As it stands, in the internal elevation of the cathedral Wren has given us a hybrid design. It reminds one of Gothic, for there is a travesty of a clerestory; it is Classic, for beneath is a gigantic Order. Wren has hesitated between two opinions. He might have given us a three-storied interior—pier-arcade, triforium and clerestory—of course with Classical detail, as is done with charming effect in the noble cathedral at Pavia; or a one-storied interior, as at St. Peter’s. As his patrons insisted on having aisles, he might well have adopted the former alternative, and have presented us with what might have been very beautiful—a Classical triforium. If he wanted the majesty of the single gigantic Order of St. Peter’s, he should have omitted the attic, run up the Order twenty feet higher, and lighted the nave by lunettes cut through a tunnel vault. As it is, the miserable attic is of no value in itself, and at the same time diminishes the importance of the pier arcade. However, as we have seen, Wren is not responsible at all for the plan, and only partially for the proportions of the interior of St. Paul’s. He has not given us of his best, because the world of his day would not have it. Most of the defects that one laments are absent from his earlier and favourite design: _e.g._, the ugly subsidiary arches under the oblique arches of the octagon of the dome, and the bad lighting of the dome itself. [Illustration: LOOKING WEST.] Externally everything is different. No ritual, Anglican or other, interfered. Wren had free play: all his success and any faults are his own. What it fails to do internally the great dome does externally with colossal success: it dominates everything—not only the church, but London. Every part of the vast building gathers up into the all-compelling unity of the central dome. Inside, St. Paul’s is all church; outside, it is all dome. Into this exterior has grown in concrete embodiment all Wren’s aspirations: his aspirations for grandeur, massiveness, and power; for monumental stability, for unity, for harmony, for symmetry and proportion, for beauty of curve and line. St. Paul’s has none of the airy lightness of Salisbury and Lincoln; it possesses in compensation the rock-hewn solidity and majesty of Durham. In Lincoln and Salisbury, and in Exeter and York, the windows are counted by hundreds; along the flanks of St. Paul’s windows are few and far apart, and they are confined to the aisles; the great screen-wall above rises sheer like a precipice, almost unbroken by an opening. Simple and grand, too, is the handling of the masses. At the re-entering angles of the transepts square masses project to form a stable platform for the mighty dome; towers project to the flanks of the western bays of the nave, giving breadth and dignity to the main façade. Otherwise the design is symmetry itself. Everything is in the “grand manner.” Perhaps the side-elevation is a little monotonous, and the western chapels block off the towers at