ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL.

THE see of London was established by Augustine of Canterbury, when the Anglo-Saxons first embraced Christianity, and a church was founded on the site of the present edifice by King Ethelbert, who dedicated it to St. Paul the Apostle: the structure was afterwards enlarged by St. Erkenwald, Bishop of London, but the Cathedral, together with great part of the city, was destroyed by an accidental fire in the year 1083.

Maurice, Bishop of London, in the year 1086, refounded the Cathedral, and built the nave; this part of the church is said to have been the most magnificent work of the kind in England. The transepts were carried on by his successor in the see, Bishop Richard de Beaumes, in 1120, but were completed by Bishop Richard Fitz-Nele, about the year 1199. The choir was begun to be erected by Bishop William de Saint Maria, in 1220, and by the contributions of his successor, Bishop Eustace de Fauconberg, it was finished, together with the chapter house. Bishop Henry Wingham originally erected the cloisters in the year 1260, on the northern side of the church, and the lady chapel was chiefly built in the year 1310, during the prelacy of Bishop Ralph Baldock; near the high altar was a celebrated shrine of St. Erkenwald, the principal resort of the pious.'

The Cathedral was anciently encompassed by a wall, which extended from the north-eastern corner of Ave Maria Lane, eastward along Paternoster Row to the end of Old Change, in Cheapside,

The

1 In dimensions the length of the nave of the cathedral, familiarly termed Paul's Walk in the old plays, was 290 feet, and the breadth 120 feet. height of the vaulting of the western part of the church was 102 feet, and of the eastern part 188 feet. The cathedral was remarkable for its beautiful spire, which surmounted the central tower, the highest in Europe, and supposed to be coeval with the tower. It was the first spire built in England, but the precise period of its erection is not known. The height of the tower was 260 feet, and of the spire, an octagonal timber frame covered with lead, 274 feet, making a total height of 534 feet. The spire was burned down by lightning in the year 1561, and was never rebuilt. The whole space occupied by the cathedral was three acres and a half, one rood and a half, and six perches, according to Dugdale's History of St. Paul's.