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both hear and see the preacher. The Romanists indeed may build larger churches-it is enough if they hear the murmur of the mass and the elevation of the host, but ours should be fitted for auditories. He considered it to be hardly practicable to make a single room so capacious, with pews and galleries, as to hold above two thousand persons, and all to hear the service, and both to hear distinctly and see the preacher. He endeavoured to effect these objects, he says, in building the parish church of St. James, Westminster, which he presumed was the most capacious, with these qualifications, that had then been built; and yet at a solemn time when the church was much crowded, he could not discern from a gallery that two thousand persons were present.

In this admirable church, which is a school of scientific construction and architectural economy, our great architect mentions, that although very broad, seventy feet between the walls, and the nave arched over, yet as there are no walls of a second order, nor lanterns, nor buttresses, but that the whole roof rests upon the columns, as do also the galleries, he considered it to be found beautiful and convenient, and, as such, the cheapest of any form he could invent. In my quarto memoirs of Wren is an engraved section of this very original piece of construction, engraved by the late Wilson Lowry, F.R.S., from a drawing made from actual measurement, by my excellent friend, Charles Robert Cockerell, R.A., Regius Professor of Architecture in the Royal Academy of Arts, and Wren's worthy successor in the care of our

great metropolitan cathedral when the church above alluded to was being repaired under his scientific directions. It may be said of this church, and many of this great architect's works, whoever wishes to acquire a knowledge of architectural construction, which is at the same time scientific, durable, beautiful and economical, must give his days and nights to the study of the executed works of Wren.

CONCERNING the placing the pulpit, Wren conceived that a moderate voice might be heard fifty feet distant in front of the preacher, thirty feet on each side, and twenty feet behind him; and not so far, unless the pronunciation be distinct and equal, without losing the voice at the last word of the sentence, which is commonly emphatical, and if obscured spoils the whole sense. A Frenchman is heard further than an English preacher, because he raises his voice and sinks not his last words. He mentions this subject as being an insufferable fault in the pronunciation of some otherwise excellent preachers, which schoolmasters might correct in the young, as a vicious pronunciation, and not as the Roman orators spoke; for the principal verb is in Latin usually the last word, and if that be lost, what becomes of the sentence?

An eminent Prelate and many distinguished preachers of our reformed Church have assured me that they have found Wren's three largest and perhaps best churches, those of St. James, Westminster, St. Andrew, Holborn, and St. Bride, Fleet Street, to be incomparably the easiest churches they ever preached in, and wherein

A. D. 1710] WREN AGAINST PEWS IN CHURCHES.

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they found, by the demeanour of their congregation, they made themselves the best heard and understood.

FROM the preceding facts Wren drew the conclusion that the best size for the proposed new churches were at least sixty feet broad and ninety feet long, besides a chancel at one end and a belfry and portico at the other.

He would not have a church so filled with pews but that the poor might have room enough to stand and sit in the aisles, for to them equally is the gospel preached. He moreover considered it to be desirable that there should be no pews in churches but only benches, and complains there was no stemming the tide of profit and the advantage of the

pew-openers.

WREN'S advice for the purchase of houses and tenements required for the new churches was judicious, and the plan having been successful at St. Paul's, he recommended its adoption to his brother commissioners for the fifty new churches. His method was in purchasing the houses and ground on the north side of St. Paul's Cathedral, where in some places houses were but eleven feet distant from the fabric, which was thereby exposed to the continual danger of fire. These houses had been hastily built immediately after the fire, on the old sites, without waiting for the adoption of Wren's novel and beautiful plan for rebuilding the city. These houses, seventeen in number, were all held on leases from the Bishop of London, the Dean alone or the Dean and

*

*Not Bishop Compton, who did not become Bishop of London till nearly sixteen years after the fire.

Chapter, and the Minor Canons of the Cathedral, with a variety of under-tenants. He first recompensed the clerical body and their successors with freehold rents of equal value, and had to assess an equitable consideration for the property held by the tenants in possession, to find the value of which he learned by diligent enquiry what the inheritance of houses in that quarter were usually valued at. This he found to be fifteen years' purchase at the most, and proportionably to that the value of each lease was soon ascertained by referring to the map and rental of the estate.

THESE rates, he and his fellow-commissioners were determined not to recede from, and such value was offered to each tenant in possession, and to shorten debate, which all abounded in, they were informed, that the commissioners were guided by one uniform method, from which they would not deviate. They soon found three or four reasonable men, who agreed to those terms, which were immediately paid, and their houses taken down. Others, who stood out at first, soon found themselves enveloped in dust and rubbish, and that ready money was better, in their situations, than a continuance of rent, taxes and dues, followed their neighbours' examples, and made way for the wholesome improvement.

THE greatest dispute about the tenants' charges, was for the fittings up of their houses, for their particular trades; for which Wren allowed one year's purchase, and permitted them to remove their fittings and wainscot, reserving to the commissioners, only the

A. D. 1711]

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fabric of the house. This affair, says Wren, gratulatorily, was finished, without a judicatory or a jury.

CENSURE is a tax which all distinguished men must pay for their eminence, and Wren escaped not its penalties. The attacks made upon him, verbally and by pamphlets, are detailed in my larger work*. One mode was, that there being a clause in an Act of Parliament, which suspended a moiety of the Architect's salary at St. Paul's till the building was finished, some of the new and younger commissioners, who knew not Wren, nor his services, obstructed to the utmost of their power all his measures for completing the fabric. Wren, therefore, petitioned the Queen, to interpose her royal authority, so that he might be suffered to finish the Cathedral, in such manner as Her Majesty should please to direct. The Queen commanded this petition to be delivered by the Duke of Shrewsbury, the Lord Chamberlain, to the commissioners, who replied in a long series of excuses, denials, and accusations against under workmen, artificers, etc. which did not inculpate the Architect in any way.

To this document, Wren replied by a pamphlet +, and an address to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, the chief commissioners for the building. In the latter, he recites the clauses relative to the coal duty and its application; and that which related to the detention of half his salary till the

* See Part I, page 30, and Part II, p. 498.

+ Called "An Answer to a Pamphlet, entitled Frauds and Abuses at St. Paul's, 8vo. 1713.