10^ SKETCHES BY A PRACTISING ARCHITECT. 



Delightful, too, is the contemplation of a work, 

 which, having been carried on amid the impediments 

 of meddling ignorance and the censures of vulgar 

 malice, now commands the admiration of the gen- 

 eral spectator, and enforces silence upon the imper- 

 tinent. In such contemplation did the great and 

 good Sir Christopher Wren freely indulge, when, 

 after his dismissal from service in the eighty-sixth 

 year of his age, he took an occasional trip from 

 Hampton Court to St. Paul's Church-yard. The 

 majestic monument of his genius stood before him. 

 It was not (ever detested be the memory of the 

 babbling blockheads who thwarted him!) — it was 

 not all he could have wished : but, though he knew 

 it not, it was still the finest building of its class in 

 the universe ; and honestly proud must he have felt, 

 when he stood beneath the vaulting cavity of its 

 dome, and reflected upon the singularly glorious 

 chance which had appointed so pious a Chiistian as 

 himself to erect such a temple to his God 1 



If it be a pleasure to behold the realization of a 

 cherished design, what must be our pain in witnessing 

 its subsequent destruction? The most positive 

 proof that there can be no such thing as the rising 

 of an angry ghost, is afforded in the destruction of 

 Wanstead House. Had there been any truth in the 

 theory of apparitions, and in the idea that departed 

 spirits are susceptible of vexation, most unquestion- 

 ably the ghost of Colin Campbell would have risen 

 simultaneously with the fall of the auctioneer's 

 hammer ! It is sufficiently discouraging to contemp- 

 late the probabihties of earthquake, fire and civil 

 broil, together with the certainty of destructive time: 

 but it were surely beyond the power of philosophy 

 to support an architect under the heavy affliction of 

 seeing: his noblest work disappear stone by stone, as 

 though it were no more than a common quarry from 



