The Sun.
London, England, 1864-01-28 00:00:00

ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL,

Yesterday a meeting of merchants And bankers in the city
of London, who had recently formed themselves into a com-
mittee for raising a fund for the interior decoration of the
great metropolitan Cathedral, was held at the Mansion-
house, the Lord Mayor presiding. The committee is com-
posed of the Lord Mayor, Alderman Rose, M.P., Mr. Go-
schen, M,P., Alderman Dakin, Mr, Henry Sykes Thornton,
the banker. Mr. William Gladstone) Mr. Butterworth, the
eminent law publisher, and Mr. Francis Fuller.
It sounds strangely at this day to say that the interior of

the Cathedral has never been finished, but so it is, and until

within the last five years no attempt upon anything like a
grand scale has been made to adorn it after the manner con-
templated by Sir Christopher Wren. The present Dean
and Chapter in particular have long felt the reproach im-
plied by the cold, unornamented, and unfinished interior of

the edifice, and the More so as the result of ecclesiastical
legislation of late years has been to leave them barely

revenues sufficient to maintain the Cathedral in a decent

state of repair, and none certainly to be applied to its adorn-
ment and completion. They have had, therefore, to appeal
to the public, and since 1858, when a subscription was first
set on foot for the purposes in question, about £lO,OOO has
been raised, exclusive of £4,10G given for special objects in
the scheme of decoration, including £750 by the corpora-
tion of London, £550 by the Goldsmiths' Company, £4OO
by:the Drapers' Company, £2OO each by five of the City
companies—namely, the Grocers, the Merchant Taylors,
the Mercers, the Goldsmiths, and the Fishmongers; £l,OOO
by Mr. Brown, of the firm of Longman and Co. ; and £lOO
by Mr. Joshua W. Butterworth. About £6OO has also
been received lately as the beginning of a guinea subscrip-
tion, to which a national character is now sought to be given
on the presumption that the Cathedral of St. Paul is really
a structure of national rather than of merely metropolitan
interest.

The proposal for completing and adorning the Cathedral
consists, primarily, in filling 11 windows at the ends of the
choir, nave, and transepts with painted glass of the highest
quality, uniform in style, design, and execution; in filling
the spandrels of the dome and vaults and other suitable
compartments, and ultimately the dome itself, with paint-
ings in mosaic, and the panels nearer the eye with a species
of mosaic formed by inlaid marbles; and generally in gild-
ing and encrusting with coloured marbles such parts of the
architecture as require it to complete the decorative frame-
work. It is also regarded as of the first importance to finish
the great organ in the south transept, and to complete the
stallwork of the choir and other works which have been left
incomplete. To some extent these intentions have been
already realised, the committee for the completion of the
interior, with his Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury at
their head, having been enabled to lay out about £1,600 in
various decorative works up to May last, in addition to the
expenses connected with the opening and enlargement of
the choir and with the special services. Of late the Dean
and Chapter have taken upon himself the entire charge
incident to the Sunday evening services as a permanent ar-
rangement. The details of the general scheme of adorn-
ment, with an approximate statement of the cost of each
particular portion of the work, have already been submitted
to the public, as approved by the Dean and Chapter and
the General Committee. The total cost is said to b 3 esti-
mated at from £60,000 to £70,000 of which only about one-
fifth has yet been obtained.
Yesterday a letter, addressed to the Lord Mayor by Mr.
Francis Fuller, of Cornhill, was read to the meeting. In
this letter Mr. Fuller said if 400 gentlemen could be found
to charge themselves with the responsibility of collecting
£lOO each, the sum of £40,00 could be, in his opinion,
easily raised within the next two years, and he should be
willing to be one of the 400 ; or, if preferred, he should be
willing to be one of the 40, who should in that case charge
themselves with tha responsibility of collecting £l,OOO each
within the same time. If the meeting should decide in fa-
vour of either of these plans they might rely on his hearty
concurrence ; but he feared that unless some one man, or
some body of men, would undertake the responsibility of
raising the necessary amount of subscriptions within a given
period, it would be long before the work was complete.
Mr. W. C. SHONE, the hon. secretary to the fund, said
he desired to correct what he knew to be an entirely errone-
ous notion out of doors—namely, that the Dean and Chap-
ter were rich enough to do all that was required for the
Cathedral without extraneous aid. Their total inability to do
so was explained by the Dean when the subject was first
mooted in 1359, and afterwards by the Bishop of London,
who stated in a letter " that there were no revenues at the
disposal of the Dean and Chapter for the purpose in ques-
tion; that the Dean and Chapter were all endowed on the
reduced and limited scale determined by recent Acts of Par-
liament ; and that there was no other fund available but
public subscription for the adornment of the metropolitan
national church." It was of the highest importance, Mr.
Shone added, to the suttees of the object in view that this
fact should be generally known.
The LORD MAYOE. said the Dean and Chapter did not
even share in the increased value which their Cathedral
property had acquired by the lapse of time. Of that the
Ecclesiastical Commissioners had the whole advantage.
Mr. SHONE, in reply to the Lord Major, said the National
Guinea Subscription which had recently been set on foot
was not meant to shut out larger donations where these
were offered, and he mentioned that Mr. Henry Hoare, the
banker, had within the last few days given £lOO.
Eventually, on the motion of Mr. WM. GLADSTON'E,
seconded by Mr. HENRY S, THORNTON, a resolution was
passed, authorising in effect an appeal to the public for a
guinea subscription, leaving it optional at the same time for
subscribers to give more if they chose, such appeal to be ac-
companied by an assurance that the Dean and Chapter, as
a body, have no funds available for purposes of education.
On the motion of Mr. BUTTERWORTH, a cordial vote of
thanks was passed to the Lord Mayor, and the meeting
separated. .