128 The Andes and the Amazon. 



Well do we remember our disappointment as we stood 

 before that wonder of the world — St. Peter's. We mount- 

 ed the pyramid of steps and looked up, but were not over- 

 come by the magnificence. We read in our guide-book 

 that the edifice covers eight acres, and to the tip-top of the 

 cross is almost five hundred feet ; that it took three hun- 

 dred and fifty years and twelve successive artists to finish 

 it, and an expenditure of $50,000,000, and now costs $30,000 

 per annum to keep it in repair ; still we did not appreciate 

 its greatness. We pushed aside the curtain and walked in 

 — walked a day's journey across the transept and uj) and 

 down the everlasting nave, and yet continued heterodox. 

 We tried hard to believe it was very vast and sublime, and 

 knew we ought to feel its grandeur, but somehow we did 

 not. Then we sat down by the Holy of Holies, and there 

 we were startled into a better judgment by the- astounding 

 fact that the Cathedral of St. Paul — the largest edifice in 

 Great Britain — could stand upright, spire, dome, body, and 

 all, inside of St. Peter's ! that the letters of the inscription 

 which run around the hase of the dome, though apparently 

 but an inch, are in reality six feet high ! Then, for the 

 first time, the scales fell from our eyes ; the giant building 

 began to grow ; higher and higher still it rose, longer and 

 deeper it expanded, yet in perfect proportions ; the colossal 

 structure, now a living temple, put on its beautiful gar- 

 ments and the robe of majesty. And that dome ! the lon- 

 ger we looked at it the vaster it grew, till finally it seemed 

 to be a temple not made with hands ; the spacious canopy 

 became the firmament ; the mosaic figures of clierubim and 

 seraphim were endowed with life ; and as we fixed our eyes 

 on the zenith where the Almighty is represented in glory, 

 we thought we had the vision of Stephen. Long we gazed 

 upward into this heaven of man's creation, and gazed again 

 till we were lost in wonder. 



