the East, surrounded with a splendid retinue of
snowy peaks that look like icebergs floating in a sea of clouds.

On our left is the most sublime spectacle 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 bananas and cocoa-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 worshiper the moment its overwhelming grandeur
breaks upon the traveler. 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 appals,
Gathers around this summit, as if to show
How earth may pierce to heaven, yet leave vain man below."

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
$50,000,000, and now costs $30,000 per annum to keep it in repair; still
we did 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 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 around the
_base_ of the dome, though apparently but an inch, are in reality