THE DECORATION OF ST. PAUL'S.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.") Si,—In your review of Dr. Holland's Bundle of Memories, in last week's issue, your reviewer states with complacency that Doan Gregory used his immense driving-power to the decoration of St. Paul's, and it was owing to him that Sir William Richmond was enabled to complete the decoration of the choir and aisles. Dr. Holland seems to think this a virtue. The only satisfactory point of the affair was the prevention of the disfigurement of the interior of the dome with Sir William Richmond's mosaics and stencilled designs, by enlightened out- side artistic and public opinion. Dean Gregory, whatever he may have been as a reformer, had no true sense of what was fitting in decoration to a noble building ; for, if so, he would have turned for help to Alfred Stevens or G. F. Watts, both of whom were living and working during the Dean's forty or more years at S. Paul's. But he was one of the typical English ecclesiastics of his time who, through their misplaced zeal, have destroyed so much that was beautiful in English churches, and who have failed to recognize genius when it was at hand. Was it not Dean Milman who bitterly opposed the setting up in St. Paul's of Stevens's equestrian statue of the Duke of Wellinkton P—I am, Sir, &es 8 Chester Terrace, Regent's Park. FE.A.mc
Ginsorr.
Previous page
