This scheme to
condense and invigorate sound at so great a distance is really
wonderful. I once noticed some sound of the same sort in the
senatorial cellar at Bremen; but neither that, nor I believe any
other in the world, can pretend to come in competition with this.
I now ascended several steps to the great gallery, which runs on the
outside of the great dome, and here I remained nearly two hours, as
I could hardly, in less time, satisfy myself with the prospect of
the various interesting objects that lay all round me, and which can
no where be better seen, than from hence.
Every view, and every object I studied attentively, by viewing them
again and again on every side, for I was anxious to make a lasting
impression of it on my imagination.
Below me lay steeples, houses, and palaces in countless numbers; the
squares with their grass plots in their middle that lay agreeably
dispersed and intermixed, with all the huge clusters of buildings,
forming meanwhile a pleasing contrast, and a relief to the jaded
eye.
At one end rose the Tower - itself a city - with a wood of masts
behind it; and at the other Westminster Abbey with its steeples.
There I beheld, clad in smiles, those beautiful green hills that
skirt the environs of Paddington and Islington; here, on the
opposite bank of the Thames, lay Southwark; the city itself it seems
to be impossible for any eye to take in entirely, for with all my
pains I found it impossible to ascertain either where it ended, or
where the circumjacent villages began; far as the eye could reach,
it seemed to be all one continued chain of buildings.
I well remember how large I thought Berlin when first I saw it from
the steeple of St. Mary, and from the Temple Yard Hills, but how did
it now sink and fall in my imagination, when I compared it with
London!
It is, however, idle and vain to attempt giving you in words, any
description, however faint and imperfect, of such a prospect as I
have just been viewing. He who wishes at one view to see a world in
miniature, must come to the dome of St Paul's.
The roof of St. Paul's itself with its two lesser steeples lay below
me, and as I fancied, looked something like the background of a
small ridge of hills, which you look down upon when you have
attained the summit of some huge rock or mountain. I should gladly
have remained here sometime longer, but a gust of wind, which in
this situation was so powerful that it was hardly possible to
withstand it, drove me down.
