came serjeant
painter to the king, and a daughter, who married Hogarth. He was a
well-made and pleasant man, and sat in Parliament for some years."

The cathedral was artificially secured from lightning, according to the
suggestion of the Royal Society, in 1769. The seven iron scrolls
supporting the ball and cross are connected with other rods (used merely
as conductors), which unite them with several large bars descending
obliquely to the stone-work of the lantern, and connected by an iron
ring with four other iron bars to the lead covering of the great cupola,
a distance of forty-eight feet; thence the communication is continued by
the rain-water pipes, which pass into the earth, thus completing the
entire communication from the cross to the ground, partly through iron
and partly through lead. On the clock-tower a bar of iron connects the
pine-apple on the top with the iron staircase, and thence with the lead
on the roof of the church. The bell-tower is similarly protected. By
these means the metal used in the building is made available as
conductors, the metal employed merely for that purpose being exceedingly
small in quantity.

In 1841 the exterior of the dome was repaired by workmen resting upon a
shifting iron frame. In 1848 a scaffold and observatory, as shown on
page 258, were raised round the cross, and in three months some four
thousand observations were made for a new trigonometrical survey of
London.

Harting, in his "Birds of Middlesex," mentions the peregrine falcons of
St. Paul's. "A pair of these birds," he says, "for many years frequented
the top of St. Paul's, where it was supposed they had a nest; and a
gentleman with whom I am acquainted has assured me that a friend of his
once saw a peregrine strike down a pigeon in London, his attention
having been first attracted by seeing a crowd of persons gazing upwards
at the hawk as it sailed in circles over the houses." A pair frequenting
the buildings at Westminster is referred to in "Annals of an Eventful
Life," by G.W. Dasent, D.C.L.

A few nooks and corners of the cathedral have still escaped us. The
library in the gallery over the southern aisle was formed by Bishop
Compton, and consists of some 7,000 volumes, including some manuscripts
from old St. Paul's. The room contains some loosely hung flowers,
exquisitely carved in wood by Grinling Gibbons, and the floor is
composed of 2,300 pieces of oak, inlaid without nails or pegs. At the
end of the ga