I used to try to
imagine how the English cathedrals must have looked in their primeval
glory, before the Reformation, and before the whitewash of Cromwell's
time had overlaid their marble pillars; but I never imagined anything at
all approaching what my eyes now beheld: this sheen of polished and
variegated marble covering every inch of its walls; this glow of
brilliant frescos all over the roof, and up within the domes; these
beautiful pictures by great masters, painted for the places which they
now occupied, and making an actual portion of the edifice; this wealth of
silver, gold, and gems, that adorned the shrines of the saints, before
which wax candles burned, and were kept burning, I suppose, from year's
end to year's end; in short, there is no imagining nor remembering a
hundredth part of the rich details. And even the cathedral (though I
give it up as indescribable) was nothing at all in comparison with a
church to which the commissionaire afterwards led us; a church that had
been built four or five hundred years ago, by a pirate, in expiation of
his sins, and out of the profit of his rapine.
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