There are over fifty splendid monuments, chiefly to English naval and military heroes, in St. Paul's, many of them most elaborate, elegant, and costly groups of marble statuary; but I left those for the last, and set about seeing other sights within the old pile, and so first started for the Whispering Gallery. This is reached by a flight of two hundred and sixty steps from the transept, and about half way up to it we were shown the library belonging to the church, containing many rare and curious works, among them the first book of Common Prayer ever printed, and a set of old monastic manuscripts, said to have been preserved from the archives of the old St. Paul's, when it was a Roman cathedral. The floor of this library is pointed out as a curiosity, being composed of a mosaic of small pieces of oak wood. Next the visitor is shown the Geometrical Stairs, a flight of ninety steps, so ingeniously constructed that they all hang together without any visible means of support except the bottom step.
Up we go, upward and onward, stopping to see the big bell,—eleven thousand four hundred and seventy-four pounds,—which is never tolled except for a death in the royal family. The hour indicated by the big clock is struck on it by a hammer moved by clock-work; but the big clapper used in tolling weighs one hundred and eighty pounds. The clock of St. Paul's seems a gigantic timepiece indeed, when you get up to it; its faces are fifty-seven feet in circumference, and the minute-hand a huge bar of steel, weighing seventy-five pounds, and nearly ten feet in length; the hour or little hand is another bar of about six feet long, weighing forty-four pounds. The figures on the dial are two feet three inches long, and the big pendulum, that sets the machinery of this great time-keeper in motion, is sixteen feet long, with a weight of one hundred and eight pounds at the end of it.
The Whispering Gallery is a gallery with a light ornamental iron railing, running entirely round the inside of the base of the cupola, a distance of one hundred and forty yards; and whispered conversation can be carried on with persons seated at the extreme opposite side of the space; the clapping of the hands gives out almost as sharp a report as the discharge of a rifle. This Whispering Gallery is a fine place to get a good view of the great paintings in the compartments of the dome, which represent leading events in the life of St. Paul. It was at the painting of these pictures that the occurrence took place, so familiar as a story, where the artist, gradually retiring a few steps backward to mark the effect of his work, and having unconsciously reached the edge of the scaffolding, would, by another step, have been precipitated to the pavement, hundreds of feet below, when a friend, seeing his peril, with great presence of mind, seized a brush and daubed some fresh paint upon the picture; the artist rushed forward to prevent the act, and saved his life. From this gallery we looked far down below to the tessellated pavement of black and white, the centre beneath the dome forming a complete mariner's compass, showing the thirty-two points.
Above this are two more galleries around the dome,—the Stone Gallery and Golden Gallery,—from which a fine view of London, its bridges and the Thames, can be had, if the day be clear. Above we come to the great stone lantern, as it is called, which crowns the cathedral, and bears up its huge ball and cross. Through the floor, in the centre of this lantern, a hole about the size of a large dinner-plate is cut, and as I stood there and looked straight down to the floor, over three hundred feet below, I will confess to a slight feeling of contraction in the soles of the feet, and after a glance or two at the people below, dwarfed by distance, I hastily retired with the suspicion of, what if the plank flooring about that aperture should be weak!
Next comes an ascent into the ball. A series of huge iron bars uphold the ball and cross; the spaces between them are open to the weather, but so narrow, that the climber, who makes his way by aid of steps notched into one of the bars, as he braces his body against the others, could not possibly get more than an arm out; so the ascent of ten feet or so is unattended with danger, and we found ourselves standing within this great globe, which from the streets below appears about the size of a large foot-ball, but which is of sufficient capacity to contain ten men. It was a novel experience to stand in that huge metallic sphere, which was strengthened by great straps of iron almost as big as railroad rails, and hear the wind, which was blowing freshly at the time, sound like a steamship's paddle-wheels above our head. Thirty feet above the globe rises the cross, which is fifteen feet high, and which the guide affirmed he really believed American visitors would climb and sit astride of, if there were any way of getting at it.
Having taken the reader to the highest accessible point, we will now descend to the lowest—the huge crypt, in which rest the last mortal remains of England's greatest naval and greatest military heroes,—Nelson and Wellington,—heroes whose pictures you see from one end of the island to the other, in every conceivable style—their portraits, naval and battle scenes in which they figured, busts, monuments, statues, engravings, and bronzes. No picture gallery seems complete without the death scene of Nelson upon his ship in the hour of victory; and one sees it so frequently, that he almost yields to the belief that the subject is as favorite a one with British artists, as certain scriptural ones used to be with the old Italian painters.
The crypt contains the immense pillars, forty feet square, which support the floor above, and in that part of it directly beneath the dome is the splendid black marble sarcophagus of Lord Nelson, surmounted by the cushion and coronet. This sarcophagus was originally prepared by Cardinal Wolsey for his own interment at Windsor, but now covers the remains of the naval hero, and bears upon its side the simple inscription "Horatio, Viscount Nelson." In another portion of the crypt is the large porphyry sarcophagus of the Duke of Wellington, the enclosure about it lighted with gas from granite candelabra, while all about in other parts of the crypt, beneath the feet of the visitor, are memorial slabs, that tell him that the ashes of some of England's most noted painters and architects rest below. Here lies Sir Christopher Wren, who built St. Paul's, and who lived to the good old age of ninety-one. Here sleeps Sir Joshua Reynolds, Sir Thomas Lawrence, and Benjamin West, painters; here Robert Mylne, who built Blackfriars' Bridge, and John Rennie, who built Southwark and Waterloo Bridges, besides many others of more or less note. In another part of the crypt is preserved the great funeral car, with all its trappings and decorations, which was used upon the occasion of the funeral ceremonies of the Duke of Wellington, and which the guide shows with great empressement, expecting an extra sixpence in addition to the three shillings and two pence you have already expended for tickets to different parts of the building.
The expenses of the whole sight are as follows: Whispering and other two galleries, sixpence; to the hall, one shilling and sixpence; library, geometrical staircase, and clock, eight-pence; crypts, sixpence. Total, three shillings and two-pence. And now, having seen all else, we take a saunter through the body of the church, and a glance at the monuments erected to the memory of those who have added to England's glory upon the sea and the field of battle.
One of the first monumental marble groups that the visitor observes on entering is that of Sir William Ponsonby, whose horse fell under him in the battle of Waterloo, leaving him to the lances of the French cuirassiers. It represents Ponsonby as a half-clad figure, slipping from his horse, that has fallen to its knees, and holding up his hand, as he dies, to receive a wreath from a rather stiff-looking marble angel, that has opportunely descended at that moment.
The statue of Dr. Samuel Johnson, represented with a scroll in his hand, and in the attitude of deep thought, stands upon a pedestal bearing a long Latin inscription.