The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-08-02
THE COMPLETION OF ST. PAUIS
CATHEDRAL.
Etem the london satardap Repiels.

then, unfinished? II so, how comes il to be
so and if so, how is it that it remains in
complete ? In answering these questions we
are driven into considerations at once histori-
cal, aesthetic, and, to use q sonorous word,
moral. First, as to the historical facts. As
everybody knows, old st. Paul's was de-
stroyed in the great fire of London in 1866.
The cost of rebuilding the city, including 81.
Paul's and the parish churches, was betrayed
by q tax on Goals. But this public impost
was, in the case of the cathedral, supple
mented by private contributions; indeed, 1T
was q tradition, even in those remote and
prehistoric days when subscription lists
were not, that st. Paul's was a national con-
Germ. When old st. Paul's was tempered
with under the name of restoration by lingo
Jones, contributions were sought from and
given by all sorts of notables. In Stuart
DAYS as much as f100,0 900 was raised for this
purpose, and Laud encouraged or imposed
voluntary gifts, especially from bishops and
Church dignitaries, which looked very
like those benevolences to the Grown which
the people contributed because they could
not help doing so. A single city merchant,
Sir Paul Pindar, gave as much as 100000
After the fire the portion of the coal-tax
which went to the rebuilding of st. Paul's
was again helped by voluntary contributions,
which reached to q sum of more than
s120, 600, and somehow or other, after thirty
five years struggle, st. Paul's was so far COM
pleted that il was weather-tight and covered
in; that is to say, about G740,000 was ex-
pended on its ponderous walls, its stately
dome, and its magnificent exterior. Sir
Christopher Wren received the usual
reward of benefactors of the human
race. Envy and detraction, meanness
and calumny did their work. The great
architect who had received the magnificent
salary of 600 O year for doing a work which
O century and a half, nineteen Popes, and a
dozen architects had failed to do OF Rome
for at the present moment st. Peters is, like
81. Pauls, unfinished = was charged with
frauds and abuses, and dismissed from his
work at the age of eighty-seven, in the year
1918. A king, George ], had arisen who knew
not Joseph, and st. Pauls was never com
pleted, except in that sense in which q private
nobleman's house may be said to be COM
pleted in which the interior walls are not
panelled or papered, which is totally without
fittings or decorations, which has neither
ceilings nor furniture. The coal tax was
wanted for other purposes, the surveyors
place was wanted for some German favorite;
the Georgian era had set in. This incom-
pleteness of the Cathedral of London, which
was q hundred and fifty years ago a parsi-
monious necessity, is now a huge and
scandalous and standing obloquy on the fame
and name of England.
That it was not intended-as perhaps may
D0 Dr6t6Uu6U ny I1OS5 WHO, ike t1HC eminent
economist Judas I~scariot, may tell us that money
spent in church magniticence were better
given to the poor-that st. Pauls should ex-
hibit it's actual cold, desolate, chilling, and
repulsive interior as normally characteristic
of what is called Protestant simplicity, is not
q matter either of conjecture or of a p1I0Jj
probability. Wren has left ON record what
he meant to do with st. Paul's. His designs
for its completion are still, not in their en-
tirety, but in their main features. extant.
He intended to ''beautify" the interior ''with
the more durable ornament of mosaic work,
which strikes the eye of the beholder with a
most magnificent and splendid appearance.
and which, without the least decay of
c%olors, is as lasting as the building
itself" He went so far as to lay
plans for the Introduction of the art from
Italy; he and Bishop Compton negotiated for
the purchase of Leyantine marbles. He dis
tinctly states that the existing painting and
gliding of the east end were only intended to
serve the present occasion till such time as
materials could be procured for a magnificent
design of an altar, consisting of four pillars
wreathed, of the richest Greek marbles, sup
porting o canopy hemispherical, with proper
decorations of architecture and sculpture, for
which the respective drawings and a model
were prepared" Sir James Thornhill's
trumpery pictures in the dome, done at forty
shillings a yard square, and put up against
Wren's wish, bear the same relation to the
real art will which Wren intended st. Paul's
to glow as a lath and plaster arch at a town
holiday does to the Arch of Titus.
From those days to these st. Paul's has
been left as Wren left it. Now, as then, ''the
huted ~pilasters of plaster, painted with blue
paint, and veined with gold, at the east end
of the choir, " in mock ultramarine, which
originally cost ESQ, remain on eyesore to
taste and a scandal to propriety. As far as
anything was done in the way of decoration,
it was lone by the painter and grainer evil
liam Thompson" at the humble figure of is.
per yard. 1t is true that there have been
protests, faint and intermittent, against this
sordid neglect. In the young and feryid days
of the nascent Royal Academy, such a man as
Reynolds proposed to introduce paintings
into the interior of st. Paul's; but with all
due acknowledgements for the spirit of the
artists of those days, it is a matter
of congratulation that the distinguished
artist who ruined New College Chapel at Ok
ford and st. Georges at Windsor, as far a.
decoration is concerned, together with MIR
Benjamin West, and Angelica Kaufman. ant
Mr.. Dance, and MIR. Cipriani, were prevented
by the stupid opposition of those famou,
~prelates, Archbishop CORVALLIS and BishoI
Terrick, who refused their consent TO tn,
scheme, though it was warmly approved o
by the Dean, afterwards Bishop, Newton
The completion of st. Paul's was left TO
better days, even for our own. Had tn,
thing been done in the last century, it woul,
only have been half done, aud the half woul,
have been a miserable failure. Neither til
public spirit nor the artistic skill was forth
-; M. Han Of 4La panaA,I ,...afs.