churches is St. Stephen's, Walbrook. Canova, the great sculptor, after paying a visit to England for the purpose of seeing the Elgin marbles, was asked if he would like to return to the country. "Yes," he replied, "that I might again see St. Paul's Cathedral, Somerset House, and St. Stephen's, Walbrook."

A dozen or more of Wren's churches have been swept off the map of London, in many cases with a wantonness amounting to sacrilege; but we can still rejoice in the possession of such gems as St. Stephen's, Walbrook; St. Nicholas, Cole Abbey; and St. Mary Abchurch, with its flat roof and cupola supported on eight arches. St. Dunstan's in the East, near the Custom House, still stands testifying to the fact that Wren could restore a church without spoiling it. St. Dunstan's, built in the latest style of perpendicular Gothic, was left a mere shell after the fire. Wren added the fine tower, and capped it with the curious and graceful spire supported on flying buttresses. It is said that the architect stood on London Bridge with a telescope anxiously watching the removal of the scaffolding from the spire. It is scarcely credible, however, that such a man should doubt his own powers of building. This legend recalls the story of the building of the Town Hall at Windsor in 1686. The spacious chamber on the street level is used as a corn exchange and above is the great hall. The anxious town councillors declared that the great room above would collapse. Wren knew exactly how much his four walls and great beams could bear, but, to appease the burghers, he promised to place four columns at the intersections of the beams. He purposely built them about two inches short, and, to this day, after the lapse of two hundred and twenty-five years, there is still a two-inch space between the top of each column and the ceiling it is supposed to support. On the exterior of the building are two statues given by Wren in 1707: one of Queen Anne and the other of her Danish consort, Prince George. Our good Christopher could flatter on occasion. The inscription to Prince George in his Roman costume reads, inter alia:

Underneath the figure of Queen Anne is the legend:

The local rhyming and free translation runs:

We admit this is a very free and extended translation, but it passes current locally. To say the least, it is high praise; but Wren had a staunch friend in Queen Anne, and every eye makes its own beauty.

The exigencies of the time called for a great architect, and he appeared in the person of Christopher Wren: they called for a great artist to adorn the master's buildings, and he appeared in the guise of Grinling Gibbon.

The discovery of Gibbon in an obscure house at Deptford goes to the credit of gossipy John Evelyn, who on January 18, 1671, writes: "This day, I first acquainted his Majesty (Charles II.) with that incomparable young man Gibbon, whom I had lately met with in an obscure place by mere accident, in a field in our parish, near Sayes Court. I found him shut in; but looking in at the window, I perceived him carving that large cartoon or crucifix of Tintoretto, a copy of which I had brought myself from Venice, where the original painting remains. I asked if I might enter; he opened the door civilly to me, and I saw him about such a work as for the curiosity of handling, drawing and studious exactness, I never had before seen in all my travels. I questioned why he worked in such an obscure and lonesome place; it was that he might apply himself to his profession without interruption, and wondered not a little how I found him out. I asked him if he were unwilling to be known to some great man, for that I believed it might turn to his profit, he answered, he was yet but a beginner, but would not be sorry to sell off that piece; on demanding the price he said £100. In good earnest, the very frame was worth the money, there being nothing in nature so tender and delicate as the flowers and festoons about it, and yet the work was very strong; in the piece was more than one hundred figures of men, &c.... Of this young artist, together with my manner of finding him out, I acquainted the King, and begged that he would give me leave to bring him and his work to Whitehall, for that I would venture my reputation with his Majesty that he had never seen anything approach it, and that he would be exceedingly pleased, and employ him. The King said he would himself go see him. This was the first notice his Majesty ever had of Mr. Gibbon."

The King evidently did not "go see him," for under date March 1 we read: "I caused Mr. Gibbon to bring to Whitehall his excellent piece of carving, where being come, I advertised his Majesty.... No sooner was he entered and cast his eye on the work, but he was astonished at the curiosity of it, and having considered it a long time and discoursed with Mr. Gibbon whom I brought to kiss his hand, he commanded it should be immediately carried to the Queen's side to show her. It was carried up into her bed-chamber, where she and the King looked on and admired it again; the King being called away, left us with the Queen, believing she would have bought it, it being a crucifix; but when his Majesty was gone, a French peddling woman, one Madame de Boord, who used to bring petticoats and fans and baubles, out of France to the ladies, began to find fault with several things in the work, which she understood no more than an ass, or a monkey, so as in a kind of indignation, I caused the person who brought it to carry it back to the Chamber, finding the Queen so much governed by an ignorant French woman, and this incomparable artist had his labour only for his pains, which not a little displeased me; he not long after sold it for £80, though well worth £100, without the frame, to Sir George Viner. His Majesty's Surveyor, Mr. Wren, faithfully promised to employ him. I having also bespoke his Majesty for his work at Windsor, which my friend Mr. May, the architect there, was going to alter and repair universally."

Grinling Gibbon was born in 1648, and so the "incomparable young man" would have been about twenty-three years of age when he sailed into Royal favour. We do not know the whereabouts of the carved cartoon after Tintoretto; but we shall find at the Victoria and Albert Museum a carving by Gibbon, measuring 6 ft. in height by 4 ft. 4 in. in width, of the "Stoning of St. Stephen." It is executed in limewood and lance-wood. Walpole, in his "Catalogue of Painters," writes of the "Stoning of St. Stephen," which was purchased and placed by the Duke of Chandos at Canons,[2] as the carving which had "struck so good a judge" as Evelyn. It is palpably not identical with the Tintoret subject which Evelyn describes as "being a crucifix."