AN OCTOBER 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 grapliic 

 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 



