“I have purchas’d a great deal of Taille-douce, that I might give our Country-men Examples of Ornaments and Grotesks, in which the Italians themselves confess the French to excel.” It would have been better if Wren had relied more on English decorative motives. Unfortunately there is silence in the letter on the purpose of the jaunt abroad. Was the stay in Paris the prelude to an intended visit to Italy, or was it an end in itself? It is odd that he should not have followed the example of Inigo Jones and studied the Renaissance at its source, but there is no written evidence that he ever projected an extension of his journey southwards. The effect of the Paris journey was to give a French accent to Wren’s work throughout his life, and to dilute the current of Palladian influence, which was not fully renewed in England until the Earl of Burlington, William Kent, and others returned to Inigo Jones and his Italian master as the fountains of inspiration. It is useless to speculate as to how Wren would have developed on a fuller Italian basis. His art would have been more informed: he would almost certainly have avoided the technical uncertainties that mar some of his finest achievements: but he could hardly have lost the freedom and inventiveness which make him one of the most individual of English architects. One of the results of Wren’s French orientation might have been that of becoming a follower of Vignola rather than Palladio. In spite, however, of Mansard’s work at Maisons and Blois, Wren, probably from the influence of his great predecessor, Inigo Jones, remained on the whole faithful to Palladio and the Ancients. As we shall see, the two-order system of the exterior of St. Paul’s was a practical necessity, and not an artistic preference. There is evidence enough from his work that he did not regard architecture as bound up with the application of Orders to building, or as the only means of salvation. CHAPTER VI TOWN-PLANNING Perhaps the most pregnant thing that Wren learnt in France was the value of planning on spacious lines. England was, in 1665, a country of mediæval cities. Such classical buildings as marked the change of taste were set down amidst surroundings of picturesque confusion. If Inigo Jones had been able to create the great Palace of Whitehall, of which the Banqueting Hall is but a symbolic fragment, the Grand Manner would have been established in the land, but when Wren returned from France early in March, 1666, there was nothing to stimulate him except the Piazza of Covent Garden and Lincoln’s Inn Fields laid out by Inigo Jones, and his memory of the Place des Vosges of Henri Quatre. Perhaps Bernini spoke of his great lay-out in front of St. Peter’s.