I walked about a hundred feet up the nave, and stopped. From a habit of analyzing buildings, I counted the paces as I advanced, and knew how far I was within the pile. Still men, at the farthest extremity, seemed dwindled into boys. One, whose size did not appear disproportioned, was cleaning a statue of St. Bruno, at the height of an ordinary church-steeple, stood on the shoulder of the figure, and could just rest his arm on the top of its head. Some marble cherubs, that looked like children, were in high relief against a pier near me, and laying my hand on the hand of one of them, I found it like that of an infant in comparison. All this aided the sense of vastness. The _baldacchino_, or canopy of bronze, which is raised over the great altar, filled the eye no more than a pulpit in a common church; and yet I knew its summit was as lofty as half the height of the spire of Trinity, New York, or about a hundred and thirty feet, and essentially higher than the tower. I looked for a marble throne that was placed at the remotest extremity of the building, also as high as a common church tower, a sort of poetical chair for the popes: it seemed distant as a cavern on a mountain. To me there was no disappointment. Every thing appeared as vast as feet and inches could make it; and as I stood gazing at the glorious pile, the tears forced themselves from my eyes. Even little P—— was oppressed with the sense of the vastness of the place, for he clung close to my side, though he had passed half his life in looking at sights, and kept murmuring, “_Qu’est-ce que c’est?—qu’est-ce que c’est?—Est-ce une église?_” It was getting dark, and perhaps the gloom magnified the effect. The atmosphere even,—for this stupendous pile has an atmosphere of its own, one different from that of the outer world,—was soothing and delicious; and I turned away impressed with the truth that if ever the hand of man had indeed raised a structure to the Deity in the least worthy of his majesty, it was this! LETTER XXI. The Campagna.—The Tarpeian Rock:—doubts as to its identity.—The Walls of Servius Tullius,—and of Aurelian.—The Muro Torto.—The Wall of Honorius, or the present wall.—Errors of Literary Men with respect to measurement.—The Walls and Ruins of brick.—Limits of modern Rome.—Rome.—Rome not a continued ruin like Pompeii.—The ruins scattered, and well preserved. I shall not enter into the ordinary details of description at Rome, but treat it as I have treated places less celebrated, touching only on those points that it has struck me are not familiarly known, or, at least were not known to me; and this, too, in my own desultory manner; for, as things have appeared to me differently from my expectations, so shall I communicate them to you. Let us then commence with an outline of the place, its general condition, and its _entourage_, before we proceed to more minute accounts.