EMMANUEL COLLEGE--GREENWICH OBSERVATORY--BIRTH OF JANE AND WILLIAM WREN--S. BARTHOLOMEW'S--PORTLAND QUARRIES--DR. AND MRS. HOLDER--DEATH OF JANE, LADY WREN--POPISH PLOT--PAPIN'S DIGESTER--SIR J. HOSKYNS--ALLHALLOWS, BREAD STREET--PALACE AT WINCHESTER. Who taught that heaven-directed spire to rise?--POPE, _Moral Essays_. Great as was the pressure of Wren's London work, he did not confine himself to that city alone, but in 1677, we find him at Cambridge, busied with buildings there. The beautiful chapel of Emmanuel College, which still stands unaltered as he left it, was Sir Christopher's work in that year. More than thirty years before, Bishop Wren, when Bishop of Ely, had instanced amongst the irregularities to be amended at Cambridge the absence of a chapel at Emmanuel College,[157] and it well became his nephew to supply this lack. Sancroft had first set the plan on foot, and when he was removed in 1665 to S. Paul's--a removal so costly that, little knowing, he consoled himself by thinking the next would be to his grave--his successor, Dr. Breton, continued his work. A picturesque cloister runs north and south across the façade built of stone instead of the brick with stone dressing as Wren at first intended; within the chapel the rich stucco ceiling, the pannelling and wood carving, the tall columns which support a pediment behind the altar, as well as the bold metal scroll-work of the altar rails, all show Wren's hand and eye. In the manuscript list of Wren's architectural works in the 'Parentalia' the Chapel of Queen's College at Oxford is assigned to him as built at about this time; but it does not appear in the more accurate printed list, and is not generally reckoned amongst his works. The Observatory at Greenwich, known by the name of Flamsteed House, was being completed. It was built at the suggestion of Sir Jonas Moor, the Surveyor-General of the Ordnance, for the purpose of ascertaining the motions of the moon and the places of the fixed stars, in order, if possible, to discover accurately the longitude at sea.[158] Wren, confessedly one of the best astronomers in England, was on the commission for building the Observatory, and was its architect. Greenwich was chosen as the site at his suggestion; the King, who took a great interest in the project, allowed 500_l._ towards it, and Sir Christopher used in the work some spare wood, iron, and lead from the Tower Gatehouse, and the bricks taken from Tilbury, the fort built by Elizabeth to repel the Spanish Armada. The Observatory was begun in June, 1675, and roofed in at the Christmas of the same year, and Flamsteed shortly afterwards installed there. [_A COLLECTION OF 'RARITIES.'_]