152 WREN'S INFLUENCE ON ARCHITECTURE 



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FIG. 101. Elevation of a House. 



From the Wren Collection, All Souls College, Oxford. 



Blenheim, declared that Wren had been " content to be dragged 

 up in a basket, three or four times a week to the top of St Paul's, 

 and at great hazard, for 200 a year." 



All through his busy years as an architect he maintained 

 his interest in science, and was not only President of the Royal 

 Society in 1680, but continued to submit all sorts of inventions 

 and suggestions for the consideration of its members. Curiously 

 enough, these things had but little practical value, not even 

 that one which showed how smoky chimneys might be cured : 

 indeed none but futile specifics have yet been offered to the 

 public with this end in view. 



His later years were clouded by the intrigues of his 

 opponents at court, who not only contrived to oust him from 

 his office of surveyor to the royal works, but endeavoured to 

 attack his character for probity. The latter attempt failed 

 of course ; but when he was already eighty-six and had held 

 his office for nearly fifty years, he was superseded by an un- 

 known and incompetent person. 



Wren's influence on architecture was powerful while he 

 lived, but he can hardly be said to have founded a distinctive 

 school of domestic architecture which long survived him. Soon 

 after his death new publications, amongst which the most 



