[Illustration: SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN. _From the engraving in Elmes' Memoirs of Sir C. Wren, after the portrait by Kneller at the Royal Society's rooms._]
Such was the man to whom not merely the king and his advisers, but public opinion, turned to repair the ravages of the Fire, and in particular to rebuild St. Paul's. It was the Surveyor General, Sir John Denham, who recommended Wren as his successor, and the death of Denham in March, 1668, gave this recommendation full effect. One of Wren's many disappointments was that the opportunity was missed of laying out afresh the whole City from Temple Bar to Tower Hill, and from Moorfields to the river. His inventive genius projected broad streets, generally rectangular, with piazzas, each the meeting-point of eight thoroughfares, and quays and terraces along the river bank. He calculated that by obliterating the numerous churchyards and laying out healthier cemeteries in the suburbs, no owner would lose a square foot of ground, and that, although they would not find their property exactly on the same site, every building would be replaced, with the immense compensation of an excellent situation in the finest and healthiest city in the whole world. By this plan St. Paul's would have directly faced a long and broad street running west and passing through the present Law Courts, with St. Dunstan's Church in the centre beyond the Fleet, and the narrow Strand joining from the west at Temple Bar. At Ludgate, three hundred yards west of the cathedral, this avenue of a width of some thirty yards began to open out until, opposite the west front, it had increased to a breadth of a hundred yards, leaving ample room for a piazza. Here an acute bifurcation was formed, the northern street leading to the Exchange; the southern, a broader and a nobler Cannon Street, with St. Paul's between. This scheme, as laid before the King and Parliament, Wren declared to be thoroughly practicable. Certainly it would have prevented congestion of traffic unto this day, and given St. Paul's (although somewhat hemmed in on the east) a position unique amongst churches.[57] "The only and as it happened unsurmountable Difficulty remaining was the obstinate Averseness of great Part of the Citizens to alter their old Properties, and to secede from building their Houses again on the old Ground and Foundations"; and as rebuilding began almost as soon as the smoke of the Fire had ceased, and long before anything definite could be decided upon, a great opportunity was lost. The estimated three-quarters of a million of souls and the vehicles innumerable now crossing the boundaries every weekday are compelled, too often, to traverse choked and narrow streets, and not without danger to life and limb; while St. Paul's itself, cribbed, cabined, confined, becomes in each successive generation more hemmed in as the surrounding emporiums and magazines grow taller and taller.