now, if we can help it.

Resting here, at any rate, for a few minutes, look up to the whitewashed
vaulting of the compartment of the roof next the west end.

You will see nothing whatever in it worth looking at. Nevertheless,
look a little longer.

But the longer you look, the less you will understand why I tell you to
look. It is nothing but a whitewashed ceiling: vaulted indeed,--but so
is many a tailor's garret window, for that matter. Indeed, now that you
have looked steadily for a minute or so, and are used to the form of
the arch, it seems to become so small that you can almost fancy it the
ceiling of a good-sized lumber-room in an attic.

Having attained to this modest conception of it, carry your eyes back
to the similar vault of the second compartment, nearer you. Very little
further contemplation will reduce that also to the similitude of a
moderately-sized attic. And then, resolving to bear, if possible--for
it is worth while,--the cramp in your neck for another quarter of a
minute, look right up to the third vault, over your head; which, if
not, in the said quarter of a minute, reducible in imagination to a
tailor's garret, will at least sink, like the two others, into the
semblance of a common arched ceiling, of no serious magnitude or
majesty.

Then, glance quickly down from it to the floor, and round at the space,
(included between the four pillars), which that vault covers. It is
sixty feet square,[Footnote: Approximately. Thinking I could find the
dimensions of the duomo anywhere, I only paced it myself,--and cannot,