There is no concealing the point that if the design which the king's warrant authorized had been carried out unaltered, St. Paul's would, externally at least, have proved a gigantic failure. In design we may perceive that there was in Wren's mind a struggle between two ideas as respects the great central feature of the dome,—namely, that of retaining the fine and well studied internal proportions of his first design, and at the same time attaining the quality of great loftiness demanded for the external appearance. This he proposed to attain by means of a lofty spire; but before long he abandoned this attempt and adopted the idea of general height as the leading principle, by which he ultimately arrived at the unrivalled exterior of the Cathedral.
Now that he was fully authorized to proceed, Wren devoted all his energies to maturing his design, and many studies are extant which show the steps by which he arrived at the final result. He had no doubt a sufficiently clear general idea in his mind's eye of what the complete structure should be, but these studies show that the details of even such essential features as the profile of the dome and the western towers were not settled until the time approached when they would be required.
For thirty-five years work was continued on the immense edifice, the third largest church in Christendom, under Wren's sole supervision, and in 1710 Sir Christopher, who had been a year old when the first stone was laid, now laid the last stone of the lantern above the dome. The scene could hardly be better painted than in the works of Dean Milman:
| PLATE LXXXVI | SHELDONIAN THEATRE: OXFORD |
"All London had poured forth for the spectacle, which had been publicly announced, and were looking up in wonder to the old man ... who was on that wondrous height setting the seal, as it were, to his august labors. If in that wide circle which his eye might embrace there were various objects for regret and disappointment; if, instead of beholding the various streets of the city, each converging to its centre, London had sprung up and spread in irregular labyrinths of close, dark, intricate lanes; if even his own Cathedral was crowded upon and jostled by mean and unworthy buildings; yet, on the other hand, he might survey, not the Cathedral only, but a number of stately churches which had risen at his command and taken form and dignity from his genius and skill. On one side the picturesque steeple of St. Mary-le-Bow; on the other the exquisite tower of St. Bride's. Beyond, and on all sides, if more dimly seen, yet discernible by his partial eyesight (he might even penetrate to the inimitable interior of St. Stephen's Walbrook), church after church, as far as St. Dunstan's-in-the-East, perhaps Greenwich, may have been vaguely made out in the remote distance; and all this one man had been permitted to conceive and execute; a man not originally destined or educated for an architect, but compelled as it were by the public necessities to assume the office, and so to fulfil it as to stand on a level with the most consummate masters of the art in Europe, and to take his stand on an eminence which his English successors almost despaired of attaining."
