The Monument, for instance, which
is of no great height nor beauty compared with that on Bunker Hill,
charmed me prodigiously. St. Paul's appeared to me unspeakably grand and
noble, and the more so from the throng and bustle continually going on
around its base, without in the least disturbing the sublime repose of
its great dome, and, indeed, of all its massive height and breadth.
Other edifices may crowd close to its foundation, and people may tramp as
they like about it; but still the great cathedral is as quiet and serene
as if it stood in the middle of Salisbury Plain. There cannot be
anything else in its way so good in the world as just this effect of St.
Paul's in the very heart and densest tumult of London. I do not know
whether the church is built of marble, or of whatever other white or
nearly white material; but in the time that it has been standing there,
it has grown black with the smoke of ages, through which there are
nevertheless gleams of white, that make a most picturesque impression on
the whole. It is much better than staring white; the edifice would not
be nearly so grand without this drapery of black.
I did not find these streets of the old city so narrow and irregular as I
expected. All the principal ones are sufficiently broad, and there are
few houses that look antique, being, I suppose, generally modern-fronted,
when not actually of modern substance. There is little or no show or
pretension in this part of London; it has a plain, business air,--an air
of homely, actual life, as of a metropolis of tradesmen, who have been
carrying on their traffic here, in sober earnest, for hundreds of years.
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