These Intercolumns Are Twenty-One Panels Of Figured Crimson Velvet, And Above Them Six Windows, Viz., In Each Intercolumniation Seven Panels And Two Windows, One Above The Other; At The Greatest Altitude Above All Which Is A Glory Finely Done.

The aperture north and south into the choir are (ascending up three steps of black marble) by two iron folding-doors, being, as that under the organ-gallery, &c., exquisitely wrought into divers figures, spiral branches, and other flourishes.

There are two others at the west end of the choir, the one opening into the south aisle, the other in the north, done by the celebrated artist in this way, M. Tijan.

And what contributes to the beauty of this choir are the galleries, the bishop's throne, Lord Mayor's seat, with the stalls, all which being contiguous, compose one vast body of carved work of the finest wainscot, constituting three sides of a quadrangle.

The cupola (within the church) appears erected and elevated on eight pillars of a large magnitude, adorned with pilasters, entablature, circular pediments, and arches of the Corinthian order, and each pillar enriched with a spacious festoon. Here are also as many alcoves fronted with curious ironwork, and over the arches, at a great height from the ground, is an entablature, and on the cornice an ambulatory, fronted or fenced in with handsome ironwork, extending round the inside of the cupola, above which is a range of thirty-two pilasters of the Corinthian order, where every fourth intercolumn is adorned with a niche and some enrichments; and it said that in every foot of altitude the diameter of this decreaseth one inch.

On the outside of the dome, about twenty feet above the outer roof of the church, is a range of thirty-two columns, with niches of the same altitude, and directly counter to those aforesaid within the cupola. To these columns there is entablament, and above that a gallery with acroteria, where are placed very spacious and ornamental vases all round the cupola. At twelve feet above the tops of these vases (which space is adorned with pilasters and entablament, and the intercolumns are windows) the diameter is taken in (as appears outwardly) five feet, and two feet higher it decreases five feet, and a foot above that it is still five feet less, where the dome outwardly begins to arch, which arches meet about fifty-two feet higher in perpendicular altitude, on the vertex of which dome is a neat balcony, and above this a large and beautiful lantern, adorned with columns of the Corinthian order, with a ball and cross at the top.

Christ's Hospital is situated between Newgate Street and St. Bartholomew's Hospital in Smithfield. Here, as has been observed already, was anciently a monastery of grey friars, founded about the year 1325, which, upon the dissolution of monasteries, was surrendered to King Henry VIII., anno 1538, who, in the last year of his reign, transferred it to the City of London for the use of the poor.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 29 of 78
Words from 14781 to 15286 of 40922