tremulous luster struggles
through the night that broods over them. Such a scene recalls Milton's
sublime pictures of Pandemonium, and shows directly to the eye what
effects a great imaginative painter may produce with no other colors
than light and darkness. Here are the "stately height," the "ample
spaces," the "arched roof," the rows of "starry lamps and blazing
cressets" of Satan's hall of council; and by the excited fancy the dim
distance is easily peopled with gigantic forms and filled with the
"rushing of congregated wings."

After this, one is led through a variety of chambers, differing in size
and form, but essentially similar in character, and the attention is
invited to the innumerable multitude of striking and fantastic objects
which have been formed in the lapse of ages, by the mere dropping of
water. Pendants hang from the roof, stalagmites grow from the floor like
petrified stumps, and pillars and buttresses are disposed as oddly as
in the architecture of a dream. Here, we are told to admire a bell, and
there, a throne; here, a pulpit, and there, a butcher's shop; here, "the
two hearts," and there, a fountain frozen into alabaster; and in every
case we assent to the resemblance in the unquestioning mood of Polonius.
One of the chambers, or halls, is used every year as a ball-room, for
which purpose it has every requisite except an elastic floor, even to a
natural dais for the orchestra.

Here, with the sort of pride with which a book collector shows a Mazarin
Bible or a folio Shakespeare, the guides point out a beautiful piece of
limestone which hangs from the roof in folds as delicate as a Cashmere
shawl, to which the resemblance is made more exact by a well-defined
border of deeper color than the web. Through this translucent curtain
the light shines as through a picture in porcelain, and one must be very
unimpressible not to bestow the tribute of admiration which is claimed.
These are the trivial details which may be remembered and described,
but the general effect produced by the darkness, the silence, the vast
spaces, the innumerable forms, the vaulted roofs, the pillars and
galleries melting away in the gloom like the long-drawn aisles of a
cathedral, may be recalled but not communicated.

To see all these marvels requires much time, and I remained under ground
long enough to have a new sense of the blessing of light. The first
glimpse of returning day seen through the distant entrance brought w