their
labour, and the temperateness of the season, instead of using their
handkerchiefs to wipe the sweat off their faces, they were most of
them blowing their nails. 'Bless me!' said I to my friend, 'sure
this church stands in a colder climate than the rest of the nation,
or else those fellows are of a strange constitution to seem ready
to freeze at such warm exercise.' 'You must consider,' says my
friend, 'this is work carried on at a national charge, and ought
not to be hastened on in a hurry; for the greater reputation it
will gain when it's finished will be, "That it was so many years in
building."' From thence we moved up a long wooden bridge that led
to the west porticum of the church, where we intermixed with such a
train of promiscuous rabble that I fancied we looked like the
beasts driving into the ark in order to replenish a new succeeding
world....

"We went a little farther, where we observed ten men in a corner,
very busie about two men's work, taking as much care that everyone
should have his due proportion of the labour, as so many thieves in
making an exact division of their booty. The wonderful piece of
difficulty, the whole number had to perform, was to drag along a
stone of about three hundred weight in a carriage in order to be
hoisted upon the moldings of the cupula, but were so fearful of
dispatching this facile undertaking with too much expedition, that
they were longer in hauling on't half the length of the church,
than a couple of lusty porters, I am certain, would have been
carrying it to Paddington, without resting of their burthen.

"We took notice of the vast distance of the pillars from whence
they turn the cupula, on which, they say, is a spire to be erected
three hundred feet in height, whose towering pinnacle will stand
with such stupendous loftiness above Bow Steeple dragon or the
Monument's flaming urn, that it will appear to the rest of the Holy
Temples like a cedar of Lebanon, among so many shrubs, or a Goliath
looking over the shoulders of so many Davids."

"The British Apollo, or curious Amusements for the Ingenious, performed
by a Society of Gentlemen;" appeared in 1708, and seems to have been a
weekly periodical, and to have been soon discontinued. The greater part
of it consisted of questions and answers. Information w