Hilda, looking up, proposed that they should enter.
"I never pass it without going in," she said, "to pay my homage at the tomb of Raphael." "Nor I," said Kenyon, "without stopping to admire the noblest edifice which the barbarism of the early ages, and the more barbarous pontiffs and princes of later ones, have spared to us." They went in accordingly, and stood in the free space of that great circle, around which are ranged the arched recesses and stately altars, formerly dedicated to heathen gods, but Christianized through twelve centuries gone by.

The world has nothing else like the Pantheon.

So grand it is, that the pasteboard statues over the lofty cornice do not disturb the effect, any more than the tin crowns and hearts, the dusty artificial flowers, and all manner of trumpery gew-gaws, hanging at the saintly shrines.

The rust and dinginess that have dimmed the precious marble on the walls; the pavement, with its great squares and rounds of porphyry and granite, cracked crosswise and in a hundred directions, showing how roughly the troublesome ages have trampled here; the gray dome above, with its opening to the sky, as if heaven were looking down into the interior of this place of worship, left unimpeded for prayers to ascend the more freely; all these things make an impression of solemnity, which St.Peter's itself fails to produce.
"I think," said the sculptor, "it is to the aperture in the dome--that great Eye, gazing heavenward that the Pantheon owes the peculiarity of its effect.

It is so heathenish, as it were,--so unlike all the snugness of our modern civilization! Look, too, at the pavement, directly beneath the open space! So much rain has fallen there, in the last two thousand years, that it is green with small, fine moss, such as grows over tombstones in a damp English churchyard." "I like better," replied Hilda, "to look at the bright, blue sky, roofing the edifice where the builders left it open.