Sir Christopher, the greatest classic British architect, and the most eminent mathematician of his time, (with the exception of Newton), was the only son of Dr Christopher Wren, dean of Windsor, and registrar of the Order of the Garter. His uncle was Dr Matthew Wren, bishop of Ely, who was impeached by order of the House of Commons in 1641, and imprisoned in the Tower, without hearing or trial, for twenty years, and at last liberated by the Restoration. The family is traditionally said to have been of Danish extraction; and must have been of considerable standing for years, for Geoffrey Wren was privy councillor to Henry VII., and VIII., canon of Windsor, and master of Sherborne Hospital; and Dugdale mentions a brass at Withibrook, in Warwickshire, inscribed to the memory of Christopher Wren, gentleman, in 1543.

The mother of the subject of our biography was Mary, daughter and heiress of Robert Cox, who then held the important estates of Fonthill in Wilts. He was born on the 29th of October 1632. It appears he was of very delicate health, and was educated by a private tutor, the Rev. W. Sheppard; and, before he was sent to the university, was a short time at Westminster School, under the famous Dr Busby. He seems very early to have given proofs of an extraordinary genius, particularly in mathematics; in which science, his son says, he was initiated by Dr W. Holder, subdean of the chapel royal.

When but thirteen years of age, he showed an extraordinary genius for mechanics. In 1646, being then only fourteen years of age, he was admitted a gentleman commoner at Wadham College, Oxford, and there seems to have acquired the friendship of the two most celebrated mathematicians of the day, Dr Wilkins, afterwards bishop of Chester, and Dr Seth Ward, Savilian professor of astronomy, afterwards bishop of Salisbury; an intimacy that ripened with time, and at last became the germ of the celebrated Royal Society. About this time he wrote a poem in Latin hexameters, which he calls Zodiacus Reformatus. It extends to nearly 400 lines, and, with the exception of the use of some few stock phrases—as "flammae lumina mundi," "lucis insana libido,"—the lines might pass for those of a first-rate Latinist. At this period also he seems to have given great attention to medical science, particularly to anatomy. In 1650 he took his B.A. degree at Wadham, in 1653 that of M.A., and was immediately elected to a fellowship at All-Soul's. Here he became acquainted with the celebrated John Evelyn, who calls him "a miracle of a youth," and "a rare and early prodigy of universal science." In 1657 he was elected Gresham professor of astronomy in London, and in 1660 Savilian professor of the science at Oxford. During this time the circle of his acquaintance had enlarged, and the chief part of them had formed themselves into a society, which they called "The Club," and which met sometimes at each other's houses, and sometimes at Gresham College. They were tolerated if not encouraged by Cromwell, but driven from their apartments in Gresham College by his successors. In 1660 came the Restoration, and in the latter part of this year the king approved of the establishment of the "Royal Society;" which may safely be said to have done as much or more for science, and to have numbered as great, or greater men among its members, than any society in the world.

We now come to the most extraordinary part of the life of this great man. Without any sort of previous theoretical study of which we have any account, and without any practical experience, which alone can make the successful architect, we find him suddenly occupied in the largest practice any one architect ever was employed in; and, apparently without the slightest difficulty to himself, executing an immense number of works of the most opposite nature, with a chastened, refined, and yet fertile fancy; an originality without extravagance or mannerism, an invention which no difficulties of site or construction could curb, and with a propriety of ideas and beauty of effect that went beyond all criticism. The only allusion in all his multitudinous early papers to anything like buildings, applies to harbours and fortifications. His works have been carefully pursued for this purpose, and there is no mention of any architectural author, except a short extract from a part of Vitruvius relative to the construction of sundials. It is said his father was skilled in architecture, but the proof is very defective. For all we know to the contrary, the results of the labour of a life in others was supplied to Wren by an intuition closely resembling inspiration.

During the reigns of Elizabeth, James, and the early part of that of Charles, architecture had indeed flourished in England. As the customs of the feudal system, both in peace and in war, failed and became changed before a gentler state of society in peace, and other and more deadly methods of destruction in war, the huge fortresses of the nobility were succeeded by the stately manor-houses; and such fair erections as Holland House, Burleigh, or Hatfield, arose in every district. And not only so, the simple squire in the country, and the representatives of the rising middle class in the cities, called in the assistance of the architect to impress something of the hand of taste on their dwellings. All this, however, seems to have been suspended during the civil war. Two architects alone are named as existing at the time. One bowed down by the weight of eighty years, and by persecution and trouble (he had been plundered of all the sequestrators could seize, and lived on a scanty stock of money he had buried); yet he still wandered from Whitehall to St Paul's, to sorrow over the desecration of his two favourite works—the royal chapel and the unrivalled portico; we mean of course the far-famed Inigo Jones. The other was the gay

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1 The principal events of the lives of himself, his father, and his uncle, were carefully collected by his son Christopher, and were published by his grandson Stephen Wren in a work which he entitled Parentalia, which for care of compilation and modesty of relation is entitled to the fullest credit.

2 The wheel barometer, if not his invention, was undoubtedly perfected by him. A register of the force and duration of the wind by a clock and piece of paper wrapped round a roller. This was considered new by many when applied to gas registers a short time ago. To write in the dark. To write two copies at once. New ways of engraving. His son says expressly "he was the inventor of the art of graving in marble-tinto, which was afterwards prosecuted and improved by his Royal Highness Prince Rupert, upon the suggestion of the learned and ingenious Mr John Evelyn, Esq. Methods of drawing in perspective. To weave many ribbons at once, by only turning a wheel. A planking instrument, from the description no doubt our drill machine. A tropical hot-house. The bee-hive for bees. A method to heat water without fire. To fill a vessel that may be damaged by fire, no doubt by a circulation. Instruments for respiration, possibly our respirator. Besides, there are many papers he wrote on astronomy, particularly on the moon and her libration, on the hypothesis of Saturn and the comet of 1662; upon clocks, and improvements in grinding lenses; on magnetic and pneumatic instruments; on writing in cipher; on improvements in shipbuilding, navigation, building forts, harbours, piers, &c.; on whale fishing; and, above all, the most useful of all problems, the easiest method of finding the longitude. It may also surprise our readers to find he practically and successfully carried out the difficult operations of the transfusion of the blood, and the excision of the spleen. In fact, there seems scarce a branch of science in which he had not written except (strange to say) that in which he afterwards excelled the most,—that of architecture.

3 The parliament seem to have had an especial spite against him. There is a touching account of his burying his scanty property in Scotland Yard, and digging it up again on account of the fear of the treachery of a servant.

4 At Whitehall his principal masques had been presented. The nave of St Paul's had been used as a sort of idle rendezvous for years; the new portico was intended to accommodate the loungers, and free the church. It was 120 feet by 42, and each column 40 feet high, nearly half as much again as those of the new Opera House. For its state at the time see infra. courtier and elegant poet, the friend and rival of Cowley and Waller, Sir John Denham. He had the promise of the reversion of the post of royal architect—or, as it was then called, the "clerk of the works"—at Jones' death, which occurred four years before the Restoration. But when the king came to his power, that which an old writer calls the "pain and sorrow of an evil marriage" had so disordered Denham's mind, that he was obliged for some time to be under restraint.

At this time (1661), and probably for this reason, Wren was sent for from Oxford, where he had just taken his doctor's degree, to assist Denham: nothing, however, seems to have been done for two years. Early in 1663 he received the commission for the first building he ever erected, the Sheldonian theatre at Oxford. This is especially famous for the scientific construction of its roof, which, in spite of the novelties in these days of railway engineering, is still considered a masterpiece of design.

About this time he visited Paris, where architecture flourished under the auspices of the Grand Monarque, in a way scarcely to be rivalled even by the late imperial works. The Louvre was then in progress, and he obtained introductions to Bernini, Mansard, Gobert, and Le Pautre, among the architects; to Le Brun, Poussin, Bourdon, Mignard, and many others, among the painters; and to all the principal men in science and art through the country.

Coming home thus "with almost all France upon paper," as he expresses it, he again turned his attention to the restoration of St Paul's, which he had been commissioned to survey a short time before, and which was then in a deplorable state. His designs for its restoration are carefully preserved in the library of All-Souls college. His idea was to convert the old Norman nave into a classic design, by raising the piers; to reduce the space under the great tower to an octagon and to carry it up, and crown the whole with a dome, leaving the fine decorated choir untouched. Then came innumerable squabbles on the subject, some wishing merely to patch up the walls (which really were not safe), and others to make a complete job of it. The matter, however, was taken out of their hands at once by the great fire, which swept the city very nearly from the Tower to the Temple, and from Smithfield to the river, and which left St Paul's, like the other churches, a total ruin. Several plans were submitted for rebuilding the city, by far the best and most practical of which was that by Wren. It unfortunately could not be carried out on account of the determined opposition of those who clung to old sites, narrow streets, and ancient prejudices.

Our limits will not permit us to go into anything like detail as to the works of this great man. They are comprehended in the Parentalia, a folio volume of 400 pages, and in Elmes' Life, a thick quarto of 600 pages. An attempt, however, must be made to give some idea of their vastness and variety, and of the general character of the genius of their author. Consequent on the fire of London, first of all, was the building of that pride of the metropolis, St Paul's cathedral. The Parentalia then gives a list of fifty-four new churches erected by him in lieu of those so destroyed. The Royal Exchange, the Monument, Temple Bar, and the College of Physicians, have also to be added. Of other public works, we have the hospitals of Greenwich and Chelsea, large additions to the palaces of Hampton Court and St James's, and an immense palace at Winchester for Charles II., now the barracks; extensive works at Westminster Abbey, and some at Salisbury cathedral; the Sheldonian theatre at Oxford, already mentioned; the front at Christ Church, and the library at All-Souls; as also the fine library at Trinity College, Cambridge. Of private houses, that for the Duchess of Marlborough in Pall-Mall, houses for the Duchess of Buckingham, the Earl of Oxford, Lords Sunderland, Newcastle, Allaston, and Lady Cooper. We have also a list of works, of which the designs were completed, but not carried out, comprehending a magnificent tomb-house to the memory of Charles I., a building which, if erected, would have vied with the celebrated Medici Chapel at Florence; a tomb to Mary, queen to William III.; large additions to Whitehall and to Windsor Palaces; and many others we have not space to recapitulate. We will endeavour now to characterize these Herculean labours in the order they occur.

Beautiful as the great metropolitan cathedral is, and although it is considered next in rank after that at Rome, the genius of Wren must not be estimated by it as it exists. His own plan was one in form of a Greek cross, and of a single order in height, with a dome as large as that at St Peter's. The form of the Latin cross and the screen wall were things forced on him, it is said, by the interference of James, duke of York. Apart from these considerations, it is, however, a work of great beauty. Although hemmed in by shops and huge Manchester warehouses, and although there is no point whence we can get a proper view of its proportions, we see there is great elegance in the outline, especially of the cupola. There is also great art in the subdivision of its parts, which adds to the apparent magnitude of the pile.

To treat of his churches would fill a volume. Some few are mere plain solid buildings, remarkable for nothing but excellence of execution; some few are clever restorations of those not entirely destroyed by the fire; many are remarkable for the great dexterity with which the building has been made to suit an awkward site; some, though small and blocked up by surrounding houses, are remarkable for exquisitely beautiful interiors, such as St Stephen's.

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1 A very pleasing and amusing letter, giving an account of his visit to France, is given in the Parentalia, p. 261, &c. He writes, "I hope I shall give you a very good account of all the best artists in France; my business now is to pry into trades and arts. I put myself into all shapes to humour them; it is a comedy to me, and, though sometimes expensive, I am yet loth to leave it."

2 Dugdale says (History, &c.), "The body of the church was converted to a horse-quarter for soldiers; the beautiful pillars of Inigo Jones' portico were shamefully hewed and defaced for the support of the timber work of the shops, for seamstresses, and other trades, for which sordid uses that stately colonnade was wholly taken up and defiled. Upon taking away the inner scaffold [centering] which supported the arched vaults, in order to their late intended repair, the whole roof of the south cross [transept] tumbled down, and the rest in several places of the church did after fall, so that the structure continued a woeful spectacle of ruin till the happy restoration."

3 There were to have been main streets connecting Aldgate and the Tower with Ludgate and Holborn, crossed by another main street from Cripplegate to Queenhithe. At one intersection St Paul's was to have stood. At another, as a sort of forum, the Exchange, Mint, Postoffice, Excise, &c., were to have been; but the main feature was a fine quay from the Tower to the Temple, on which all the Companies' halls, and other public buildings, were to have been. For details we must refer to the various histories of London.

4 We have no space nor inclination to enter into the dispute as to the preeminence of either of the great divisions of architecture, nor to exalt buildings of one style over those of the other, but must be understood as simply comparing classic with classic, and Gothic with Gothic, as they come in our way.

5 He is said to have shed tears when the expedient of the unreal screen wall was forced on him.

6 Though beauty and vastness have nothing abstractedly in common, yet the latter always impresses the mind of the spectator with ideas of costliness and stateliness. It is known that St Peter's always appears to be smaller than it really is. St Paul's, on the contrary, even to the practised eye of the architect, seems larger than its real dimensions would lead him to suppose. Wren; and the remainder, for beauty both of interior and exterior, may challenge comparison with any in Britain, and very many churches abroad. Wren was the inventor of that peculiarity of London, the classic spire, or what is more familiarly called steeple—a feature which gives such effect to the old city when viewed by a stranger from the river. As the steamers shoot along from Blackfriars to the Tower, it meets the eye in a score of varied forms, and gives a life to what painters call the "sky-line," which is exceedingly pleasing.

To treat shortly of his other public buildings, would be to give a catalogue of them, with a well deserved word of praise to each, and our limits entirely prevent our doing this at the length they deserve. The finest undoubtedly is Greenwich Hospital, but, as in the case of St Paul's, we must not judge of Wren's talent by the building as it exists. His intention was to have built a fine chapel in the centre, so as to join the two wings together, and make one complete composition; but the wise men of the day found it would interfere with the view from the old house in Greenwich Park, called "The Queen's House;" he was therefore obliged to compose his building as it were in two halves, with a considerable space between them. What would Blenheim be if the centre was knocked out? Chelsea Hospital is a plain building, but imposing from its simplicity. In the works at Hampton Court, he is said to have been so much interfered with, they can hardly be called his own. The palace at Winchester was never finished. The libraries at Trinity and All-Souls may vie with any, even perhaps with that built by Michael Angelo at Florence.

We believe there is no work of Wren's which betrays an exaggerated or a false taste. There is a harmony of parts, a justness of proportion, a judgment in the general design, and a propriety in the decoration, that disarm criticism, and that please even the uneducated. This arises no doubt chiefly from that quality we call genius, and which the ancients called mens divinior, that which animates the poet as well as the painter and architect; but in Wren's case this was strengthened and corrected by a profound mathematical as well as practical knowledge of construction, and a minute acquaintance with detail. His great principles may be summed up in three words—utility, propriety, beauty; principles which have been the guide of every true architect in every age, and in every style. In Gothic architecture he was less successful. The spirit was extinct, and all its traditions departed, and forgotten both among architects and workmen. His detail therefore, as might be expected, offends us now; but if we look at the general arrangement of the masses of St Michael's Tower and St Dunstan's-in-the-East, the general idea of the gateway at Christchurch, and in fact many other attempts in the medieval manner, even prejudice must concede, that had he lived in the present day, when styles are so well classified and defined, and when workmen abound who can execute groining, tracery, and carving, when all appliances and means are ready to the hand, he probably would have excelled as much in Gothic as in classic art.

To relate the events of his private life will not take much space. He was twice married. Once, in about 1674, to Faith, daughter of Sir John Coghill of Blechington in Oxfordshire, by whom he had one son, Christopher, who survived him. The lady died very shortly after. His second wife was Jane, daughter of Viscount Fitzwilliam, baron of Lifford, by whom he had a daughter, whom he is known to have loved very tenderly, and who died in 1703, and a son, who died unmarried in 1738. This lady seems to have been much respected, for we find the parishioners of Walbrook presented her with a testimonial on the completion of their church. It is curious we have neither the date of her death, nor of his two marriages. In 1673 he received the honour of knighthood at Whitehall. In 1685, was returned as member for the borough of Plympton, and afterwards represented first Weymouth, and then Windsor, till 1713, when he resigned his seat for the latter in favour of his son Christopher.

Of his private fortune we have no account. He may have inherited from his father (his uncle had children of his own), and he may have had some fortune with his wives; but his public remunerations were stingy beyond measure. For his services at St Paul's he had but a paltry £200 a year, and for those as comptroller of the works at Windsor Castle the sum of £9, 2s. 6d. per annum, the same salary as "the vermin-killer." His life, however, was passed in the pursuit of honour and fame rather than of wealth and fortune, and his success now began to attract great envy. It was pretended the works at St Paul's were protracted in order that he might still continue to receive his paltry salary; and his enemies were mean enough to get a clause into the act to suspend "a moiety of the surveyor's salary until the said church should be finished, thereby to encourage him to finish the same with the utmost diligence and expedition." Unmoved by this insult, he kept on quietly with the works, and in 1710, in the seventy-ninth year of his age, had the satisfaction of seeing the last stone laid by his son. The miserable persecution against him still went on; and as his detractors could not attack his designs nor ridicule his taste, they tried a baser and more venomous plan. An anonymous pamphlet was published, entitled Frauds and Abuses at St Paul's, charging falsified payments to workmen and peculation of materials; that the great bell was broken; that the clock did not go well; and a host of minor things. Wren replied in a dignified and temperate manner, showing the profits and charges of the master carpenter were merely those which were usual and regular; that the great bell was broken because the chapter made a show of it, and suffered people to thump it with heavy hammers on paying a fee; and that the rest of the charges were really frivolous. Jennings, the master carpenter, did not take it so

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1 In these churches, as indeed in all Wren's works, there is not the least mannerism, the designs are all varied, and there is but one circumstance in common to them all, and that of the greatest importance, the preacher can easily make himself heard in every church he built. Wren's philosophical studies had made him master of acoustics. In his later days he wrote a short practical tract on the building of churches, their dimensions, their acoustic qualities, their materials, in short, a summary of the whole subject, which is without doubt a complete masterpiece.

2 A French traveller, after seeing St James's Palace and Greenwich, said the order of things was reversed, the palace was an hospital, and the hospital a palace.

3 In a MS. letter preserved in the library at All Souls, he says, "I suppose you have good masons; however, I would willingly take a further pains to give all the mouldings in great, wee are scrupulous in small matters, and you must pardon us, the architects are as great pedants as critics or heralds."

4 Because it has been proved that Gothic architects went on the principle of "decorating construction," it has absurdly been supposed the classic architects did not. If any one will take the trouble to read the first few chapters of Vitruvius, he will find the same principles laid down at much greater length.

5 He was a scholar, antiquary, and traveller, and succeeded his father as member of parliament for New Windsor; was author of a work on Greek medals, which he dedicated to the Royal Society; as well as the chief part of the Persepolis. He died in 1747, at the age of 72. Wrexham, easily, for he justified himself in such sharp terms that the commission complained he "bullied them." The government, however, took up the matter, declared the charges groundless, and ordered Wren's salary and all arrears to be immediately paid him; and the general voice of the nation supported the venerable old man against his cowardly persecutors.

They were, however, implacable. About this time the queen died, and was succeeded by the Elector of Hanover, a man equally ignorant of British feeling or of fine art, and who, like his hopeful son, hated "banters and boets."

What was then called "court favour" was brought into play, and an impudent, ignorant man, whose name would now be forgotten had it not been placed on the dusky roll of the dunces in Pope's immortal satire, was actually pitted against him. It seems difficult to credit it; but such was the effect of their intrigue, that Sir Christopher Wren, after serving the crown for more than fifty years, and though in the eighty-sixth year of his age, in the full vigour of his intellect, was unceremoniously—nay, almost ignominiously—turned out of his offices, and the dunces put in his place. The nation was indignant. Pope boldly expressed his feelings in lines that are well known; and Steele, who perhaps dared not speak out, veiled the harsh treatment of the "man who had saved the city" in one of his neatest apologies. The dunces, however, showed himself to be wretchedly incapable, and was dismissed in about a twelvemonth.

In the meantime the good old man, who seems to have been much less affected by his persecutions than his friends, retired to Hampton Court, and passed the last few years of his life in calm retirement, quoting, his son says, the words of Seneca, "Nunc me jubet fortuna expeditius philosophari." But he had a better resource than the heathen philosopher had, the frequent study of the Scriptures, and the desire to benefit his country, by the discovery of better methods to facilitate the art of navigation.

His ninety-first year approached. Though his limbs grew weak, his mind still seems to have been fresh as ever, till one day, after his usual trip from Hampton Court to London, he complained of having taken cold, and, as was his habit, determined to invite a quiet sleep in his easy-chair after dinner. It was his last rest. His servant coming in at the usual time, thought him still sleeping, but he was gone. He lies in the crypt of his famous work, under the south aisle of the choir. A simple black marble slab covers his tomb, which is enclosed by a plain iron rail. He is said to have been of small stature, and of very delicate health, but active, and remarkable for the expression of his eyes and visage. His character may easily be gathered from what has before been said. In every point of view, morally or intellectually, whether for acuteness of talent or gentleness of spirit, the great architect Sir Christopher Wren is one of the worthies of whom Great Britain has indeed reason to be proud.

(A.A.)