When I next saw the Duke of Wellington, I had the honour of being presented to him, and of observing his person and his manners more narrowly, in a scene of private festivity. I saw him once again, and that, too, was at St. James’s, amid all the splendours of the Court, dressed in his military uniform, and glittering with decorations. Even there he was the “observed of all observers,” and long will it be before such another shall be seen amid its splendours, giving, rather than receiving lustre, in the face of the throne itself. But to have seen the old hero bowing at the throne of grace, and asking mercy as a miserable sinner, through the precious blood-shedding of Jesus Christ, will often be one of the things which I shall most pleasingly recall, when I see some poor dying cottager, or tenant of a garret, taking into his hand, with as good a right, the same cup of salvation. When I first came into the neighborhood of St. Paul’s, I was far more impressed than I had expected to be with its dingy, but still sublime exterior. With this Cathedral I had no very agreeable associations. Erected during the first period of decline in correct taste and sound theology, subsequent to the Rebellion, it naturally partakes of the cold formality of the age, and is altogether as Anti-Anglican as pedantry and an over-estimation of the classical in art could make it. It is in the style of a Roman Basilica, rather than of an English Church, and is far more suitable to Tridentine notions, than any Church in England erected before the Reformation. Still, it is beautiful; I think exceedingly so: and St. Peter’s, in the Vatican, is as inferior to this, in model, as this is inferior to St. Peter’s in dimensions and internal magnificence. I give my opinion boldly, for I feel sure that there can be no just room for difference of opinion as to this matter. The more I saw of St. Peter’s, the less was I satisfied with its ill-conceived and awkwardly developed bulk; while every time I saw St. Paul’s, I found myself more and more in love with its rich combinations of grace and majesty. How it came to pass that Michael Angelo and his partners produced only a magnificent monster, while Sir Christopher Wren came so near producing a model of magnificence, it may be hard to tell; but though the latter has its faults, no one can do less than admit, that if the immensity of St. Peter’s embodied the same outline and proportions which are preserved in St. Paul’s, the whole effect of the front, as you approach it between the colonnades of Bernini, would be inconceivably better. St. Paul’s unfortunately has no such approach; but its great dome looms before you, as you begin to ascend Ludgate-hill, for all the world like a peak of the Alps descried through the gorge of Gondo. When the promised improvements are made in the neighborhood of the churchyard, and when a better finish and composition of details are adopted at the eastern end,