ll English
churches--and I say it deliberately--St. Bartholomew's the Great, over
in Smithfield.

Other churches have I studied in my wanderings; many and various
cathedrals, basilicas, and mosques have delighted me. I know the color
and the value of tapestry and rich hangings; of mosaics, porphyry, and
verd-antiques; of fluted alabaster and the delicate tracery of the
arabesque; but the velvety quality of London soot when applied to the
rough surfaces of rudely chiselled stones, and the soft loveliness
gained by grime and smoke, came to me as a revelation.

This rich black which, like a tropical fungus, grows and spreads
through St. Bartholomew's interior, hiding under its soft, caressing
touch the rough angles and insistent edges of the Norman, is what the
bloom is to the grape, what the dark purpling is to the plum,
mellowing from sight the brilliancy of the under skin. And there are
wide coverings of it, too, in this wonderful church, as if some master
decorator had wielded a great coal and at one sweep of his hand had
rubbed its glorious black into every crevice, crack, and cranny of
wall, column, and arch.

Certain it is that no other medium than the one used could give any
idea of its charm. Neither oil, water-color, nor pastel will transmit
it--no, nor the dry-point or bitten plate. The soot of centuries, the
fogs of countless Novembers, the smoke of a thousand firesides were
the pigments which the Master Painter set upon his palette in the task
of giving us one exquisitely beautiful interior wholly in
black-and-white.

So it was in the Temple when I was searching for Mr. Thackeray's
haunts.

What of alterations, scrapings, patchings up, and fillings in have
taken place in these various courts and their surroundings, I did not
trouble myself to find out. Nothing looks new in London after the fogs
and soot of one winter have wreaked their vengeance upon it. Whether
the facade is of brick, stone, or stucco depends entirely on the
thickness of the soot, packed in or scoured clean by winds and rains,
or whether the surface is ebony or marble, as may be seen in many of
the statues on Burlington House, where a head, arm, or part of a
pedestal chair has been kept white by constant douches.

As for me, I was glad that these old haunts of Mr. Thackeray and his
characters are even blacker to-day than they might have been in his
time. For the soot and grime become them, and London as well, for that
matter. A great