160 WINTER SUNSHINE 



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

 whole interior of the building. Rising over the 

 central area, it seems to gather up the power and 

 majesty 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 

 architecture 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 apparently descending upon you, that looked 

 like a petrified thunder-cloud. 



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 sui- 

 cides; people unable to withstand the terrible fas- 

 cination would leap into the yawning gulf. But, 

 with the privilege usually accorded to Americans, I 

 stepped down into the narrow circle, and, leaning 

 over the balustrade, coolly looked the horrible temp- 

 tation in the face. 



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

 that one wonders what occasion or what ceremony 

 can rise to the importance of not being utterly 

 dwarfed within its walls. The annual gathering of 

 the charity children, ten or twelve thousand in 

 number, must make a ripple or two upon its soli- 



