ly of
the general conformation of our great water-fall, while the column or
obelisk in the center of the square (which column is a mistake, in my
humble judgment, and should be removed) has its parallel in the
unsightly tower overlooking the main cataract from the extreme point of
Goat Island. Eternal endurance and repose may be fitly typified by the
oceans and snow-crested mountains, but power and energy find their best
expressions in the cataract and the dome. Time and Genius may produce
other structures as admirable in their own way and regarded in
connection with their uses; but, viewed as a temple, St. Peter's will
ever stand unmatched and unapproachable.

I chose the early morning for my first visit. The sky was cloudless, as
it mainly is here save in winter, but the day was not yet warm, for the
summer nights are cooler here than in New-York, and the current English
talk of the excessive heat which prevails in Rome at this season is
calculated to deceive Americans. No one fails to realize from the first
the great beauty and admirable accessories of this edifice, with the
far-stretching but quite other than lofty pile of the Vatican on its
right and its own magnificent colonnade in front, but you do not feel
that it is lofty, nor spacious, nor anything but perfect. You ascend the
steps, and thus gain some idea of the immense proportions prevailing
throughout; for the church seems scarcely at all elevated above the
square, and yet many are the steps leading up to the doors. Crossing a
grand porch with an arched roof of glorious mosaic, you find yourself in
the body of the edifice, which now seems large and lofty indeed, but by
no means unparalleled. But you walk on and on, between opposing pillars
the grandest the world ever saw, the space at either side between any
two pillars constituting a separate chapel with its gorgeous altar, its
grand pictures in mosaic, its sculptured saints and angels, each of
these chapels having a larger area than any church I ever entered in
America; and by the time you have walked slowly and observingly to the
front of the main altar you realize profoundly that Earth has nothing
else to match with St. Peter's. No matter though another church were
twice as large, and erected at a cost of twice the Thirty Millions of
dollars and fifty years expended upon this, St. Peter's would still
stand unrivaled. For every detail is so marvellously symmetrical that no
one is dwarfed, no one challeng