CHAPTER X. THE DOME OF ST. PAUL'S.
The dome of St. Paul's rises above the centre of the church, over the intersection of the arms of the cross. There are, in fact, two domes-an interior and an exterior one; and there are three galleries connected with them which strangers visit. The first of these galleries is an interior one. It passes round the church on the inside, just at the base of the interior dome. Our party were going first to visit this gallery.
They accordingly walked back through the whole length of the long corridor described at the close of the last chapter, and then turned in towards the centre of the building through a sort of passage way leading to a door which was pointed out to them by the guide. On entering this door, they found themselves ushered at once into the whispering gallery. This they found was a vast circular gallery, extending all round the interior of the church, directly under the dome.
"Ah," said Mr. George, "here we are in the whispering gallery!"
There was a man standing just inside the door. He accosted the party as soon as they came in.
"Ladies and gentlemen," said he, "this is the whispering gallery. If you will pass round to the other side of it, and put your ears against the wall, I will show you the effect."
So, Mr. George leading the way, and the others following, they all passed round the gallery towards the other side. The gallery was not very wide, the space being only sufficient for two or three persons to walk abreast. There was a high balustrade on the edge of it, and on the other side a continuous seat against the wall. First Rollo and Jennie, running forward a little way, sat down on the seat to try it. Then, going forward again a little in advance of Mr. George and Mrs. Holiday, they stopped to look over the balustrade. Rollo could look over it down upon the floor of the church far below. Jennie was not tall enough to look over the balustrade, and so she looked through.
"There!" said Rollo to Jennie, pointing down; "there's the place where we stood when we looked up to this whispering gallery at the time we first came in."
The party went on until they had walked half round the gallery and were exactly opposite the man who was standing at the door where they had entered. Here Mr. George stopped and sat down upon the seat.
[Illustration: THE WHISPERING GALLERY.]
"Come," said he, "we must all sit down on this seat and put our ears against the wall."
Mrs. Holiday and the children did as Mr. George had directed, and listened. The man at the door, then putting his mouth to the wall, began to speak in a low tone,-almost in a whisper, in fact,-saying something about the building of the church; and though he was at a great distance from them,-so far, that if he had been in the open air it would have been necessary for him to have called out in a very loud voice to make them hear,-yet every word and syllable of his whisper was distinctly audible, the sound being brought round in some mysterious manner along the smooth surface of the wall.
"It is very extraordinary!" said Mrs. Holiday.
"It is, indeed!" said Mr. George.
Rollo himself, however, did not seem to be so much interested in this acoustic phenomenon as his uncle had been. His attention was attracted to the spectacle of the workmen, who were employed in repainting the inner surface of the dome, and whom he could now see at their work on the staging which he had looked up to from below. One side of the staging-the side towards the wall-was supported by a cornice, which it rested upon there. The other side-the side that was towards the centre of the dome-was suspended by ropes and pulleys, which came down through the lantern from a vast height above.
There was a ladder, the foot of which rested on this staging, the top of it being placed against the surface of the dome above. There was a man upon this ladder, near the top of it, at work on the ceiling, and two or three assistants on the staging at the foot of it.
Rollo and Jennie gazed some time with great wonder and awe at this spectacle, picturing to their imaginations the scene which would ensue if the ropes from the lantern above, by which the staging was suspended, were to break and let the staging, the ladders, and the men all down to the pavement below.
Presently Rollo and Jane, on looking up, found that Mr. George and Mrs. Holiday were going back; so they made haste to follow them. On their way towards the door they met other parties coming in to see the whispering gallery. They themselves went out; and, following the directions of the guide, they began to ascend again, by various intricate and winding staircases, to higher parts of the building still. After ascending to the height of four or five stories more, the party came to another gallery, which was, however, outside of the church instead of within it. This outer gallery is called the stone gallery; it is so called to distinguish it from another outer gallery, still higher up, called the golden gallery. You can see the places of both these galleries by looking at the engraving, as they are both outside of the building. The stone gallery is below the dome. You can see the balustrade surrounding it, just above the head of the statue which stands on the pediment in the centre of the building. There is a row of columns above this gallery which supports an entablature above them, that forms the base of the dome.
As soon as the party came out into the open air they began to realize how high they had ascended; for they found, on looking down into the neighboring streets, that the tops of the chimneys of the six-story houses there were far below them. And yet, as you will see by looking at the engraving, they had not, thus far, ascended more than half way to the top of the building.
The party walked round the stone gallery, looking off over the roofs of the houses in the city on every side. They could see the river, the bridges, vast ranges of warehouses, and long streets, with tiny omnibuses and carts creeping slowly along them, and men, like mites, moving to and fro along the sidewalks. They could see tall chimneys, too, pouring forth columns of smoke, and steeples and spires of churches, far below them.
"How high we are!" said Rollo.
"Yes," said Mrs. Holiday; "I am high enough. I do not wish to go any higher."
In fact, it was somewhat frightful to be so high. It even made Mr. George dizzy to look down from so vast an elevation.
"Are we above, or below, the dome?" said Mrs. Holiday.
"We are above the inner dome," said Mr. George, "but below the outer one."
"I thought they were both the same," said Mrs. Holiday. "I thought the inner dome was the under side of the outer one."
"It ought to be," said Mr. George; "but it is not so in St. Paul's. There is a great space between, filled with masonry and carpentry."
Here Mr. George led the way up a flight of stone steps that ascended from the gallery to a door leading into the interior of the church again. When they had all entered they looked up and saw above and around them the commencement of a perfect maze of beams, piers, walls, buttresses, and braces, all blackened by the smoky London atmosphere, and worn and corroded by time. What was near of this immense complication was dimly seen by the faint light which made its way through the narrow openings which were left here and there in nooks and corners; but the rest was lost in regions of darkness and gloom, into which the eye strove in vain to penetrate.
This was the space between the inner and the outer dome. The walls which were seen were part of an immense cone of masonry which was built in the centre to sustain the whole structure. The lantern above, with the ball and cross surmounting it, rests on the top of this cone. The outer dome is formed around the sides of it without. This outer dome is made of wood; and the immense system of beams and braces which our party saw in the darkness around them were parts of the framework by which it is supported.