Sir Christopher Wren

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Duckworth and Company, 1908 - 367 pages
 

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Page 157 - Observer' at a salary of 100£ per annum, his duty being 'forthwith to apply himself with the most exact care and diligence to the rectifying the tables of the motions of the heavens and the places of the fixed stars, so as to find out the so much desired longitude of places for the perfecting the art of navigation.
Page 136 - In good earnest the very frame was worth the money, there being nothing in nature so tender and delicate as the flowers and festoons about it, and yet the work was very strong; in the piece were more than 100 figures of men, &c.
Page 31 - He had, above in his lodgings and gallery, variety of shadows, dials, perspectives, and many other artificial, mathematical, and magical curiosities, a way-wiser, a thermometer, a monstrous magnet, conic, and other sections, a balance on a demi-circle, most of them of his own, and that prodigious young scholar Mr.
Page 95 - Europe, as not long before repaired by the late king) now rent in pieces, flakes of vast stone split asunder, and nothing remaining entire but the inscription in the architrave, showing by whom it was built, which had not one letter of it defaced.
Page 293 - My opinion, therefore, is to have statues erected on the four pediments only, which will be a most proper, noble, and sufficient ornament to the whole fabric, and was never omitted in the best ancient Greek and Roman architecture ; the principles of which, throughout all my schemes of this colossal structure, I have religiously endeavoured to follow ; and if I glory, it is in the singular mercy of God, who has enabled me to begin and finish my great work so conformable to the ancient model.
Page 136 - I asked if I might enter; he opened the door civilly to me, and I saw him about such a work as for the curiosity of handling, drawing, and studious exactness, I never had before seen in all my travels.
Page 219 - Their first purpose was no more than only the satisfaction of breathing a freer air, and of conversing in quiet one with another, without being engaged in the passions and madness of that dismal age.
Page 357 - I have made a design which will not be very expensive, but light, and still in the Gothic form, and of a style with the rest of the structure, which I would strictly adhere to throughout the whole intention. To deviate from the old form would be to run into a disagreeable mixture, which no person of a good taste could relish.
Page 111 - What we are to do next is the present Deliberation, in which you are so absolutely and indispensably necessary to us, that we can do nothing, resolve on nothing without you.
Page 137 - Majesty, who asked me where it was ; I told him in Sir Richard Browne's (my father-in-law) chamber, and that if it pleased his Majesty to appoint whither it should be brought, being large and though of wood heavy, I would take care for it.

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