An urgent appeal for funds for the strengthening of the Dome of St. Paul's Cathedral has been made by Canon Alexander, Treasurer of the Cathedral, during an Advent service at St. Giles', Cripplegate.
For more than seven years, he said, fortified by expert advice every kind, they had been grappling with the critical problem of the stability of that great Dome. The problem went back to the first beginnings of the present structure. Sir Christopher Wren planned originally a much lighter Dome, and when his designs were put aside, the piers, filled as they are with rubble, proved hardly adequate to meet the tremendous pressure; and the. Dome settled towards the southwest. As one stood inside and beneath it there was a wonderful impression of serenity and power; yet, in fact, there was going on without pause, day and night, a veritable struggle of giants—the Dome pressing down the piers, the piers straining to uplift the Dome.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.