"St. Peter's is less like a church than a collection of large churches enclosed under one gigantic roof.... One is lost in it. It is a city of columns, sculptures, and mosaics." So says the clever, versatile Willis, in his "Pencillings by the Way," and it would certainly take months to examine minutely all that is worthy of attention in this vast pile. Our time, unfortunately, was limited, and we were only able to notice some of the more celebrated and striking features. Of the plan of the building, and its architecture, external and internal, I will say nothing, for what can now be said that has not been said before, and far better than I could say it? Almost every one nowadays has formed his own idea of what this great church is like--of its exceeding vastness and extent, the immensity of its over-arching dome, and its gorgeous and profuse decorations. Yet when they at length come to visit this preconceived and idealized vision, perhaps their feeling is almost one of vague disappointment. Like Hilda in the "Marble Faun," we at first prefer our own dream-edifice to the solid reality. It is, in fact, so immense that you utterly fail to take it in all at once; your gaze is arrested by ponderous columns and you must be content to see it in fragments. You yourself seem so lost in its immensity, that you find it impossible to take in its immeasurable vastness from any single standpoint, the mind utterly refusing to grasp it; but on a second and third visit, you gradually obtain a more comprehensive idea of its proportions.
"Thy mind, Expanded by the genius of the spot, Has grown colossal....
"Thou movest, but increasing with the advance, Like climbing some great Alp, which still doth rise, Deceived by its gigantic elegance; Vastness which grows, but grows to harmonize, All musical in its immensities: Rich marbles, richer painting, shrines where flame The lamps of gold, and haughty dome which vies In air with earth's chief structures, though the frame Sits on the firm-set ground--and this the clouds must claim.
"Thou seest not all; but piecemeal thou must break, To separate contemplation, the great whole: And as the ocean many bays will make, That ask the eye--so here condense the soul To more immediate objects, and control