Photo. S.B. Bolas & Co.
THE LANTERN, FROM THE CLOCK TOWER.[ToList]
A few words will suffice for the main features. The first stage of the superstructure is the Stylobate, of 25 feet in height and some 140 to 145 feet in diameter. The next, the Peristyle or Colonnade which lights up the interior. It has thirty-two Composite columns of a height of 38 feet, including the pedestals. Every fourth intercolumnation is filled up with an ornamental niche (if the term be allowable for a recess of the size) to hide the supports behind. This alternation, while it agreeably affects the play of light and shade, yet allows a partial glimpse of the supports. Why could not Wren have done as much with his curtain wall? Above the peristyle comes the Stone Gallery with its balustrade—a great attraction for visitors—just about half-way up to the summit of the cross. Here the diameter decreases by the breadth of the gallery to 108 feet, and the Tholobate[88] rises. It has pilasters, with lights between, in the upper parts. Above is the outer dome proper—the spherical part—with a further contraction to 102 feet. Wren had the advantage of St. Peter's to profit by, and abstained from inserting the "luthern" lights of the larger edifice. The absence of these and the ribbing of the lead coating was, in his opinion, "less Gothic." The lights, again, could not easily have been reached for repairs; and if left unrepaired would have been the means of causing injury to the supporting timbers underneath. The effect, no doubt, is better, and the lighting above and below sufficient for the stairs leading to the lantern.
The Lantern.—The Golden Gallery is almost exactly a hundred feet above the Stone Gallery. The Lantern is an elegant and graceful piece of design and workmanship, and consists of three square stages, each of them with lights and with recesses (or chamfered, so to speak) at the angles. The second has Corinthian columns, which must be fifteen feet in height, and a plain entablature, and some more urn-shaped pedestals. The third is completed with a miniature dome, and has upper and lower lights in each face. Standing immediately underneath, or by Nelson's tomb in the Crypt, these lights produce a striking and almost unique effect. The present gilt ball and cross, which crown the edifice, replaced the originals of Francis Bird, being put up by Cockerell—the then Clerk to the Works—in 1821. The extreme height is from 363 to 365 feet, and in 1848 the Ordnance Survey placed a "crow's nest" against the cross for the purpose of observations from the highest attainable point.
Miss Lucy Phillimore has published a paper of Wren's in which the Surveyor remarks that for the architect it is necessary "in a conspicuous Work to preserve His Undertaking from general censure, and so for him to accommodate his Designs to the Geist of the Age he lives in, though it appear to him less rational." As regards the height of the dome, we are the gainers because he was compelled to do this. It is not, indeed, the whole of St. Paul's or its only important feature; for St. Paul's is not a Byzantine church in which the dome is practically not a part, but the whole. It is the most magnificent member of a magnificent building, and with its graceful equipoise and conscious evidence of stability stands alone and in a class by itself amongst the cathedral superstructures of the land.
FOOTNOTES:
[68] Fergusson's "History on the Modern Styles of Architecture," p. 243. The Pantheon at Rome as restored A.D. 202 was, or rather is, a rotunda with a portico. The rotunda, according to Fergusson ("Handbook," p. 311), is about 125 feet in internal diameter, and an external elevation of about 150 feet. The Basilica of Maxentius, or Temple of Peace, may have been finished in the reign of Constantine (Maxentius, A.D. 311-312; Constantine the Great, 325-337). The ruins show an oblong of 265 feet by 195 feet in internal measurement, including aisles. The whole length is divided into only three bays ("Handbook," p. 319). Fergusson should have added St. Peter's at Rome, which exercised such an influence over Wren. This immense building has, in the exterior, only one Order and an Attic. All three have the round arch.
[69] Fergusson, "Modern Architecture," p. 390.
[70] An Attic is a small story above the cornice, or principal elevation of a building. [The same would read better by substituting "story" for "elevation".] An Attic order is an inferior order of architecture, used over the principal order of a building. It never has columns, but, sometimes, small pilasters. (Longman, note, p. 164.) Very common in Roman and Italian, but unknown in Greek.