The wonders of the world

by John Loraine Abbott

Silliman, in his late “Visit to Europe,” adds points of interest with regard to St. Peter’s not given above, which therefore we quote. “The interior,” he says, “is beyond description rich and magnificent. It is said to have cost fifty million dollars. The circumference of each of the four great pillars which support the dome, is two hundred and thirty-four feet. The diameter of the dome is one hundred and ninety-five feet; the hight of the dome to the lantern, is four hundred and five feet; to the top of the cross, is four hundred and thirty-four feet. The floor is composed entirely of marble of various colors, and disposed in ornamental forms; indeed, the whole interior of the church, the columns and pilasters excepted, is faced with the most beautiful marble, highly polished; while numerous medallions, exquisite monuments, and splendid mosaic copies of the best pictures, adorn the interior, and form an integral part of its walls. The roof, or ceiling, is stuccoed in sunken squares or panels, richly gilt. There is no part which is not sumptuously decorated. It seems as if ingenuity, art, taste, talent, and skill, all the resources of wealth, and of Nature herself, through all her vast storehouse of materials, had been laid under contribution, to make St. Peter’s the most glorious of the structures reared by man. With a pure faith, it would be a temple worthy of the God who created all the materials with which it is built, and who furnished man with all the faculties, which have enabled him to rear and adorn this unrivaled structure, a fit abode, like the glorious fane of Jerusalem, for the habitation of the spiritual influence of Jehovah. St. Peter’s was one hundred and seventy-six years in building. Indeed, including all its vicissitudes, the period was three hundred and fifty years, under forty-three popes. It was finally dedicated by Urban VIII., November eighteenth, 1626. The vases for holding holy water serve to give an idea of the immensity of the building. They are supported by cherubs, which, on first entering the church, appear like children, but on approaching them they are found to be six feet high. Another illustration is derived from the mosaic figures of the four evangelists, with their emblems over the arches. The pen in the hand of St. Mark is six feet long. Upon the frieze running round the basis of the dome is this inscription, each letter of which is six feet long, and yet the writing is only conveniently legible below: Tv es petrvs et svper hanc petram aedificabo ecclesiam meam et tibi dabo claves regni.”

THE SOIL OF ROME.

In leaving the wonders of Rome, and the city itself, we will quote an interesting extract from Townsend’s “Tour in Italy,” in 1850. “Many authors,” he says, “have asserted, as their interpretation of some parts of the Apocalypse, that Rome will be destroyed by fire from heaven, or swallowed up by earthquakes, or overwhelmed with destruction by volcanoes, as the visible punishment of the Almighty, for its popery and its crimes. I am unwilling, having read so many books on the interpretation of the prophecy, to deduce any argument of this kind from the prophecies which are unfulfilled; but I behold everywhere—in Rome, near Rome, and through the whole region from Rome to Naples—the most astounding proofs, not merely of the possibility, but the probability that the whole region of central Italy will one day be destroyed by such a catastrophe. The soil of Rome is tufa, with a volcanic subterranean action still going on. At Naples the boiling sulphur is to be seen bubbling near the surface of the earth. When I drew a stick along upon the ground, the sulphurous smoke followed the indentation; and it would never surprise me to hear of the utter destruction of the southern peninsula of Italy. The entire country and district is volcanic. It is saturated with beds of sulphur and the substrata of destruction. It seems as certainly prepared for the flames as the wood and coal on the hearth are prepared for the taper which shall kindle the fire to consume them. I again read the remarks of Dr. Cumming: ‘Rome,’ he believes, ‘is to be overthrown by judgment; not to be converted by the agency of the gospel, nor to be exhausted by political assaults. It is literally to be consumed by fire.’ Whether he is correct in regarding such an event as the fulfillment of the prophecies, and the demonstration of the anger of the Creator against the incorrigible assumption of an erring and influential church, I know not; but the divine hand alone seems to me to hold the element of fire in check by a miracle as great as that which protected the cities of the plain, till the righteous Lot had made his escape to the mountains.”

EDDYSTONE LIGHT-HOUSE.

The Eddystone rocks, on which this celebrated light-house is built, are situated nearly south-south-west from the middle of Plymouth sound, being distant from the port of Plymouth nearly fourteen miles, and from the promontory called Ramshead, about ten miles. They are almost in the line, but somewhat within it, which joins the Start and the Lizard points; and as they lie nearly in the direction of vessels coasting up and down the channel, they were necessarily, before the establishment of a light-house, very dangerous, and often fatal to ships under such circumstances. Their situation, likewise, relatively to the bay of Biscay and the Atlantic ocean, is such that they lie open to the swells of both from all the south-western points of the compass; which swells are generally allowed by mariners to be very great and heavy in those seas, and particularly in the bay of Biscay. It is to be observed, that the soundings of the sea, from the south-west toward the Eddystone, are from eighty fathoms to forty, and that in every part, until the rocks are approached, the sea has a depth of at least thirty fathoms; insomuch that all the heavy seas from the south-west reach them uncontrolled, and break on them with the utmost fury.

The force and hight of these seas are increased by the fact that the rocks stretch across the channel, in a direction north and south, to the length of above one hundred fathoms, and by their lying in a sloping manner toward the south-west quarter. This striving of the rocks, as it is technically called, does not cease at low-water, but still goes on progressively; so that, at fifty fathoms westward, there are twelve fathoms of water; neither does it terminate at the distance of a mile. From this configuration it happens, that the seas are swollen to such a degree, in storms and heavy gales of wind, as to break on the rocks with the utmost violence. It is not surprising, therefore, that the dangers to which navigators were exposed by the Eddystone rocks should have made a great commercial nation desirous to have a light-house erected on them. The wonder is that any one should have had sufficient resolution to undertake its construction. Such a man was, however, found in the person of Mr. Henry Winstanley, of Littleburgh, in Essex, who, being furnished with the necessary powers to carry the design into execution, entered on his undertaking in 1696, and completed it in four years. So certain was he of the stability of his structure, that he declared it to be his wish to be in it “during the greatest storm which ever blew under the face of the heavens.” In this wish he was but too amply gratified; for while he was there with his workmen and light-keepers, that dreadful storm began, which raged most violently on the night of the twenty-sixth of November, 1703; and of all the accounts of the kind with which history has furnished us, no one has exceeded this in Great Britain, nor has been more injurious or extensive in its devastations. On the following morning, when the storm was so much abated, that an inquiry could be made, whether the light-house had suffered from it, nothing was to be seen standing, with the exception of some of the large irons by which the work was fixed on the rock; nor were any of the people, nor any of the materials of the building ever found afterward.

THE EDDYSTONE LIGHT-HOUSE.

In 1709, another light-house was built of wood, on a very different construction, by Mr. John Rudyerd, then a silk-mercer on Ludgate hill. This very ingenious structure, after having braved the elements for forty-six years, was burned to the ground in 1755. On the destruction of this light-house, that excellent mechanic and engineer, Mr. Smeaton, was selected as the fittest person to build another. He found some difficulty in persuading the proprietors, that a stone building, properly constructed, would be in every respect preferable to one of wood; but having at length convinced them, he turned his thoughts to the shape which would be most suitable to a building so critically situated. Reflecting on the structure of the former buildings, it seemed to him a material improvement to procure, if possible, an enlargement of the base, without increasing the size of the waist, or that part of the building placed between the top of the rock and the top of the solid work. Hence he thought a greater degree of strength and stiffness would be gained, accompanied with less resistance to the acting power. On this occasion, the natural figure of the waist, or bole of a large spreading oak, occurred to our sagacious engineer.

With these very enlightened views, as to the proper form of the superstructure, Mr. Smeaton began the work on the second of April, 1757, and completed it on the fourth of August, 1759. Its appearance, as completed, may be seen in the cut on the preceding page. The rock, which slopes toward the south-west, is cut into horizontal steps, into which are dovetailed, and united by a strong cement, Portland stone and granite. The whole to the hight of thirty-five feet from the foundation, is a solid body of stones, engrafted into each other, and united by every means of additional strength that could be devised. The building has four rooms, one over the other, and at the top a gallery and lantern. The stone floors are flat above, but concave beneath, and are kept from pressing against the sides of the building by a chain let into the walls. It is nearly eighty feet in hight, and since its completion has been assaulted by the fury of the elements, without suffering the smallest injury. To trace the progress of so vast an undertaking, and to show with what skill and judgment this unparalleled engineer overcame the greatest difficulties, would far exceed the limits of this work.