MELLOW ENGLAND. 



163 



pot were slashed through here and 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 ap- 

 pear the exhausted receiver it does now. 



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

 whole interior of the building. Rising aver the cen- 

 tral 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 firma- 

 ment. 



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 de- 

 scending 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 suicides ; people 

 unable to withstand the terrible fascination would leap 

 into the yawning gulf. But with the privilege usually 

 accorded to Americans, I stepped down into the nar- 

 row 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 



