Well do we remember our disappointment as we stood before that wonder of the world,--St. Peter's. We mounted the pyramid of steps and looked up, but were not overcome by the magnificence. We read in our guide-book that the edifice covers eight acres, and to the tip-top of the cross is almost five hundred feet; that it took three hundred and fifty years and twelve successive artists to finish it and an expenditure of fifty million dollars, and now costs thirty thousand dollars per annum to keep it in repair, still we do not appreciate its greatness. We pushed aside the curtain and walked in,--walked a day's journey across the transept and up and down the everlasting nave, and yet continued heterodox. We tried hard to believe it was very vast and sublime, and we knew we ought to feel its grandeur, but somehow we did not. Then we sat down by the Holy of Holies, and there we were startled into a better judgment by the astounding fact that the Cathedral of St. Paul--the largest edifice in Great Britain--could stand upright, spire, dome, body, and all, inside of St. Peter's! that the letters of the inscription which run round the _base_ of the dome, though apparently but an inch, are in reality six feet high! Then for the first time the scales fell from our eyes, the giant building began to grow; higher and higher still it rose, longer and deeper it expanded, yet in perfect proportions; the colossal structure, now a living temple, put on its beautiful garments and the robe of majesty. And that dome! the longer we looked at it the vaster it grew, till finally it seemed to be a temple not made with hands; the spacious canopy became the firmament; the mosaic figures of cherubim and seraphim were endowed with life; and as we fixed our eyes on the zenith where the Almighty is represented in glory, we thought we had the vision of Stephen. Long we gazed upward into this heaven of man's creation, and gazed again till we were lost in wonder.