He had evidently planned to spend at least six months in studying French architecture, for he wrote: “My Lord Berkley returns to England at Christmas, when I propose to take the Opportunity of his Company, and by that Time, to perfect what I have on the Anvil: Observations of the present State of Architecture, Arts and Manufactures in France.” Unhappily, his sight-seeing seems to have absorbed all his time in Paris, and when he got back the torrent of work carried him along and made impossible the fulfilment of the final promise of this letter. Wren had an easy pen, and it is sad to think that what he had “on the Anvil” never got into the muddled mass of manuscript from which his son compiled the _Parentalia_. What would we not give for more portraits of French architects and artists like his thumb-nail sketch of Bernini, that “old reserv’d Italian” whose plans for the Louvre never went any further? In the result, we have lost the observations which would have been a great addition to the literature of architecture. He did not confine himself to the buildings of Paris. “The Palace, or if you please, the Cabinet of Versailles call’d me twice to view it; the Mixtures of Brick, Stone, blue Tile and Gold make it look like a rich Livery: Not an Inch within but is crowded with little Curiosities of Ornaments: the Women, as they make here the Language and Fashions, and meddle with Politicks and Philosophy, so they sway also in Architecture; Works of Filgrand, and little Knacks are in great Vogue; but _Building certainty ought to have the Attribute of eternal, and therefore, the only Thing uncapable of new Fashions_. The masculine Furniture of Palais Mazarine pleas’d me much better where is a great and noble Collection of antique Statues and Bustos.” [Illustration: PLATE II WREN AS A MAN OF FORTY.] Probably Wren had little sympathy with the efforts of that typical Frenchman Philibert de l’Orme to invent new Orders a century earlier; and is there a finer epigram of architecture than the phrase in italics? But his travels took him wider than Versailles. “After the incomparable Villas of Vaux and Maisons, I shall but name Ruel, Courances, Chilly, Essoane, St. Maur, St. Mande, Issy, Meudon, Rincy, Chantilly, Verneul, Lioncour, all which, and I might add many others, I have survey’d; and that I might not lose the Impressions of them, I shall bring you almost all France in Paper, which I found by some or other ready design’d to my Hand, in which I have spent both Labour and some Money.” Would that Wren’s collections and drawings had been preserved with something of the faithfulness which makes the Adam collection at Sir John Soane’s Museum such a mine of information on one of Wren’s greatest successors. One reference is helpful as showing the source of much of Wren’s detail, though the work itself is informing without his note: