'By far the most beautiful piece of ancientry in Rome is that simple and unutterable Pantheon to which I repeated my devotions yesterday afternoon. It makes you profoundly regret that you are not a pagan suckled in the creed outworn that produced it. It's the most conclusive example I have seen yet of the simple sublime. Imagine simply a vast cupola with its drum, set directly on the earth and fronted with a porch of columns and a triangular summit: the interior lighted by a hole in the apex of the cupola and the circumference furnished with a series of altars. The effect is the very delicacy of grandeur - and more worshipful to my perception than the most mysterious and aspiring Gothic.'
from a letter by Henry James to his sister in 1869
