ning, another long ascent leads to the Whispering Gallery, below the
windows of the cupola, where visitors are requested to sit down upon a
matted seat that they may be shown how a low whisper uttered against the
wall can be distinctly heard from the other side of the dome. Hence we
reach the Stone Gallery, outside the base of the dome, whence we may
ascend to the Golden Gallery at its summit. This last ascent is
interesting, as being between the outer and inner domes, and showing how
completely different in construction one is from the other. The view from
the gallery is vast, but generally, beyond a certain distance, it is
shrouded in smoke. Sometimes, one stands aloft in a clear atmosphere,
while beneath the fog rolls like a sea, through which the steeples and
towers are just visible "like the masts of stranded vessels." Hence one
may study the anatomy of the fifty-four towers which Wren was obliged to
build after the Fire in a space of time which would only have properly
sufficed for the construction of four. The same characteristics, more and
more painfully diluted, but always slightly varied, occur in each. Bow
Church, St. Magnus, St. Bride, and St. Vedast are the best.

The Great Bell of St. Paul's (of 1716), which hangs in the south tower,
bears the inscription, "Richard Phelps made me, 1716." It only tolls on
the deaths and funerals of the royal family, of Bishops of London, Deans
of St. Paul's, and Lord Mayors who die in their mayoralty.

THE BRITISH MUSEUM AND THE CRYSTAL PALACE [Footnote: From "Notes on
England." By arrangement with the publishers, Henry Holt & Co.]

BY HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE

I have letters of introduction and a ticket of admission to the British
Museum. About the Grecian marbles, the original Italian drawings, about
the National Gallery, the Hampton Court galleries, the pictures at
Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle, and the private collections, I shall
say nothing. Still, what marvels and what historical tokens are all these
things, five or six specimens of high civilization manifested in a perfect
art, all differing greatly from that which I now examine, and so well
adapted for bringing into relief the good and the evil. To do that would
fill a volume by itself.

The Museum library contains six hundred thousand volumes; the reading-room
is vast, circular in form, and covered with a cupola, so that no one is
far from the central office, and no one has the light in his eyes. Al