The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-08-22

eOuS sight of the walls of the church ready to fall, that was in fear as long as was in It." The very sight of the stones falling from the top of the stee- pie do make me sea- sick" the famous diarist wrote again. We are not likely to see St. Paul's as Pepsys saw it, but any peril in its condition Is a legitimate cause of national anxiety.
 Those who know their London can find few places so inspiring, that carry the mind back to far in history as un- derneath the great dome. Christianity has been represented by a church on this site since Augustine brought the 1 Gospel to England, and all through the centuries a national interest has been taken in the Cathedral of St. Pauls. After the destruction by fire in the reign of the Conqueror, the new St. Paul's was built from the offerings of thousands of people, to whom the bishops granted special indulgences in return for their subscriptions Then the spire was struck by lightning in the middle of the fifteenth century, and hundred years later-in 1561-the tall steeple became a ruin. Divers persons, in time of the tempest being in the fields near adjoining to the city. affirmed that they saw long and spear-pointed flame of fire run through the top of the shaft of St. Pauls stee- ple," and it was natural that the jour- nalists of that day should set down the calamity to the lightning. If later writer is to be believed however, plumber afterwards confessed that the destruction was caused through his carelessness in leaving q pan of burn ing coal in the steeple while he went home to dinner.
 l A hundred thousand pounds was spent in restoring the Cathedral, and the work was finished in time to allow the great Oliver to stable his horses there in comfort. Twenty years after the great fire burned St. PauPs once more to ashes. The ground was 50 hot, says Evelyn, that it burned the soles of his shoes. Half London had schemes for rebuilding the famoue church. St. Paul's was still smouldering when Wren submitted his ideas to the king, within two days of the confagration. He ha little hope. The cost. he said, would frighten the age" But at last the work was begun, and the pulling down of the ruin was for days one of the sights of the metropolis. The heaps | of rubbish were so great that scafrolds had to be erected over them to save delay while the men were clearing It away, and when it became necessary to remove the high tower, the workmen ouailed before the task of mounting two hundred feet to cast 1t down, and gunpowder was resorted to.
 A box containing eighteen pounds of powder was placed in hole under the pier and the explosion caused the tow CT to rise visibly, in the mass, for quite nine inches before it fell By an acci- dent piece of stone was shot into a room in which two women were at work and this led to the prohibition of the use of powder. Wren provided an ingenious substitute In the form Of an ancient battering-ram, with which ne kept thirty men beating against the same part of one of the great walls for whole day. On the second day the wall trembled at the top, and in few hours the last ruin of old St. PauPs fell with a crash like an earthquake. With 1t passed a strange phase of life In ancient London. For generations St. Paul's had been the rendezvous Of all sorts and conitions of men. The bench- es at the door of the choir were the common resort of beggars and drunk ards, and a large dung-hill lay within ne of the doors. The aisle through the center of the Cathedral was known as Paul,s Walk, and Rotten Row is not more popular in our day than Pauls | Walk was then. A dramatist has left us the picture "At one time" he says, 'qn one and the same rank, yes, foot by foot and elbow by elbow, shall you see walking the knight, the gull the gallant, the upstart, the gentleman the clown, the captain, the apple squire, the lawyer, the usurer, the citizen, the bankroot, the scholar, the beggar, the doctor, the idiot, the ruffian the cheat CT. the Puritan, the cut throat the highwaymen, the low-man, the true men. and the thief; of all trades and professions some of all countries some. Thus, while Devotion kneels at CT prayers, doth Profanity walk under her nose in contempt of religon."
 Old St. Paul's, indeed, must have had within it's walls veritable city More than twenty private houses were puiit at one time against the walls ana the owners of several of these cut doorways through into the church, parts or which they made use of as their own rooms. The very vaults were turned into pr1- vate cellars, with doorways from the houses outside. Somewhere i'll the rec ords of the Cathedral Is report or faithful verger who protested that the shrouds and cloisters under the convo- cation house are made a common lay- stall for boards, trunks, and chests, pe- ing let out unto trunk makers, where, by means of their daily, knocking and noise, the church is greatly disturbed"