Page:Anecdotes of painters, engravers, sculptors and architects, and curiosities of art (IA anecdotesofpaint01spoo).pdf/314

 *ance was not far distant, for he was released from confinement by the Restoration.

WREN'S RESTRAINTS IN DESIGNING HIS EDIFICES.

It is often seen, that when kings patronize genius, instead of allowing it to develop itself according to its own laws, they hamper it according to their own preconceived fancies. The palace at Hampton Court is censured for its ill proportions; but Cunningham says that Wren moved under sad restraints from the commissioners in one place, and the court in the other. When the lowness of the cloisters under the apartments of the palace was noticed by one of the courtiers, King William turned on his heel like a challenged sentinel, and answered sharply, "Such were my express orders!" The rebuked nobleman bowed, and acquiesced in the royal taste. When St. Paul's Cathedral was nearly completed, the "nameless officials" called commissioners of that edifice, decided to have a stone balustrade upon the upper cornice, and declared their determination to that effect, "unless Sir Christopher Wren should set forth that it was contrary to the principles of architecture." To this resolution, in which blind ignorance gropes its way, calling on knowledge to set its stumblings right, Wren returned the following answer: "I take leave first to declare I never designed a balustrade. Persons of little skill in architecture did expect, I believe, to see something that had been used in Gothic structures, and ladies