"This room is the library room of the dean and chapter. It is fifty
feet long and forty feet wide. The floor is of oak. It is made of
two thousand three hundred and seventy-six square pieces, curiously
inlaid, without a nail or a peg to fasten them together."
After looking about for a little time in this room, in which, after all,
there was nothing very remarkable or interesting except the idea that it
was situated in one of the towers of St. Paul's, the party were
conducted across the end of the church towards the other tower seen in
the engraving; that is, the tower on the left, which is used as a
belfry. In passing through from one of these towers to the other, the
party traversed a sort of gallery which was built here across the end of
the church, and which afforded a very commanding view of the whole
interior of the edifice. The whole party stopped a moment in this
gallery to look down into the church below. They could see through the
whole length of it, five hundred feet; and Rollo and Jennie were very
much amused at the groups of people that were walking about here and
there, like mites, on the marble floor. They could see, at a great
distance, the place where the transepts crossed the main building; but
of course they could not see far into the transepts. In the same manner
they could see the beginning of the dome; but they could not see very
far up into it, the view being cut off by the vaulted roof of the nave,
which was nearer.
After this our party went to see various other curious places in and
near these two great towers. One of these places was called the model
room, where there is a very large model of a plan for a church which Sir
Christopher Wren, the architect who built St. Paul's, first designed. By
most good judges, it is thought to be a better design than the one which
was finally adopted. There were, besides this, various other curious
models and old relics in this room.
The party also went up into the clock tower, by means of a very narrow,
steep, and winding staircase, where there was only room for one to go at
a time. The steps were of stone, but they were greatly worn away by the
footsteps of the thousands of visitors that had ascended them.
There was a woman at the top of the stairs who had the charge of the
clock room. This woman showed the party the wheels of the clock, which
were of prodigious magnitude.[E] There were three bells--two that were
called the small bells, though they were really very large, and one
which was called the large bell. This last, Rollo said, was a monster.
[E] The works of this clock are on such a scale that the pendulum is
fourteen feet long, and the weight at the end weighs more than one
hundred pounds. The minute hand is eight feet long, and weighs
seventy-five pounds.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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