did not succeed in getting a good impression. The air within is
somewhat damp, but fresh and agreeably cool, and one can scarcely
realize in walking along the light passage, that a river is rolling
above his head. The immense solidity and compactness of the structure
precludes the danger of accident, each of the sides being arched
outwards, so that the heaviest pressure only strengthens the whole. It
will long remain a noble monument of human daring and ingenuity.

St. Paul's is on a scale of grandeur excelling every thing I have yet
seen. The dome seems to stand in the sky, as you look up to it; the
distance from which you view it, combined with the atmosphere of London,
give it a dim, shadowy appearance, that perfectly startles one with its
immensity. The roof from which the dome springs is itself as high as the
spires of most other churches--blackened for two hundred years with the
coal-smoke of London, it stands like a relic of the giant architecture
of the early world. The interior is what one would expect to behold,
after viewing the outside. A maze of grand arches on every side,
encompasses the dome, which you gaze up at, as at the sky; and from
every pillar and wall look down the marble forms of the dead. There is
scarcely a vacant niche left in all this mighty hall, so many are the
statues that meet one on every side. With the exceptions of John Howard,
Sir Astley Cooper and Wren, whose monument is the church itself, they
are all to military men. I thought if they had all been removed except
Howard's, it would better have suited such a temple, and the great soul
it commemorated.

I never was more impressed with the grandeur of human invention, than
when ascending the dome. I could with difficulty conceive the means by
which such a mighty edifice had been lifted into the air. That small
frame of Sir Christopher Wren must have contained a mind capable of vast
conceptions. The dome is like the summit of a mountain; so wide is the
prospect, and so great the pile upon which you stand. London lay beneath
us, like an ant-hill, with the black insects swarming to and fro in
their long avenues, the sound of their employments coming up like the
roar of the sea. A cloud of coal-smoke hung over it, through which many
a pointed spire was thrust up; sometimes the wind would blow it aside
for a moment, and the thousands of red roofs would shine out clearer.
The bridged Thames, covered with craft of all sizes, wound beneath us