Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

the school of Palladio, and in England with Inigo Jones and Wren.*

Roman Architecture.

The zenith of Roman architecture was under the auspices of Vespasian and his immediate successors, who completed the Temple of Peace and the Coliseum: upon the establishment of Christianity, external magnificence was sacrificed to internal decoration; and the oblong square, the ground plan peculiar to ancient temples, simple in the interior but magnificent in the external view, was gradually changed, as will be hereafter noticed, into the Greek and Latin cross, which are less favourable to beauty.

It was not, however, till about the time of Leo X. that architects were encouraged to apply to the antique models, and to measure their proportions, that the orders might be designed with precision. With Bramante, Sangallo, and Michael Angelo, the elegance of the Grecian and the splendour of the Roman architecture was revived, and St. Peter's was commenced. This may be considered as the period of the revival of architecture in Europe. After that, Rome became the grand school for architects; and they in general were content to form their taste, not as the great authors of the revival had, from works of antiquity, but from the new works which were then rising. It was not, however, till the time of Palladio that all the elegance and simplicity of the ancient buildings were rendered applicable to the practical purposes of domestic use.

[blocks in formation]

Christ,) when the principal temples, including the Parthenon, the temples of Pæstum, Ægina, Corinth, &c. were constructed. The Roman, in which the great aqueducts, bridges, and other public works were built, and in which the arch was brought into more efficient use, and gave rise to novel and infinite combinations and improvements in the art of building: the time of Hadrian may be fixed as the best period of this style.-The first Christian era, (Justinian,) in which the multiplied dome or cupola first came into general use; and this is important, as it was adopted for two reasons—to accommodate the large Christian congregations, and to distinguish their churches from the heathen temples, which the Iconoclasts held in detestation. The Saracenic, which, without the colossal materials and mechanical means used by the Romans, first gave the idea of raising immense structures by smaller means. - And lastly, the Cathedral or second Christian era (thirteenth century) is remarkable for the vast sacred edifices which were erected throughout Europe, all partaking of the same general character.

-

It was during these several eras that the different great improvements were effected. As, in the Assyrian, the invention and completion of the brick.--In the Egyptian, the working of granite and marbles, and the use of them on an extended scale.-In the Grecian, the perfection of the beauty of proportion or fitness supplying the place of vastness and ponderous mass.-In the Roman, the arch, forming in fact the basis of the science, and admitting of the extension and adaptation of the principles of architecture to works which the Greeks could not have executed.-In the first Christian era, the dome perfected.And in the second or Gothic, the pointed arch introduced, by which additional lightness and strength were attained. These eras were dependent on the great religious changes in the history of Europe; were respectively marked by a different manner of construction; and (though separated by considerable intervals) formed the types for the productions during the intermediate periods.

Of Architecture in England

The first appearance of the Italian school in England began with Holbein, (Hen. 8.) who was established here under

royal patronage, and gained sufficient influence for a partial introduction of the architecture which had begun to revive in Italy. The first house purely Italian is stated, by Mr. Dallaway, to have been built by Sir Horatio Palavicini; and although many magnificent houses were built in the reign of Elizabeth, they had lost all the beauty of the Gothic, without deriving any improvement from the dawning taste for the revived style. The ornaments, both within and without, were cumbrous, and equally void of grace and propriety :-nothing could exceed the heaviness of the cornices and ceilings wrought into compartments, or the awkward intersection of the passages; the hall retained nothing of the Gothic character, excepting its size and large bay window, and instead of battlements and pinnacles, the parapet was broken into numerous high misshapen pediments. Towards the end of the reign of James I. and the beginning of Charles's taste in architecture made a bold step from Italy to England at once, scarcely resting a moment to visit France by the way.

From the most profound ignorance in architecture, Inigo Jones (who had been sent to Italy either by Lord Pembroke or Lord Arundel) started up a prodigy of art, vying in some degree with his master, Palladio. The Banquetinghouse at Whitehall, and the Church of St. Paul, Covent Garden, are sufficient proofs of his claim to be considered the founder of this style in England. But the civil wars put a stop to the course so happily begun. Wren, the next genius, arose to kindle afresh the love for that art which had been so long neglected. What had been begun by Jones was fully accomplished by Wren; and the period of our greatest architectural eminence was not far distant.

CHAPTER II.

Wren's Birth, Education, and early Studies.

CHRISTOPHER WREN was born at East Knoyle, in Wiltshire, the rectory of his father, Dr. Christopher Wren, Dean of Windsor, on the 20th day of October, 1632. His father was a learned divine, descended from an ancient English family of Danish origin, and his mother was the daughter and heiress of Robert Cox, of Fonthill, in the county of Wilts.

Dr. Matthew Wren, his uncle, successively Bishop of Hereford, Norwich,

and Ely, was a person eminent in the ecclesiastical history of England; who, having devoted himself to the royal cause, was impeached by order of the House of Commons in 1641, shortly after the impeachment of Archbishop Laud; but he was never brought to trial, though he suffered a protracted imprisonment of nearly twenty years: an injustice not singular in those troublous times. The Parentalia, a work we shall afterwards notice, contains a somewhat laboured defence of the bishop, meant to have been used had he been put on his trial. Right or wrong, he adhered firmly and unchangingly to the cause he had espoused, and to the memory of his royal master; and Cromwell, who often met Christopher (the subject of this memoir,) at his son-in-law Claypole's sent a message to the uncle, (by the nephew,) that he might come out of the Tower if he pleased; but the bishop utterly refused, disdaining the terms proposed for his enlargement; which were, as he conceived, a mean acknowledgment of Cromwell's favour and submission to his tyranny; determining, as he expresses it, to tarry the Lord's leisure, and owe his deliverance to him only. Whether Cromwell was informed of the terms with which his offers were rejected, is not known ; but if he was, it does not appear to have altered for the worse the situation of the martyr to the cause of Royalty. The bishop, however, was mainly tinctured with the feelings of the times: he was conspicuous for his cruel persecution of the dissenters within his diocese; and he is represented as proceeding passionately against the Walloon manufacturers, who in the time of Edward VI. transplanted themselves into England and had their privileges enlarged, and were much encouraged by Elizabeth. He also makes a conspicuous figure in the virulent party squib, called " A nest of perfidious vipers in the parliament of black saints." From this it may be inferred, that his zeal for his own party carried him beyond reason, and exposed him to the severe animadversions of his enemies. He had four sons, all of whom were eminent in their day; one being, at the Restoration, Secretary to Lord Clarendon, and afterwards to James, Duke of York; one was knighted, and the other two returned to Parliament.

Dr. Wren, the father of Sir Chris

topher, was educated at Merchant Tailors' School; he became a fellow of St. John's, Oxford, Chaplain in Ordinary to Charles I., and was ultimately installed Dean of Windsor, and made Registrar of the Order of the Garter. His tastes and his habits led him to associate with all the learned of the age; and he possessed himself considerable attainments both in science and literature: he had turned his attention to the cultivation of that art, in the pursuit of which his son was afterwards to become so eminent; and it appears, from an estimate made by him, and preserved in the State Papers, that he had been employed by the court respecting a building to be erected for the Queen of Charles I.

Wren was one of those whose future eminence was early foreseen; and whose riper years redeemed the promise of youth. Like his great contemporary Pascal, his genius early displayed itself. But though alike in talents, their fates were dissimilar. The genius and acquirements of Wren laid the groundwork of his happiness through a long series of years, whilst in Pascal the acuteness of his intellect, and his acquirements, seem but to have aggravated his misery, and to have hurried him to an early grave. At the age of thirteen an invention by Wren of some new astronomical instrument is recorded, the account of which is dedicated by him to his father, in a Latin epistle. This essay was followed by others of the same kind. His infancy and youth were marked by a peculiarly delicate state of health; he received his early education at home under his father, and at the age of fourteen was sent to Wadham college, Oxford, where notwithstanding his youth, his attainments procured him the friendship and patronage of the most eminent persons, amongst whom were the ingenious Bishop Wilkins, and the celebrated Oughtred, who in the preface to his Clavis Mathematica mentions Wren as having attained, at the age of sixteen, such a knowledge in mathematics and other branches of natural philosophy, as gave promise of future eminence.-Wilkins also introduced him to Prince Charles, Elector Palatine, as a prodigy.

As early as the year 1645, Dr. Willis, an eminent mathematician, formed a sort of club of scientific persons, chiefly those connected with Gresham college, who met weekly; amongst them was Wren. Their object was the discussion

of all subjects relating to philosophica inquiries, and from these meetings originated that body of eminent persons called the Royal Society, who by their pursuits contributed so mainly to the advancement of science. In 1648, Dr. Wilkins and several other leading mempers retired to Oxford, where they continued their weekly meetings, and thus set a fashion for the study of the useful sciences in that university. Amongst those distinguished persons were Sir W. Petty, the ancestor of the Lansdowne family, and Robert Boyle.

One of Wren's early inventions in the arts was a sort of penna duplex, for which he obtained a patent, and which gave rise to some controversy between Sir William Petty and himself; the former having taken out a patent for a similar invention on his return from France in the same year. Wren, more fortunate than his father and uncle, though he lived in troubled times, when the conflicting parties were exhausting themselves in acts of violence, pursued his course straight to the object of his ambition, in the study of those sciences which he was afterwards to adorn.

He is said to have been the first who turned his attention to the representation of subjects as shown in a microscope, and in which he was mainly assisted by Hooke; and Harrington, the author of the Oceana, alludes to these tastes, and also to the politics of the family, in some observations on a cousin of Wren's, whom he designates as being one of those virtuosi, "who had an excellent faculty for magnifying a louse and diminishing a commonwealth." Shortly after this he produced a Theory of the Planet Saturn, an Algebraic Treatise on the Julian Period, a tract much esteemed, it is said, by the most learned mathematicians of his day. In 1653 he was elected Fellow of his college, and soon proceeded to London, continuing to cultivate the sciences. One of the most important inventions of this period was the barometer; and to this some laid claim on behalf of Wren; but the discovery was, without doubt, the property of Torricelli, though it is supposed Wren was the first in England who suggested that the various weight of the atmosphere was the true cause of the variations in the height of the mercury, which the followers of Des Cartes had ascribed to the influence of the moon. Evelyn (himself a man of sense

[blocks in formation]

Whilst Wren was devoted to the pursuits of science, the times were distracted by the fury of party. The objects of the early association of eminent persons at Oxford is thus described by Spratt, Bishop of Rochester, in his History of the Royal Society "Their first purpose was no more than only the satisfaction of breathing a fresher air, and of conversing in quiet one with another, without being engaged in the passions and madness of that dismal age. And from the institution of that assembly it had been enough, if no other advantage had come but this, that by this means there was a race of young men provided against the next age, whose minds, receiving from them their first impressions of sober and generous knowledge, were invincibly armed against all the enchantments of enthusiasm. But what is more, I may venture to affirm, that it was in good measure by the influence which these gentlemen had over the rest, that the university itself, or at least any part of its discipline and order, was saved from ruin. "Nor were the good effects of this conversation only confined to Oxford, but they have made themselves known by their printed works, both in our own and in the learned languages, which have much conduced to the fame of our nation abroad, and to the spreading profitable light at home."

It was not until the age of Wren that the inductive process of Bacon was duly understood and appreciated. This period, on the eve of Newton's great discoveries, was perhaps the most important that has yet occurred in the annals of science. The spirit of inquiry, at first feeble, which actuated some individuals at the time of the revival of learning, had from numerous causes gathered strength, and spread itself over Europe. Bacon had turned his power and creative mind to the state of human knowledge, marking its imperfections and planning its improvements, amending the vagueness and

uncertainty of physical speculations, and supplying the want of connection between the sciences and the arts. This and the illustration of Bacon's method by Galileo and his contemporaries, (amongst whom Wren was eminent,) first led the way to the general adoption of the new philosophy-reasoning gradually from particulars to those that were only one step more general; not as formerly, adopting general positions drawn suddenly from particular instances hastily assumed. It was now felt that facts and not opinions were the things to reason about, in order to arrive at the knowledge of the laws governing the material world; and Bacon himself had foreseen the formation of a society directed to scientific improvement, and has given a general outline of it in the Nova Atlantis. And it was now that the enthusiastic ardour in the pursuit of natural philosophy was awakened in the minds of literary men, and which has ever since remained undiminished. None of the members of these meetings were more conspicuous than Wren, who, together with Boyle, (the great improver of the air-pump,) had imbibed the true spirit of Bacon. They applied themselves to the prosecution of experimental science, being the avowed enemies of the philosophy of Aristotle; following up the true principles of the new philosophy by preparing a history of the phenomena of nature in all their modifications and varieties; and instituting every form of experiment for the sake of discovery. Wren was one of the first (in conjunction with Wallis, Huygens, Newton, Leibnitz, and the Bernouillis) to occupy himself with the investigation of the cycloid, which had been discovered by Pascal; and he constantly urged, in his communications to the Royal Society, the importance of experiments and observations on facts. "For the improvement of theories," he observes, "we need be least solicitous; it is a work which will insensibly grow on us if we be always doing something in experiment; and every one is more prone to exercise his fancy in building paper theories than patient first to pile the unsure foundation, and hew solid materials out of the history of nature: this is rather our task, and in many things we must be content to plant crab stocks for posterity to graft on; and instead of the vanity of prognosti.

cating, I could wish we would have the patience for some years of registering past times, which is the certain way of learning to prognosticate; experiment and reason is the only way of prophesying natural events; in combating prejudices, detecting error, and establishing truth."

theory and practice of physic." The French, however, laid claim to the discovery; but we shall not here enter into the controversy; the genius and the acknowledged and undisputed works of Wren enable him beyond all others to abandon his claim when it is contested.

CHAPTER III.

Paul's.

This great era in the progress of useful knowledge was destined to conclude with the most splendid series of Wren's pursuits to the Building of St. philosophical improvements yet recorded-the discovery by Newton, in succession, of fluxions, the composition of light, and the principle of universal gravitation, all within twenty years, and all the work of one individual!

During his residence at Oxford, Wren in anatomical science stood amongst the first professors of his day, and as early as the age of fifteen he was employed by Sir Charles Scarborough, an eminent physician and mathematician, as a demonstrating assistant. His abilities as a demonstrator, and his attainments in anatomy generally, are acknowledged by Dr. Willis, in his Treatise on the Brain, for which he made all the drawings; and he is allowed to have been the originator of the physiological experiment of injecting various liquors into the veins of living animals, which Bishop Spratt calls a "noble experiment," exhibited at the meetings at Oxford. A notice of it was sent into Germany, and published abroad, as is supposed by the treachery of Oldenburgh, a person connected with the men of science of that day; and who is believed often to have secretly communicated to the continental philosophers the discoveries which came to his knowledge, thus giving rise to numberless disputes and elaims to priority of invention among

the learned of that time.

This experiment is alluded to by Sir Christopher Wren himself, in a letter to a friend in Ireland, (conceived by Mr. Elmes to be Sir William Petty :) "The most considerable experiment I have made of late is this: I injected wine and ale into the mass of blood in a living dog, by a vein, in good quantities, till he became extremely drunk; but soon after voided it by urine. It will be too long to tell you the effects of opium, scammony, and other things which I have tried in this way. I am in further pursuit of the experiment, which I take to be of great concernment, and what will give great light to the

WREN, in his twenty-fifth year, left his retirement at Oxford for the more extended field of the metropolis; being chosen, in 1657, to fill the Professor's chair of Astronomy at Gresham college. His inaugural Oration in Latin is published in Ward's Lives of the Gresham Professors, and its first sketch in English is to be found in the Parentalia; it is curious, as showing the care and labour which he thought it necessary to bestow on the work. This Oration at once established his reputation, and his Lectures were attended by the most eminent and learned persons of the time. The greater part of the Oxford Society, who afterwards were the leading members of the Royal Society, coming to London about 1658, usually assembled to hear Wren's Wednesday Lectures, in his Lecture room, and on Tuesday those upon, Geometry, by Rooke.

In his inaugural discourse, amongst other things, he proposed several methods by which to account for the shadows returning backwards ten degrees on the dial of King Ahaz, by the laws of nature. One subject of discussion was the Telescope, to the improvement of which he had greatly contributed. Another head comprised certain properties of the air and the barometer.

a

In 1658 Wren acquired fresh fame as mathematician, by the solution of the celebrated problem of Pascal; which had been given out, under the assumed name of Jean de Mountfort, as a challenge to the learned of England; and, in return, he proposed another, for the solution of the mathematicians of France, which had formerly been proposed by Kepler, and solved by himself geometrically. The challenge, however, was never answered. In the same year he communicated four mathematical tracts to Dr. Wallis, the Savilian Professor at Oxford, which were published by the doctor in his Treatise on the Cycloid.

« AnteriorContinuar »