tminster, St. Peter, in the like manner, gave way to
Apollo. These myths are, however, more than doubtful.

Sir Christopher Wren's excavations for the foundation of modern St.
Paul's entirely refuted these confused stories, to which the learned
and the credulous had paid too much deference. He dug down to the
river-level, and found neither ox-bone nor stag-horn. What he did find,
however, was curious. It was this:--1. Below the mediaeval graves Saxon
stone coffins and Saxon tombs, lined with slabs of chalk. 2. Lower
still, British graves, and in the earth around the ivory and boxwood
skewers that had fastened the Saxons' woollen shrouds. 3. At the same
level with the Saxon graves, and also deeper, Roman funeral urns. These
were discovered as deep as eighteen feet. Roman lamps, tear vessels, and
fragments of sacrificial vessels of Samian ware were met with chiefly
towards the Cheapside corner of the churchyard.

There had evidently been a Roman cemetery outside this Praetorian camp,
and beyond the ancient walls of London, the wise nation, by the laws of
the Twelve Tables, forbidding the interment of the dead within the walls
of a city. There may have been a British or a Saxon temple here; for the
Church tried hard to conquer and consecrate places where idolatry had
once triumphed. But the Temple of Diana was moonshine from the
beginning, and moonshine it will ever remain. The antiquaries were,
however, angry with Wren for the logical refutation of their belief. Dr.
Woodward (the "Martinus Scriblerus" of Pope and his set) was especially
vehement at the slaying of his hobby, and produced a small brass votive
image of Diana, that had been found between the Deanery and Blackfriars.
Wren, who could be contemptuous, disdained a reply, and so the matter
remained till 1830, when the discovery of a rude stone altar, with an
image of Diana, under the foundation of the new Goldsmith's Hall, Foster
Lane, Cheapside, revived the old dispute, yet did not help a whit to
prove the existence of the supposed temple to the goddess of moonshine.

The earliest authenticated church of St. Paul's was built and endowed by
Ethelbert, King of East Kent, with the sanction of Sebert, King of the
East Angles; and the first bishop who preached within its walls was
Mellitus, the companion of St. Augustine, the first Christian missionary
who visited the heathen Saxons. The visit of St. Paul to England in the
time of Boadicea's war, and that of Joseph o