. Dunstan's in their shirts, followed by the Lord, bareheaded, and the Lady barefooted, and Kentwode, archdeacon of London, to the church of St. Dunstan, where, at the hallowing of it, Lady Strange was compelled to fill all the sacred vessels with water, and offer an ornament, value 101., and her husband a piece of silver worth 51.* What a contrast to this state of things is the bill now before parliament, where the Church steps forward to renounce the last few vestiges that remain to it of the power which caused such scenes to be exhibited in our streets and churches! Among the remaining buildings of the Basilical style may be mentioned St. Andrew Wardrobe, with its striking monument by Bacon to Romaine; St. Augustine, where the fraternity of the same name were accustomed, as Strype tells us, to meet on the eve of St. Austin, and in the morning at high mass, when every brother offered a penny, and afterwards was ready either to eat or to revel, as the master and wardens directed; St. Sepulchre's, with its exceedingly beautiful antique porch and its dreadful associations with the neighbouring prison; and, lastly, St. James, Westminster, where Wren has exhibited the most consummate union of beauty and fitness in the interior, and, as a kind of practical antithesis, left the exterior destitute of these or any other valuable qualities. The church was founded, chiefly through the agency of the Earl of St. Albans, as a chapel of ease to St. Martin's during the latter part of Charles's reign, but made parochial in the reign of Charles's successor, James. There are many features of the interior that will repay the visitor's attention, but more particularly the marble font, carved by Gibbons, an exquisite specimen of art. The support of the basin consists of the trunk of the tree of knowledge, with the branches and foliage of which it is partially covered, and by the side of the tree

*Londinum Redivivum,' v. iii. p. 444.

are two of the most gracefully sculptured figures that can be well conceived, representing Eve offering to Adam the apple. In this church was buried the footman, bookseller, and poet, Dodsley.

In the last class of Wren's churches that we have to notice, the Domed, the genius of the architect shines out more clearly than in either of the others, as being works of greater pretension than the one class, and not, like the other (the Basilical), apt to suggest by its form thoughts of the still more beautiful, ancient style that they superseded. At the head of this division stands the far-famed St. Stephen's, Walbrook, into the interior of which no one can have ever entered for the first time without obtaining a higher opinion even of the architect of St. Paul's. Proportion, harmony, and repose are its pervading characteristics; and, with one exception-the walls left almost in their primitive nakedness-he seems to have felt the influence of his own beautiful work lead him into a greater degree of delicacy in all the subordinate features of decoration to harmonise therewith, than is usual with him. Hence the perfect effect produced. Hence the opinions of one of our most accomplished architectural critics, that all things considered its equal in its style is not to be found in Europe: hence the observation, " Had the materials and volume been so durable and extensive as those of St. Paul's Cathedral, Sir Christopher Wren had consummated a much more efficient monument to his well-earned fame, than that fabric affords."* The dimensions of St. Stephen's are only 82 feet 6 inches from east to west, within the walls, and 59 feet 6 inches from north to south, the ground plan forming therefore nearly a parallelogram. Of the incidental features of the church, the most remarkable is West's picture of the death of St. Stephen, which is placed against (thereby concealing) the central eastern window. The exterior, as usual, Wren has treated as though scarcely condescending to notice its existence; till the aspiring steeple attracts his regard, when he puts forth his strength, and makes it his own. St. Benet Fink, with its external walls in the form of a decagon, and worthy of notice if it be only for the ingenuity exhibited in the conquest over the difficulties attending a confined and irregular position, is another church of this class; as are also St. Swithin's, Cannon Street, with the oldest piece of metropolitan antiquity, the well-known London stone, let into its exterior walls, and St. Antholin's, or Anthony's; neither of which, however, require any more particular architectural notice. Near to the last-mentioned building, the Scottish commissioners were located during their residence in London just before the outbreak of the Civil War, and there was a passage from the house into the gallery of the church; the minister of which was a Puritan. "This benefit," says Clarendon," was well foreseen on all sides in the accommodation, and this church assigned to them for their own devotions, where one of their own chaplains still preached, amongst which Alexander Henderson was the chief. To hear these sermons there was so great a conflux and resort by the citizens, out of humour and faction, by others of all qualities out of curiosity, by some that they might the better justify the contempt they had of them, that from the first appearance of day in the morning of every Sunday to the shutting in of

*Britton and Pugin's Illustrations of the Public Buildings of London.

the light the church was never empty; they (especially the women) who had the happiness to get into the church in the morning (they who could not hung upon or about the windows without, to be auditors or spectators) keeping the places till the afternoon exercises were finished." The noble historian, whilst covertly satirising the folly or credulity or "faction," that could alone in his opinion bring such assemblages together, tells us something that requires still greater faith or absurdity to believe, namely, that the service was flat and insipid: a cause unlikely to produce such effects; incredible, if we consider the fiery fanaticism which every where characterised the parties in question. But taste is often made the scapegoat of opinion. The Cavaliers, whose opinion Clarendon has here most probably perpetuated, would of course like the men as men very little, their business in London less (to negotiate a treaty with their monarch, backed by an irresistible army in the northern counties), their increasing intimacy with the English reformers, religious and political, least of all; for it was tolerably evident by this time that in the forthcoming struggle the Scotch would play an important part, and very possibly have the power in their hands to turn the scale decidedly in favour of king or people. Apart from the novelty (a most refreshing one to many) of seeing and sharing in a more simple mode of worship than had been permitted since Laud's ascendancy (of whose proceedings the consecration of Katharine Cree in our last number offers a striking example), this no doubt was the origin of such assemblages. To the English reformers it was all but a matter of life and death the part these men at St. Antholin's would take. Strafford's trial was pending, Laud had been just arrested, the tide of the revolution was rolling on, but as yet with a force which the King might possibly be able to contend with successfully; we may imagine, then, the importance of that army on the frontiers, of that declaration made by one of the commissioners, Baillie, respecting the negotiations, which, said he, "we will make long or short according as the necessities of our good friends in England require, for they are still in that fray, that if we and our army were gone they were yet undone." In the church of St. Mildred, Bread Street, which is small, without columns, but beautiful from the elegance of the arches which support the dome, and of the cornice of the latter, we meet with a later reminiscence of the Civil War in connexion with the memorial of Sir T. Crisp, which refers to the exertions of his father, Sir Nicholas Crisp, in the royal cause, involving, it is stated, losses exceeding in amount 100,000l.; "but this was repaired in some measure by King Charles II. :" a fact that should never be forgotten, since there are so very few of the kind in the history of the "merry monarch." The Sir Nicholas Crisp referred to was a wealthy merchant of London, who had been driven from thence by a parliamentary prosecution, and joined the King at Oxford. He is said to have been Charles' chief agent for the receipt of foreign succours, as well as the manager of no inconsiderable part of a similar business at home. Whilst the King was in the lines at Oxford, Crisp was most indefatigable in his vocation, a perfect Proteus in the shapes he assumed to elude the inquiries or interference of the parliamentarians: one day he was to be seen as a porter, with a basket of fish on his head, watching the arrival of vessels; the next, as a mounted butter-woman between her panniers, on the road to head-quarters. In 1643 he set on foot a