Returning, another long ascent leads to the Whispering Gallery, below the windows of the cupola, where visitors are requested to sit down upon a matted seat that they may be shown how a low whisper uttered against the wall can be distinctly heard from the other side of the dome.  Hence we reach the Stone Gallery, outside the base of the dome, whence we may ascend to the Golden Gallery at its summit.  This last ascent is interesting, as being between the outer and inner domes, and showing how completely different in construction one is from the other.  The view from the gallery is vast, but generally, beyond a certain distance, it is shrouded in smoke.  Sometimes, one stands aloft in a clear atmosphere, while beneath the fog rolls like a sea, through which the steeples and towers are just visible “like the masts of stranded vessels.”  Hence one may study the anatomy of the fifty-four towers which Wren was obliged to build after the Fire in a space of time which would only have properly sufficed for the construction of four.  The same characteristics, more and more painfully diluted, but always slightly varied, occur in each.  Bow Church, St. Magnus, St. Bride, and St. Vedast are the best.

The Great Bell of St. Paul’s (of 1716), which hangs in the south tower, bears the inscription, “Richard Phelps made me, 1716.”  It only tolls on the deaths and funerals of the royal family, of Bishops of London, Deans of St. Paul’s, and Lord Mayors who die in their mayoralty.

The British museum and the crystal palace [Footnote:  From “Notes on England.”  By arrangement with the publishers, Henry Holt & Co.]

BY HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE

I have letters of introduction and a ticket of admission to the British Museum.  About the Grecian marbles, the original Italian drawings, about the National Gallery, the Hampton Court galleries, the pictures at Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle, and the private collections, I shall say nothing.  Still, what marvels and what historical tokens are all these things, five or six specimens of high civilization manifested in a perfect art, all differing greatly from that which I now examine, and so well adapted for bringing into relief the good and the evil.  To do that would fill a volume by itself.

The Museum library contains six hundred thousand volumes; the reading-room is vast, circular in form, and covered with a cupola, so that no one is far from the central office, and no one has the light in his eyes.  All the lower stage of shelves is filled with works of reference—­dictionaries, collections of biographies, classics of all sorts—­which can be consulted on the spot, and are excellently arranged.  Moreover, a small plan placed on each table indicates where they are placed and the order in which they stand.