160 AN OCTOBER ABROAD. 



blotches and stains, as if it had been dipped in some 

 black Lethe of oblivion, and then left to be restored 

 by the rains and the elements. This black Lethe is 

 the London smoke and fog, which has left a dark de- 

 posit over all the building, except the upper and more 

 exposed parts, where the original silvery 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 susceptibility to art for which I had never given 

 myself credit. Perhaps from both, for I seemed to be- 

 hold Art turning toward and reverently acknowledging 

 Nature — 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 big- 

 ness was a little prosy, that it suggested the historic 

 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 architecture. 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 



