The western towers of Westminster Abbey are said to have been built after a design by Wren, but of this there is a doubt. Among his other works in church architecture are the steeple of Bow Church, London; the church of St. Stephen's, Walbrook; St. Bride's, Fleet Street, and St. James's, Piccadilly. The royal palaces of Winchester and Hampton were designed by Wren, and many other well-known edifices, among which is Greenwich Hospital. He made some signal failures, but it is great praise to say, what is undoubtedly true, that, though he was a pioneer in the Renaissance architecture of England, and died a century and a half ago, no one of his countrymen has surpassed him, and we may well question whether any other English architect has equalled him. [Illustration: FIG. 119.--ST. GEORGE'S HALL. _Liverpool._] Churches, palaces, university buildings, and fine examples of municipal and domestic architecture are so numerous in England and other portions of Great Britain that we cannot speak of them in detail. The culmination of the taste for the imitation of Classical architecture was reached about the beginning of the present century, and among the most notable edifices in that manner are the British Museum, Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, and St. George's Hall, Liverpool (Fig. 119). A revival of Gothic Architecture has taken place in England in our own time. The three most prominent secular buildings in this style are Windsor Castle, the Houses of Parliament, and the New Museum, at Oxford. Of course, in the case of Windsor Castle, the work was a remodelling, but the reparations were so extensive as to almost equal a rebuilding. Sir Jeffry Wyatville had the superintendence of it, and succeeded in making it appear like an ancient building refitted in the nineteenth century--that is to say, it combines modern luxury and convenience in its interior with the exterior appearance of the castellated fortresses of a more barbarous age (Fig. 120). [Illustration: FIG. 120.--WINDSOR CASTLE.] In the Houses of Parliament there was an attempt to carry out, even to the minutest detail, the Gothic style as it existed in the Tudor age, when there was an excess of ornament, most elaborate doorways, and the fan-tracery vaultings were decorated with pendent ornaments which look like clusters of stalactites. Sir Charles Barry was its architect. The present school of artists in England are never weary of abusing it; they call it a horror and declare its style to be obsolete. In fact, it is not the success at which Barry aimed; but it excels the other efforts to revive the Gothic in this day, not only in England, but in all Europe, and has many points to be admired in its plan and its detail, while the beauty of its sky-line must be admitted by all (Fig. 121). [Illustration: FIG. 121.--THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT. _London._]