But the great churches, though they could hardly be models for imitation, yet demanded admiration and criticism. St. Peter’s disappointed him greatly in its elevation. He thought it had “a confused appearance and want of simple grandeur;” that “the openings in the centre were too crowded,” and that “the three-quarter columns, always objectionable, did not afford sufficient relief.” The details he greatly disliked. He noticed especially the want of apparent size in a building, one of the largest in the world, and accounted for it by the presence of colossal figures on the top of the façade, without anything to give the true scale,[21] by the want of sufficient projection in the front, and the enormous size of the windows, and by the impossibility of seeing any great part of the dome from the piazza, whence alone the whole substructure was visible. On the whole he much preferred the exterior of St. Paul’s, in spite of the “piling of order upon order,” which was a departure from Wren’s original design; he preferred its regularity of design to “the complicated front and lofty attic of St. Peter’s;” he thought the circular peristyle of columns under the dome far finer than the corresponding substructure in the other case; and, if only the churchyard could be enlarged, he thought that its complete insulation, and the fine perspective views which it offers, gave it a decided advantage in position and apparent grandeur. It was far otherwise with the general effect of the interior of St. Peter’s. Its magnificent size, satisfying his love of spaciousness, its beautiful proportions and simplicity of design, its richness and completeness of decoration, producing a sense of harmony and perfection, seized his imagination at once, and seemed to “leave nothing to be desired.” Its details he thought unworthy of special notice; but not so its decoration. The decoration of the dome delighted him; but the gem in his eyes was the baptistery. There the arrangement of marbles and mosaics seemed perfect, both in colour and form; it constantly recurred to him in designing, and had much to do with fixing his taste for that gorgeous kind of decoration. He delighted also in the gilding of the vault. Being wholly gilt (either dead or burnished gold), it seemed not gilt, but golden. This was to him real magnificence; “parcel-gilding” was gaudy, and he held it in contempt. This vault and the ceiling of Sta. Maria Maggiore were models which he would have gladly followed in his designs, and it was with reluctance that he gave up the idea of making the roof of his House of Lords all gold. The piazza in front of St. Peter’s, with its semicircular colonnades and magnificent fountains, greatly impressed him. The remembrance of it constantly floated before his memory as the ideal of the proper treatment of such a spot; and he long cherished a hope of realizing his ideal in London.[22]