St. Paul’s is on a scale of grandeur excelling every thing I have yet seen.  The dome seems to stand in the sky, as you look up to it; the distance from which you view it, combined with the atmosphere of London, give it a dim, shadowy appearance, that perfectly startles one with its immensity.  The roof from which the dome springs is itself as high as the spires of most other churches—­blackened for two hundred years with the coal-smoke of London, it stands like a relic of the giant architecture of the early world.  The interior is what one would expect to behold, after viewing the outside.  A maze of grand arches on every side, encompasses the dome, which you gaze up at, as at the sky; and from every pillar and wall look down the marble forms of the dead.  There is scarcely a vacant niche left in all this mighty hall, so many are the statues that meet one on every side.  With the exceptions of John Howard, Sir Astley Cooper and Wren, whose monument is the church itself, they are all to military men.  I thought if they had all been removed except Howard’s, it would better have suited such a temple, and the great soul it commemorated.

I never was more impressed with the grandeur of human invention, than when ascending the dome.  I could with difficulty conceive the means by which such a mighty edifice had been lifted into the air.  That small frame of Sir Christopher Wren must have contained a mind capable of vast conceptions.  The dome is like the summit of a mountain; so wide is the prospect, and so great the pile upon which you stand.  London lay beneath us, like an ant-hill, with the black insects swarming to and fro in their long avenues, the sound of their employments coming up like the roar of the sea.  A cloud of coal-smoke hung over it, through which many a pointed spire was thrust up; sometimes the wind would blow it aside for a moment, and the thousands of red roofs would shine out clearer.  The bridged Thames, covered with craft of all sizes, wound beneath us like a ringed and spotted serpent.  The scene was like an immense circular picture in the blue frame of the hills around.

Continuing our way up Fleet street, which, notwithstanding the gaiety of its shops and its constant bustle, has an antique appearance, we came to the Temple Bar, the western boundary of the ancient city.  In the inside of the middle arch, the old gates are still standing.  From this point we entered the new portion of the city, which wore an air of increasing splendor as we advanced.  The appearance of the Strand and Trafalgar Square is truly magnificent.  Fancy every house in Broadway a store, all built of light granite, the Park stripped of all its trees and paved with granite, and a lofty column in the centre, double the crowd and the tumult of business, and you will have some idea of the view.