Its columns strew the wilderness, and dwell I have beheld Sophia's* bright roofs swell Their glittering mass i the sun; and have surveyed But thou, of temples old, or altars new, Standest alone with nothing like to thee- Thou movest, but increasing with the advance, Vastness which grows-but grows to harmonize- Rich marbles-richer painting-shrines where flame In air with earth's structures, though their frame Sits on the firm-set ground, and this the clouds must claim. St. Paul's Cathedral, in London, (Plate XXI.) though inferior in size and richness to St. Peter's, is a magnificent edifice. "The first stone," says the architect, Sir Christopher Wren, " was laid in 1675, and the works carried on with such care and industry, that by the year 1685, the walls of the choir and the side aisles were finished, with the north and south *The mosque, formerly the church of St. Sophia, at Constantinople. porticoes, and the great pillars of the dome brought to the same height; and it pleased God, in his mercy, to bless the surveyor (architect) with health and length of days, and to enable him to complete the whole structure in the year 1710, to the glory of his holy name, and promotion of his divine worship, the principal ornament of the imperial seat of this realm.” "Thus was this mighty fabric, the second church for grandeur in Europe, in the space of thirty-five years, begun and finished by one architect, and under one Bishop of London, Dr. Henry Compton." St. Paul's is five hundred feet in length, two hundred and fifty in breadth, and its height, from the pavement to the top of the cross, is three hundred and sixty-six feet. Height of the central nave to the top of the arch, eighty-five feet. Height from the pavement to the top of the interior dome, two hundred and eighteen feet. The Grecian orders of architecture are mingled in St. Paul's. The principal columns on the exterior are Corinthian; then there are composite columns and pilasters. St. Paul's is decidedly an imitation of St. Peter's, and it is considered a successful one, producing upon the beholder the emotion of beauty and sublimity. Brunileschi and Bramanté, fully imbued with enthusiasm inspired by the arts of the ancients, of which they had so many examples before them that are lost to us, established a style, as perfectly pure and consistent in all its parts, as it was distinct from either the Gothic or all that we know of the Roman. This was the style called the cinquecento. With all the great models of antiquity before them, these great architects only took such features as were in accordance with the buildings they erected; they were not seduced by the splendour of those noble columns, with their glorious acanthus crown, to insert them where they were not required; they did not imitate the portico, nor were they led away by the grandeur of the noble pediment. Full of the poetic feelings of the great artist, their models only served them to form new and original combinations. The entrance and the windows were made the principal vehicles for ornament; and since palaces were no longer required to be fortresses, the window assumed its proper dimensions, and admitted that light freely into the apartments of a dwelling, which the fierce character of earlier times had long obliged them for safety, to exclude. The example in the margin, of one of the FIG. 32. graceful windows of Bramanté, is from the Palazzo Giraud, Rome. (Fig. 32.) Their works might serve, with some alterations, as models for our own times. Raphael and Giulio Romano, painters as well as architects, although they adopted the cinquecento style, reduced it to greater severity. |