From Lincoln and Lichfield to St. Paul’s, the transition is vast and abrupt. It is a transition from the archaic, mediæval, feudal world to modern England. Mediæval religion, mediæval art is dead—killed by the printed book. Mediæval architecture also succumbs before the printed book. The master-masons of the old cathedrals, whose very names for the most part are unknown, give place to architects of European fame—men who read books, write books, and work to book. The mediæval architect was a builder and nothing else. The Renaissance architect was first of all a scholar, and secondly an artist; and only incidentally an architect. He learnt the art of architectural design, not in the builder’s yard, but by preference at the goldsmith’s bench. From jewellery he turned with equal facility to painting and sculpture, to civil engineering or to the art of fortification, to water-colours, to stage mechanism, to landscape gardening, to poetry, politics or diplomacy. Among the men of this versatile genius Christopher Wren holds a worthy place. He proceeded to Oxford at the early age of fourteen; and obtained a fellowship at All Souls’. Physical science and astronomy were his first love. At the age of twenty-five “he was known in scientific circles all over Europe,” and was Professor of Astronomy. He wrote on comets, and gnomonicks, and diplographic pens. In his twenty-ninth year he was honoured with the degrees of D.C.L. and LL.D. at Oxford and Cambridge. He helped to found the Royal Society, and was twice its President. He was even a Member of the House of Commons in two Parliaments. In his thirty-first year he turned his attention to architecture—attracted, no doubt, largely by the physical and mathematical problems involved. Two years later he set out to the Continent to see for himself the great works of the Revival of Classical Architecture. Unfortunately he went no farther than Paris: those masterpieces of the Renaissance, Brunelleschi’s dome at Florence, Michael Angelo’s dome at Rome, he was fated never to see. For the rest of a life unusually prolonged he was to be occupied in imitating models which he had never seen. The result is perhaps not to be regretted. He left behind him not the close copy of Italian Renaissance work which we might have had, under more favourable circumstances, from Inigo Jones, but an English Renaissance style of marked individuality and originality, and therefore of great interest. He had to think out all his problems—problems of construction and problems of planning—for himself. [Illustration: WEST FRONT.]