pectacle in the New World. It is a
majestic pile of snow, its clear outline on the deep blue sky describing
the profile of a lion in repose. At noon the vertical sun, and the
profusion of light reflected from the glittering surface, will not allow
a shadow to be cast on any part, so that you can easily fancy the figure
is cut out of a mountain of spotless marble. This is Chimborazo,--yet
not the whole of it,--you see but a third of the great giant. His feet
are as eternally green as his head is everlastingly white; but they are
far away beneath the banana and cocoanut palms of the Pacific coast.

Rousseau was disappointed when he first saw the sea; and the first
glimpse of Niagara often fails to meet one's expectations. But
Chimborazo is sure of a worshipper the moment its overwhelming grandeur
breaks upon the traveller. You feel that you are in the presence-chamber
of the monarch of the Andes. There is sublimity in his kingly look of
which the ocean might be proud.

"All that expands the spirit, yet appeals,
Gathers around this summit, as if to show
How earth may pierce to heaven, yet leave vain man below."

[Illustration: THE MONARCHS OF THE ANDES]

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 eye