One would
expect such a room to be picturesque; but it is really not of striking
aspect, being low, with a plastered ceiling,--the beams just showing
through the plaster,--a boarded floor, and the walls being washed over
with a buff color. A warder sat within a railing, by the great window,
with sixpenny books to sell, containing transcripts of the inscriptions
on the walls.
We now left the Tower, and made our way deviously westward, passing St.
Paul's, which looked magnificently and beautifully, so huge and dusky as
it was, with here and there a space on its vast form where the original
whiteness of the marble came out like a streak of moonshine amid the
blackness with which time has made it grander than it was in its newness.
It is a most noble edifice; and I delight, too, in the statues that crown
some of its heights, and in the wreaths of sculpture which are hung
around it.
November 12th.--This morning began with such fog, that at the window of
my chamber, lighted only from a small court-yard, enclosed by high, dingy
walls, I could hardly see to dress. It kept alternately darkening, and
then brightening a little, and darkening again, so much that we could but
just discern the opposite houses; but at eleven or thereabouts it grew so
much clearer that we resolved to venture out. Our plan for the day was
to go in the first place to Westminster Abbey; and to the National
Gallery, if we should find time. . . . .
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