In the successive stages of mounting to the ball, one passes, of course, many objects of interest. The original model of St. Paul’s is well worthy of inspection, as conveying Wren’s own ideal of the cathedral. He was so attached to it, that he cried when forced to depart from it; but it strikes me as greatly inferior to the actual design. It might better suit the _dilettanti_, but except in the unreality of the second story, which is a mere screen to the roofing and buttresses, I can see nothing to regret in the substitution. The model room is also the depository of sundry old and tattered flags, which, after escaping “the thunder of the captains, and the shoutings,” were formerly suspended in the dome. It was fashionable to say that they desecrated it—but why so? The God of battles and the Prince of Peace are one: and I can see no reason why the flags of Waterloo should not be hung up before the Lord of Hosts, in His Holy Temple. The question is merely one of taste; but the flags may be as well considered as tokens of peace, as trophies of war; and why should not the providence of God, as the giver of all victory, be thus recognized, by a significant acknowledgment, that to Him, and not to the Duke of Wellington, for example, we owe the general peace which has for so long a period blessed the world, since the overthrow of Napoleon? It is a sublime association with this cathedral, that it was first used for Divine Service in celebrating the Peace of Ryswick, which, with all its faults, has secured to England inestimable blessings: and, perhaps the virtual appeal to God, which is made by connecting His awful name with the awful issues of battles, may have a happy effect on the national conscience. It may make men afraid of mere wars of ambition; may keep in view the fact, that peace only should be the end of conflict; and may also correct the sentimentalism which fails to see that war may sometimes be a just and a holy exertion of that magistracy with which God has girded the loins of rulers, and for which they are responsible to Him who commands them not to “wear the sword in vain.”