Even if the new fifty churches were to hold 2,000 apiece, there would not be room enough. “The churches, therefore, must be large, but still, in our reformed religion, it should seem vain to make a parish church larger than that all who are present can both hear and see. The Romanists, indeed, may build larger churches; it is enough if they hear the murmur of the Mass, and see the elevation of the Host; but ours are to be fitted for auditories.” Wren then quotes his St. James’s Piccadilly as the most practicable model of “a single room so capacious, with pews and galleries, as to hold above 2,000 persons, and all to hear the service and both to hear distinctly and see the preacher.” He claims for St. James’s that it is a beautiful and convenient form, with “no walls of a second order, nor lanterns nor buttresses, but the whole roof rests upon the pillars, as do also the galleries ... the cheapest of any form I could invent.” St. James’s Piccadilly cost £8,500, so its accommodation for 2,000 persons worked out at £4 5s. a seat. This church is really in the line of development of the old English timber Hall so far as its constructive idea is concerned. It lent itself to the passing need of galleries, but they are not essential to the idea, as is sometimes supposed. In discussing the place for the pulpit Wren has some shrewd things to say about the enunciation of English parsons, which hold good to-day: “A Frenchman is heard further than an English preacher because he raises his voice and sinks not his last words ... an insufferable fault in the pronunciation of some of our otherwise excellent preachers.” Wren would have appreciated the similar advice of a modern bishop to a class of candidates for ordination, that they should not drop their voices at the end of a sentence “lest the congregation might suppose, _however erroneously_, that they had lost something.” On the vexed question of seating the people, our architect has some shrewd words: “A church should not be so filled with pews, but that the poor may have room enough to stand and sit in the alleys: _for to them equally is the Gospel preached_.” We may guess that Wren would have been all for the rush-bottomed chair if it had been invented in his day: “It were to be wished there were to be no pews, but benches: but there is no stemming the tide of profit, and the advantage of pew-keepers.” I have quoted at length from this letter in order to mark the massive common sense which Wren brought to the solution of his problems. Mr. Arthur Bolton gives me the interesting parallel of 1818, when Sir John Soane reported to the Government on the national church building scheme. His recommendations show that he worked on his great predecessor’s report and he even sent to St. James’s and measured it as a typical instance. As, however, the year 1818 preferred numbers to quality, the results fell far below those of the earlier century.