To Those Who Love St Paul's.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19107, 27 June 1930, Page 8

To Those Who Love St Paul's.

A Woman s View.

JT IS DIFFICULT to decide which means the more to us, St Paul’s or Westminster Abbey. They both have such a special place in the heart of the Motherland and Empire, and yet I once detected a sort of rivalry between these two great churches—a rivalry for royal favour. For my own part I don’t think I ever really digested Westminster Abbey. It was so full of historic monuments, almost lumbered up with statuary. Memories indeed stirred there, but they came in such a flood that the full tide rather swamped one at first. It is true that when I last visited St Paul’s there was little of it to be seen. All beneath the great dome was dirt and dust and builders’ scaffolding. I descended to the crypt to pay a tribute to Seddon, and climbed worn stairs to the whispering gallery, to look down on the confusion of the church’s reconstruction. But perhaps I loved St Paul’s because she stood at the centre of the Old London, the City, Wren’s London. On every tour up Fleet Street, St Paul’s stood solidly along the skyline. From all the little lanes, from Paternoster Row, from excursions down Cheapside, one returned to the broad steps of St Paul’s. I like.to think now that she stands in her old splendour, and that the friendly pigeons are still feeding there. B.E.S.