The total sum expended on the building of St. Paul's Cathedral, according to Dean Milman, was £736,752 2s. 3¼d.; a small residue from the coal duty was all that was left for future repairs. To this Dean Clark added about £500, part of the profits arising from an Essex estate (the gift of an old Saxon king), leased from the Dean and Chapter. The charge of the fabric was vested not in the Dean and Chapter, but in the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, and the Lord Mayor for the time being. These trustees elect the surveyor and audit the accounts.
On the accession of George I. (1715), the new king, princes, and princesses went in state to St. Paul's. Seventy years elapsed before an English king again entered Wren's cathedral. In April, 1789, George III. came to thank God for his temporary recovery from insanity. Queen Charlotte, the Prince of Wales, and the Duke of York were present, and both Houses of Parliament. Bishop Porteous preached the sermon, and 6,000 charity children joined in the service. In 1797, King George came again to attend a thanksgiving for Lord Duncan's and Lord Howe's naval victories; French, Spanish, and Dutch flags waved above the procession, and Sir Horatio Nelson was there among other heroes.
The first grave sunk in St. Paul's was fittingly that of Wren, its builder. He lies in the place of honour, the extreme east of the crypt. The black marble slab is railed in, and the light from a small window-grating falls upon the venerated name. Sir Christopher died in 1723, aged ninety-one. The fine inscription, "Si monumentum requiris, circumspice," written probably by his son, or Mylne, the builder of Blackfriars Bridge, was formerly in front of the organ-gallery, but is now placed over the north-western entrance.
The clergy of St. Paul's were for a long time jealous of allowing any monument in the cathedral. Dean Newton wished for a tomb, but it was afterwards erected in St. Mary-le-Bow. A better man than the vain, place-hunting dean was the first honoured. The earliest statue admitted was that of the benevolent Howard, who had mitigated suffering and sorrow in all the prisons of Europe; he stands at the corner of the dome facing that half-stripped athlete, Dr. Johnson, and the two are generally taken by country visitors for St. Peter and St. Paul. He who with Goldsmith had wandered through the Abbey, wondering if one day their names might not be recorded there, found a grave in Westminster, and, thanks to Reynolds, the first place of honour. Sir Joshua himself, as one of our greatest painters, took the third place, that Hogarth should have occupied; and the fourth was awarded to that great Oriental scholar, Sir William Jones. The clerical opposition was now broken through, for the world felt that the Abbey was full enough, and that St. Paul's required adorning.
Henceforward St. Paul's was chiefly set apart for naval and military heroes whom the city could best appreciate, while the poets, great writers, and statesmen were honoured in the Abbey, and laid among the old historic dead. From the beginning our sculptors resorted to pagan emblems and pagan allegorical figures; the result is that St. Paul's resembles a Pantheon of the Lower Empire, and is a hospital of third-rate art. The first naval conqueror so honoured was Rodney; Rossi received £6,000 for his cold and clumsy design; Lord Howe's statue followed; and next that of Lord Duncan, the hero of Camperdown. It is a simple statue by Westmacott, with a seaman and his wife and child on the pedestal. For Earl St. Vincent, Bailey produced a colossal statue and the usual scribbling, History and a trumpeting Victory.
Then came Nelson's brothers in arms—men of lesser mark; but the nation was grateful, and the Government was anxious to justify its wars by its victories. St. Paul's was growing less particular, and now opened its arms to the best men it could get. Many of Nelson's captains preceded him on the red road to death—Westcott, who fell at Aboukir; Mosse and Riou, who fell before Copenhagen (a far from stainless victory). Riou was the brave man whom Campbell immortalised in his fiery "Battle of the Baltic." Riou lies
"Full many a fathom deep,
By thy wild and stormy steep,
Elsinore."
Then at last, in 1806, came a hero worthy, indeed, of such a cathedral—Nelson himself. At what a moment had Nelson expired! At the close of a victory that had annihilated the fleets of France and Spain, and secured to Britain the empire of the seas. The whole nation that day shed tears of "pride and of sorrow." The Prince of Wales and all his brothers led the procession of nearly 8,000 soldiers, and the chief mourner was Admiral Parker (the Mutiny of the Nore Parker). Nelson's coffin was formed out of a mast of the L'Orient—a vessel blown up at the battle of the Nile, and presented to Nelson by his friend, the captain of the Swiftsure. The sarcophagus, singularly enough, had been designed by Michael Angelo's contemporary, Torreguiano, for Wolsey, in the days of his most insatiable pride, and had remained ever since in Wolsey's chapel at Windsor; Nelson's flag was to have been placed over the coffin, but as it was about to be lowered, the sailors who had borne it, as if by an irresistible impulse, stepped forward and tore it in pieces, for relics. Dean Milman, who, as a youth, was present, says, "I heard, or fancied I heard, the low wail of the sailors who encircled the remains of their admiral." Nelson's trusty companion, Lord Collingwood, who led the vanguard at Trafalgar, sleeps near his old captain, and Lord Northesk, who led the rear-guard, is buried opposite. A brass plate on the pavement under the dome marks the spot of Nelson's tomb. The monument to Nelson, inconveniently placed at the opening of the choir, is by one of our greatest sculptors—Flaxman. It is hardly worthy of the occasion, and the figures on the pedestal are puerile. Lord Lyons is the last admiral whose monument has been erected in St. Paul's.
The military heroes have been contributed by various wars, just and unjust, successful and the reverse. There is that tough old veteran, Lord Heathfield, who drove off two angry nations from the scorched rock of Gibraltar; Sir Isaac Brock, who fell near Niagara; Sir Ralph Abercromby, who perished in Egypt; and Sir John Moore, who played so well a losing game at Corunna. Cohorts of Wellington's soldiers too lie in St. Paul's—brave men, who sacrificed their lives at Talavera, Vimiera, Ciudad Rodrigo, Salamanca, Vittoria, and Bayonne. Nor has our proud and just nation disdained to honour even equally gallant men who were defeated. There are monuments in St. Paul's to the vanquished at Bergen-op-Zoom, New Orleans, and Baltimore.