w passage, barely wide enough for
one person to walk in, which extended all around the choir, with a solid
wall on one side, and arches through which they could look down into the
church below on the other. After walking along for several hundred feet,
listening to the swelling sounds of the music, which, coming from the
organ and choir below, echoed grandly and solemnly among the vaults and
arches above them, until they reached the centre of the curve at the
head of the cross, Mr. George and Rollo stopped, and leaned over the
stone parapet, and looked down. The parapet was very high and very
thick, and Rollo had to climb up a little upon it before he could see
over.

They gazed for a few minutes in silence, completely overwhelmed with the
dizzy grandeur of the view. It is always impossible to convey by words
any idea of the impression produced upon the mind by looking down from
any great height upon scenes of magnificence or of beauty; but it would
be doubly impossible in such a case as this. Far below them in front,
they could see the choir of singers in the singing gallery, with the
organ behind them. The distance was, however, so great that they could
not distinguish the faces of the singers, or even their persons. Then at
a vast distance, lower still, was the floor of the choir, paved
beautifully in mosaic, and with little dots of men and women, slowly
creeping, like insects, over the surface of it. At a distance, through
the spaces between the columns, a part of the congregation could be
seen, with the women and children at the margin of it, kneeling on the
praying chairs, and a little red spot near a gate, which Rollo thought
must be the Swiss. The whole of the interior of the choir, which they
looked down into as you would look down into a valley from the summit of
a mountain, was so magnificently decorated with paintings, mosaics, and
frescoes, and enriched with columns, monuments, sculptures, and
carvings, and there were, moreover, so many railings, and screens, and
stalls, and canopies, and altars, to serve as furnishing for the vast
interior, that the whole view presented the appearance of a scene of
enchantment.

Mr. George said it was the most imposing spectacle that he ever saw.

After this, the guide led our two travellers up about a hundred feet
higher still, till they came to the first outer gallery; and the scene
which presented itself to view here would be still more difficult to
describe than the