Many meetings and much discussion ensued, and Wren's opinion at last prevailed; the King issued an order in council for taking down the walls at the east end, the old choir, and the tower, and for clearing the ground in order to lay a fresh foundation. While this was being done, Wren prepared sketches and designs for a new S. Paul's. He had also an engagement out of London: his friend Dr. Seth Ward, the Bishop of Salisbury, an active member of the Royal Society, asked Wren to survey his beautiful cathedral, which had suffered much in the civil wars, and lately by lightning and tempest. Though the architecture of the cathedral was not of the kind which he considered the best, Wren had too fine a taste, too quick an eye for beauty of form, not to admire it heartily, and in his report he pronounced that 'the whole pile was large and magnificent, justly accounted one of the best patterns of the age wherein it was built.' He praised the pillars and mouldings, 'the stately and rich plainness' to which the architect had trusted. He made a thorough examination of the whole, especially the spire, which had declined to the south-west, and had caused great alarm. Wren was of opinion that the architect had not laid as sufficient foundations, especially under the pillars, as he should have done, considering the marshy nature of the soil, the frequent inundations, the great weight that the pillars had to bear, and that they themselves were too slight, particularly those under the spire. To prevent further mischief to the spire, he ordered some timbers in it, and in the tower, to be cut away, and put in bands and braces of iron wrought by anchor smiths who were accustomed to great work for ships. He then had a plummet dropped to the pavement, from the highest possible part of the spire, the height of which he reckoned at 404 feet from the ground, to see exactly what the decline was, and ordered this trial to be repeated at certain times to see if the decline increased. When, nearly 200 years later, Mr. Wyatt made the trial, he found that the decline was unaltered, so true had Wren's science proved. [_LONDON AS IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN._] Both this year and the previous one had, so far as London was concerned, been taken up by the business of levelling, marking out streets, and adjusting the claims of such as had had houses in the city before the fire. Wren had laid before the King and Parliament a model of the city as he proposed to build it, with full explanations of the details of the design; the model probably does not exist, but the ground-plan has been preserved, and suggests a London very different to the present one.