"Now shalt thou stand, tho' sword, or time, or fire,
Or zeal more fierce than they, thy fall conspire;
Secure, while thee, the best of poets sings,

Preserved from ruin by the best of kings."

It is well for the poetical reputation of this age, that it does not rest upon the verses of its fashionable rhymers; for notwithstanding some beauties, Waller and Denham were no true poets. Denham's prediction was particularly unhappy; and he lived to see it falsified. The great fire of 1666 levelled St. Paul's with the ground; and in the general renovation that ensued, Sir Christopher Wren made the design, and was entrusted with the building of the present magnificent edifice. He began and finished the building, which cost thirty-seven years of labour, and one million two hundred thousand pounds sterling. In digging the foundations, Sir Christopher became convinced that the site had been a place of sepulchre prior to the Saxon invasion. He found abundance of ivory and wooden pins, apparently of box, which are supposed to have fastened the winding-sheets of the Britons. The graves of the Saxons lay above them, lined with chalk-stones, or consisting of stones hollowed out; and in the same row with the pins, but deeper, lay Roman urns, lamps, lachrymatories, &c.

The foundation of the old church rested on a layer of hard and close pot-earth. Curiosity led Sir Christopher Wren to search farther. He found that on the north side it was six feet thick, that it grew thinner towards the south, and on the decline of the hill was scarcely four. On advancing farther, he

met with nothing but loose sand; at length he came to water and sand mixed with periwinkles and other sea-shells; and, by boring came at last to the beach, and under that the natural hard clay; which evinced that the sea had once occupied the space on which St. Paul's now stands.

Sir Christopher had difficulties of all sorts to contend with in the erection of this great building: his plans were interfered with, his money was not paid, and his genius was undervalued. But he lived to see the completion of his work, and died at the good old age of 90. He was buried in the vaults underneath the church; and a fine epitaph was written upon him by his son, of which the concluding words are so well known,

"Si monumentum quæris, circumspice

The church was completed in the reign of Queen Anne, and her statue was consequently placed at the western entrance looking down Ludgate Hill. This statue, which is no great ornament to the place, stands in the middle of the front area, with the figures of Great Britain, France, Ireland, and America, at its base. Garth wrote the following lines upon it, in reference to the disgrace of Marlborough :

"Near the vast bulk of that stupendous frame,
Known by the Gentiles' great apostle's name,
With grace divine, great Anna's seen to rise,
An awful form that glads a nation's eyes:
Beneath her feet four mighty realms appear,
And with due reverence pay their homage there.
Britain and Ireland seem to own her grace,
And e'en wild India wears a smiling face.

seen,

But France alone with downcast eyes is
The sad attendant on so good a queen.
Ungrateful country! to forget so soon
All that great Anna for thy sake has done.
When sworn the kind defender of thy cause,
Spite of her dear religion, spite of laws,
For thee she sheathed the terrors of her sword,
For thee she broke her gen'ral-and her word:
For thee her mind in doubtful terms she told,
And learned to speak like oracles of old:
For thee, for thee alone-what could she more?
She lost the honour she had gained before;
Lost all the trophies which her arms had won,
(Such Cæsar never knew, nor Philip's son;)
Resigned the glories of a ten years' reign,
And such as none but Marlborough's arm could gain:
For thee in annals she's content to shine,

Like other monarchs of the Stuart line."

St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey may be called the two pantheons of England, where monuments are erected to her most illustrious sons. Of Westminster Abbey and its tombs we have already spoken. St. Paul's contains the monuments of warriors of modern times; while Westminster Abbey is more remarkable for those of wits and poets, and the heroes of a remoter age than those whose memories are enshrined in the other minster. The monuments of Nelson and Pitt are the most striking, from their magnitude. Besides these, the visitor, from their prominence, will easily distinguish those of Lord Collingwood, Lord Heathfield, Samuel Johnson, Abercrombie, Sir John Moore, Rodney, Howe, Ponsonby, Captain Riou, Sir Thomas Picton, Captain Westcott, General Sir Thomas Dundas, Sir William Jones, Captain Robert Faulkner, Captain Burgess, Captain R. W. Miller, and Howard the philanthropist,

To the south of St. Paul's, extending down to Thames Street, is a district of London which is chiefly inhabited by ecclesiastical lawyers. This district has a character peculiar to itself. It is unlike the Temple, Lincoln's Inn, or any other of the inns of court; and the visitor will see in a moment, that its inhabitants are of another class of lawyers altogether the proctor cannot be confounded with the attorney, nor the grave doctors of the ecclesiastical courts with the barristers of Westminster Hall. Let the unhappy wight who is determined to go to law, go at once to the Queen's Bench, the Common Pleas, or the Exchequer; aye, let him even plunge into the abysses of the Court of Chancery, and there will be hope for him still; but let no man, not even the most reckless, have anything to do with the ecclesiastical courts. He had much better pay away all his substance at a swoop, and become a beggar at once, than enter here: by so doing he would escape the intermediate harassing and sickening of soul; and as the beggary would come at last, it would be much better to embrace it at once, and avoid the suffering. Doctors' Commons, which gives name to this district, is situated in Knight-Rider Street. It is an old brick building of considerable extent, a little to the south of St. Paul's churchyard. It consists principally of two squares. The establishment is properly a college for students of the civil and ecclesiastical laws, and contains various courts, in which those laws are administered, subject to the common and statute law of the land; and several

offices belonging to the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London. The epithet of "Commons" is given to this place from the civilians commoning together, as in other colleges. The courts, maritime and ecclesiastical, are five in number; viz., 1. Arches; 2. Admiralty; 3. Prerogative; 4. Delegates; and 5. Consistory; in all of which the business is carried on chiefly in writing, according to the forms of the Roman civil law, by the doctors and proctors. The doctors are such as, having taken the degree of LL.D. at one of the universities, are afterwards admitted of the College of Advocates belonging to these courts, in which, after a year of silence, they can plead. The proctors are also especially admitted to practise in these courts, and conduct the preparatory part of the business, as attorneys do in the courts of common law. The civil law terms are the same as those of the common law; but their sittings are arranged according to the business of the different courts, each of which has four sessions in a term, besides by-days, &c.

The Prerogative Office opens at nine o'clock in the morning, from October till March, and shuts at three; the remaining six months it continues open till four. The usual public holidays are kept, any of which happening on a Sunday are kept on a Monday. Searches for wills are here made at one shilling each, and copies, which are always stamped, are to be had on application. They are registered from the year 1383. There are several interior registries in the Commons, viz., the Bishop of London's, in Knight