The laws made here ort to be noble and big-sized, indeed, to correspond with the place they are made in. It covers eight acres of ground, has eleven hundred rooms, one hundred stairways, and eleven courts. It cost over fifteen millions, so they say.
But I d’no, I didn’t feel ashamed of our own Capitol at Washington when I see it. That is a good sizable buildin’, and made on honor, good enough and big enough to correspond with the laws made in it.
Yes, indeed!
Wall, Westminster Hall, that we went through to go to the House of Parliament, wuz dretful interestin’.
The great Hall of William Rufus wuz built first in 1097. Rufus wanted a great Hall, where he could hold banquets, and not feel crowded, and feel that he had air enough, and wuzn’t in any danger of hittin’ his head on the ceilin’, so he built this Hall.
It wuz partly burnt up once, but it has been repaired, so that it is a room now good enough for anybody, and big enough so’s the World and his wife and children could eat dinner here if they wanted to, or so it seemed.
It is three hundred feet long, seventy feet wide, and ninety feet high. The ruff overhead is carved into many beautiful forms, and is one of the largest in the world that has no columns or supports from below.
Glorious seens have been enacted in this Hall, as well as dretful ones. After the Hall wuz built over and beautified by Richard II., the very first public meetin’ held in this Hall wuz to take away his crown and septer and send him to prison.
Poor thing! after all he’d went through buildin’ it. I should thought them old timbers and jices would have creaked and groaned to have seen it go on.
I know well how I should have felt after we got our house altered over, and I’d jest got the parlor papered and carpeted and new curtains up, if I’d had to be dragged off and shet up, and let Sister Bobbett or Sister Henzy move in and take the comfort of it.