ur of repairing
the Chapel. The funds for this purpose, it should be understood, were in
course of provision by public subscription, so that the blindness of party
zeal threatened to reject a special advantage--the public would find the
money if they would allow the Chapel to remain--whereas, had the
demolition taken place, the parishioners must themselves have defrayed the
consequent expenses. Historians loudly condemn the royal and noble thieves
who plundered the Coliseum and the Pantheon to build palaces, yet there
are men in our times, who would, if they could, take Dr. Johnson's hint to
pound St. Paul's Church into atoms, and with it macadamize their roads; or
fetch it away by piecemeal to build bridges with its stones, and saw up
its marble monuments into chimneypieces.

The church of St. Saviour is built in the form of a cathedral, with a nave,
side aisles, transepts, a choir, with its side aisles; and the chapel of
St. John, which now forms the vestry, and the chapel of the Virgin Mary,
or Our Lady. To the east end of the latter there has since been added a
small chapel, called the Bishop's Chapel. Another chapel, (of St. Mary
Magdalen,) was also connected with the south aisle of the church. The
parishioners seem to have hitherto neglected the Lady Chapel, and to have
shown their cupidity in ages long past. Through the influence of Dr.
Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, they were allowed to _purchase_ the church
of that wholesale sin-salesman, Henry VIII.; but after the parish had
obtained the grant of the church, they let the Lady Chapel to one Wyat, a
baker, who converted it into a bake-house. He stopped up the two doors
which communicated with the aisles of the church, and the two which opened
into the chancel, and which, though visible, still remain masoned up.[1]
In 1607, Mr. Henry Wilson, tenant of the Chapel of the Holy Virgin, found
himself inconvenienced by a tomb "of a certain cade," and applied to the
vestry for its removal, which was very "friendly" consented to, "making
the place up again in any reasonable sort."[2] In this state it continued
till the year 1624, when the vestry restored it to its original condition,
at an expense of two hundred pounds. "More than that sum," observes the
Rev. Mr. Nightingale, "I should conceive would now be required to repair
this venerable part of St. Saviour's Church in such a manner as is
absolutely necessary. The pillars have in a great degree lost their
perpendicula