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 was desired on all
sorts of abstruse and absurd points--some scriptural, others referring
to natural philosophy, or to matters of social interest.
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