24 JANUARY 1925, Page 17

The First Volume of the Wren Society, issued only to

sub- scribers, gives a selection of Sir Christopher Wren's drawings for St. Paul's Cathedral, from the library of All Souls' College, Oxford. Wren was at work upon his designs for thirty-five years ; even before the Fire there was a project to rebuild the Cathedral. And his imagination of the finished building changed, or developed, the whole time. The dome towers and grows squat, has thimbles and seltzer-siphons, pine- apples, rotundas, and pagodas placed upon it, achieves successively buttresses and steps and cloisters, before it approaches to the final design. It is interesting to see the great care which Wren took to produce his masterpiece, assiduously studying even the decorative detail.