180 AN OCTOBER ABROAD. 



there, or if it rested on a row of tall columns, or 

 piers, and was shown to be a legitimate part of the 

 building, it would not appear the exhausted receiver 

 it does now. 



The dome of St. Paul's is the culmination of the 

 whole interior of the building. Rising over the cen- 

 tral area, it seems to gather up the power and maj- 

 esty of the nave, the aisles, the transepts, the choir, 

 and give them expression and expansion in its lofty 

 firmament. 



Then those colossal piers, forty feet broad, some of 

 them, and nearly one hundred feet high ; they easily 

 eclipsed what I had recently seen in a mine, and 

 which I at the time, imagined shamed all the architect- 

 ure of the world where the mountain was upheld 

 over a vast space by massive piers left by the miners, 

 with a ceiling unrolled over your head, and appar- 

 ently descending upon you, that looked like a petrified 

 thundercloud. 



The view from the upper gallery, or top of the 

 dome looking down inside, is most impressive. The 

 public are not admitted to this gallery, for fear, the 

 keeper told me, it would become the scene of suicides ; 

 people unable to withstand the terrible fascination 

 would leap into the yawning gulf. But with the priv- 

 ilege usually accorded to Americans, I stepped down 

 into the narrow circle, and leaning over the balustrade, 

 coolly looked the horrible temptation in the face. 



On the whole, St. Paul's is so vast and imposing 

 that one wonders what occasion or what ceremony can 



