At about half-past ten, Mr. ---- called for us, and we walked up to the cathedral, which is a large unfinished stone building, standing on the brow of a hill, which is to be the fashionable quarter of the town, and where there are already some very nice-looking houses. The interior of the church is large and handsome, and has more the look of a church than any thing I have been inside of in this country yet. 'Tis full eight years since I was in a Catholic church; and the sensation with which I approached the high altar, with its golden crucifix, its marble entablatures, and its glimmering starry lights, savoured fully as much of sadness as devotion. I have not been in a Catholic place of worship since I was at school. How well I remember the beautiful music of the military mass, the pageants and processions of the feast days at high mass, and the evening service, not vespers, but the Salut.[82] They sang that exquisitely mournful and beautiful _Et incarnatus est_, of Haydn's, which made my blood all run backwards. One thing disgusted me dreadfully, though the priests who were officiating never passed or approached the altar without bending the knee to it, they kept spitting all over the carpet that surrounded and covered the steps to it, interrupting themselves in the middle of the service to do so, without the slightest hesitation. We had a very indifferent sermon: the service was of course in Latin. When it was over, Mr. ---- insisted on showing me some paintings which hung on either side the grand entrance. These were a couple of pictures by Paulin Guerin; the one representing the descent from the cross, the other, the burying of the dead, by St. Charles, in the Holy Land. I do not understand much about bad pictures, but I know good ones when I see them; and I think these were not such. There was no beauty of imagination or poetical conception whatever in them, and there appeared to me to be manifold glaring faults in the execution. I could have sworn to their being French pictures. Was introduced to several people, coming out of church. A little way beyond the cathedral stands Washington's monument,--a _neat and appropriate_ pillar,--which, together with a smaller one erected at the head of our street, to the memory of the North Point heroes, has given Baltimore the appellation of the monumental city, which never could have befallen it in any other country under heaven but this. At eight o'clock, we went to Mrs. ----'s. They are all in deep mourning, and the circle was very small. They are most agreeable pleasant people, with a peculiar gentleness of manner, like very high breeding, which I have often observed in Catholics of the better orders. Their conversation appeared to me totally divested of the disagreeable accent which seems almost universal in this country. Mrs. ---- talked to me about my aunt Whitelock, and what a charming actress she was, and what an enchanting thrilling voice she had. I spent a delightful evening.