The interior of St. Paul’s is not without a grandeur of its own, but in detail it is bare, cold, and uninteresting, tho Wren intended to have lined the dome with mosaics, and to have placed a grand baldacchino in the choir.  Tho a comparison with St. Peter’s inevitably forces itself upon those who are familiar with the great Roman basilica, there can scarcely be a greater contrast than between the two buildings.  There, all is blazing with precious marbles; here, there is no color except from the poor glass of the eastern windows, or where a tattered banner waves above a hero’s monument.  In the blue depths of the misty dome the London fog loves to linger, and hides the remains of some feeble frescoes by Thornhill, Hogarth’s father-in-law.  In St. Paul’s, as in St. Peter’s, the statues on the monuments destroy the natural proportion of the arches by their monstrous size, but they have seldom any beauty or grace to excuse them.  The week-day services are thinly attended, and, from the nave, it seems as if the knot of worshipers near the choir were lost in the immensity, and the peals of the organ and the voices of the choristers were vibrating through an arcaded solitude....

The most interesting portion of the church is the Crypt, where, at the eastern extremity, are gathered nearly all the remains of the tombs which were saved from the old St. Paul’s.  Here repose the head and half the body of Sir Nicholas Bacon (1579), Lord Keeper of the Great Seal in the reign of Elizabeth, and father of Francis, Lord Bacon.  Other fragments represent William Cokain, 1626; William Hewit, 1597; and John Wolley and his wife, 1595.  There are tablets to “Sir Simon Baskerville the rich,” physician to James I. and Charles I., 1641; and to Brian, Bishop of Chester, 1661.  The tomb of John Martin, bookseller, and his wife, 1680, was probably the first monument erected in the crypt of new St. Paul’s....

In the Crypt, not far from the old St. Paul’s tombs, the revered Dean Milman, the great historian of the church (best known, perhaps, by his “History of the Jews,” his “History of Latin Christianity,” and his contributions to “Heber’s Hymns"), is now buried under a simple tomb ornamented with a raised cross.  In a recess on the south is the slab of Sir Christopher Wren, and near him, in other chapels, Robert Mylne, the architect of old Blackfriars Bridge, and John Rennie, the architect of Waterloo Bridge.  Beneath the pavement lies Sir Joshua Reynolds (1742), who had an almost royal funeral in St. Paul’s, dukes and marquises contending for the honor of being his pallbearers.  Around him are buried his disciples and followers—­Lawrence (1830), Barry (1806), Opie (1807), West (1820), Fuseli (1825); but the most remarkable grave is that of William Maillord Turner, whose dying request was that he might be buried as near as possible to Sir Joshua.