beth and Dean Nowell--Thanksgiving for the Armada--The
"Children of Paul's"--Government Lotteries--Executions in the
Churchyard--Inigo Jones's Restorations and the Puritan
Parliament--The Great Fire of 1666--Burning of Old St. Paul's, and
Destruction of its Monuments--Evelyn's Description of the Fire--Sir
Christopher Wren called in.

Stooping under the flat iron bar that lies like a bone in the mouth of
Ludgate Hill, we pass up the gentle ascent between shops hung with gold
chains, brimming with wealth, or crowded with all the luxuries that
civilisation has turned into necessities; and once past the impertinent
black spire of St. Martin's, we come full-butt upon the great grey dome.
The finest building in London, with the worst approach; the shrine of
heroes; the model of grace; the _chef-d'oeuvre_ of a great genius,
rises before us, and between its sable Corinthian pillars we have now
to thread our way in search of the old legends of St. Paul's.

The old associations rise around us as we pass across the paved area
that surrounds Queen Anne's mean and sooty statue. From the times of the
Saxons to the present day, London's chief sanctuary of religion has
stood here above the river, a landmark to the ships of all nations that
have floated on the welcoming waters of the Thames. That great dome,
circled with its coronet of gold, is the first object the pilgrim
traveller sees, whether he approach by river or by land; the sparkle of
that golden cross is seen from many a distant hill and plain. St. Paul's
is the central object--the very palladium--of modern London.

[Illustration: OLD ST. PAUL'S.--THE INTERIOR, LOOKING EAST.]

Camden, the Elizabethan historian, revived an old tradition that a Roman
temple to Diana once stood where St. Paul's was afterwards built; and he
asserts that in the reign of Edward III. an incredible quantity of
ox-skulls, stag-horns, and boars' tusks, together with some sacrificial
vessels, were exhumed on this site. Selden, a better Orientalist than
Celtic scholar (Charles I.), derived the name of London from two Welsh
words, "Llan-den"--church of Diana. Dugdale, to confirm these
traditions, drags a legend out of an obscure monkish chronicle, to the
effect that during the Diocletian persecution, in which St. Alban, a
centurion, was martyred, the Romans demolished a church standing on the
site of St. Paul's, and raised a temple to Diana on its ruins, while in
Thorny Island, Wes