AN OCTOBEE ABROAD 157 



Lethe is the London smoke and fog, which has left 

 a dark deposit over all the building, except the up 

 per and more exposed parts, where the original sil 

 very whiteness of the stone shows through, the effect 

 of the whole thus being like one of those graphic 

 Rembrandt photographs or carbons, the prominences 

 in a strong light, and the rest in deepest shadow. I 

 was never tired of looking at this noble building, 

 and of going out of my way to walk around it; but 

 I am at a loss to know whether the pleasure I had 

 in it arose from my love of nature, or from a suscep 

 tibility to art for which I had never given myself 

 credit. Perhaps from both, for I seemed to behold 

 Art turning toward and reverently acknowledging Na 

 ture, indeed, in a manner already become Nature. 

 I believe the critics of such things find plenty of 

 fault with St. Paul's; and even I could see that its 

 bigness was a little prosy, that it suggested the his 

 toric rather than the poetic muse, etc. ; yet, for all 

 that, I could never look at it without a profound 

 emotion. Viewed coolly and critically, it might seem 

 like a vast specimen of Episcopalianism in architec 

 ture. Miltonic in its grandeur and proportions, and 

 Miltonic in its prosiness and mongrel classicism also, 

 yet its power and effectiveness are unmistakable. 

 The beholder has no vantage-ground from which to 

 view it, or take in its total effect, on account of its 

 being so closely beset by such a mob of shops and 

 buildings; yet the glimpses he does get here and 

 there through the opening made by some street, 

 when passing in its vicinity, are very striking and 



