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"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."

GREENWICH HOSPITAL

FROM THE RIVER

But though his most notable achievement, the building of St. Paul's had only absorbed a fraction of Wren's amazing energy, it would be impossible even to catalogue his achievements in our present space.

ENTRANCE TO KENSINGTON PALACE

Temple Bar was rebuilt from his designs about 1670-72. This historic Bar had formerly served as a sort of official entrance to the city, and when the reigning sovereign visited London on state occasions he was wont, in accordance with an ancient custom, to wait there till the Lord Mayor gave him permission to pass it,—a formal acknowledgment of the rights of the freemen of the city. (The photograph of Sir Christopher's Temple Bar shown in Plate LXXXIX. was made in 1877, one year before the arch was demolished to permit the widening of the street.) In 1684 Wren was appointed by Charles II. as comptroller of works in the Castle of Windsor, and besides all these spheres of activity he took some part in politics, and was three times elected to parliament.