WESTMINSTER ABBEY

F. W. FARRAR

Westminster Abbey was originally the abbey or church of Westminster, now a district in London. Tradition relates that the first abbey was built on the site of a heathen temple. King Edward the Confessor rebuilt the church, and of his work an archway may be identified. King Edward's building was consecrated in 1065; in it William the Conqueror was crowned. Henry III again rebuilt the church, which was again consecrated in 1269, though the building was not completed until 1735. The abbey is the burial-place of thirteen kings of England, as well as of five queens in their own right, and the queens of many of the kings. In the reign of Richard II the practice of burying court favorites and others in the abbey commenced, and the first poet to be laid in the south transept, often called the Poet's Corner, was Geoffrey Chaucer. In the same transept are buried Spenser, Dryden, Garrick, Johnson, Dickens, Browning, Tennyson, and others of note; and many monuments commemorate poets and literary men buried elsewhere. Nearly all English kings and queens have been crowned here, and since Edward I's reign have used the chair holding under its seat the Stone of Scone.

As you enter the cathedral which enshrines memorials of nine centuries of English history as you pass under the roof which covers more immortal dust than any other in the whole world - you can hardly fail to feel some sense of awe. And before you begin to study the cathedral in detail, I should advise you to wander through the length and breadth of it without paying any attention to minor points, but with the single object of recognizing its exquisite beauty and magnificence.

You will best understand its magnificence as a place of worship if you visit it on any Sunday afternoon, and see the choir and transepts crowded from end to end by perhaps three thousand people, among whom you will observe

hundreds of young men contented to stand through the whole of a long service and to listen, with no sign of weariness, to a sermon which perhaps occupies an hour in delivery.

These walls have heard Bishop Bonner chanting the mass in his mitre, and Stephen Marshall preaching at the funeral of Pym. Here Roman bishop and Protestant dean, who cursed each other when living, lie side by side in death; and Queen Elizabeth, who burned Papists, and Queen Mary, who burned Protestants, share one quiet grave, as they once bore the same uneasy crown.

In walking through the Abbey, to learn its general aspect, you will be struck by the bewildering multiplicity of tombs. There is not a Valhalla in the world in which repose so many of the great and good. It is this which has made the deepest impression on multitudes of visitors.

There over the western door, with his arm outstretched and his haughty head thrown back, as though in loud and sonorous utterance, he were still pouring forth to the Parliament of England the language of indomitable courage and inflexible resolve, stands William Pitt. History is recording his words of eloquence. Anarchy sits, like a chained giant, at his feet. And within a few yards of this fine monument is the no less interesting memorial of Charles James Fox-of Fox, who opposed Pitt's public funeral; of Fox, whom he once charged with using the language of a man "mad with desperation and disappointment."

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There are the monuments to great statesmen, to the naval commanders, to former deans of Westminster, and to the great Indian heroes. It is singular how exceedingly bad many of the epitaphs are, and how, as we approach the eighteenth century, they grow more and more verbose

and futile in exact proportion as the sentiments expressed by the statuary grow more and more irreligious and fantastic. Yet we should always bear in mind that even the worst monument in the Abbey has its historical significance. Its allegories, its ugliness, its obtrusiveness are like tidemarks which indicate the height or the depth to which the taste of the age had risen or sunk.

How deep, for instance, is the significance of the fact, that, as age after age advances, the tombs seem to grow more and more worldly, less and less religious! The tombs of the Plantagenet kings and crusaders represent them lying in death, with the hands clasped in prayer across the breast. But, as time advances, the effigies gradually rise to their knees, then to their feet. Then they deal in stately or impassioned gesticulation, like Pitt and Chatham.

Apart from the monuments, there are, in the nave, several graves and cenotaphs of deep interest. By the west door is the modest marble slab which records how Jeremiah Horrox, though he died as a humble curate at the age of twenty-two, was the first to rectify Kepler's theory of the motion of the moon. He was also the first to observe a transit of Venus, which he succeeded in doing on December 4, 1639, between two of the three religious services for which he was on that day responsible.

There is, close by, the bust of Zachary Macaulay, the father of Lord Macaulay, and the great opponent of the slave-trade. The inscription-written by Sir James Stephen is well worth reading for the beauty and eloquence of the language. There is the grave of John Hunter, the great anatomist. Close by this is the simple rectangular slab under which Ben Jonson was buried upright, having asked Charles I for eighteen square

inches of ground in Westminster Abbey. On this stone was carved the quaint and striking epitaph, “O rare Ben Jonson," which, only the accidental expression of a passer-by, was afterwards copied upon his bust in "Poets' Corner."

Near the centre of the nave a slab records that the grave beneath was the resting-place, for some months, of George Peabody; and on this slab are carved the words of his early prayer, that, if God prospered him, He would enable him to render some memorial service to his fellowmen. A little farther on, is the grave of Livingstone, which records the last pathetic words found in his diary: “All I can add in my loneliness, is, May Heaven's rich blessing come down on every one, American, English, or Turk, who will help to heal this open sore of the world the slave-trade."

There are, however, two monuments to which I must lead you before I conclude. One is the monument to Sir Isaac Newton, close beside whose grave were laid the mortal remains of Charles Darwin. The tomb of Newton is well worth your notice, from its intrinsic beauty, as well as from the fact that it is placed above the last restingplace of one of the greatest of Englishmen. The monument is by Rysbraeck. Over it is a celestial globe, on which is marked the course of the comet of 1680. Leaning on this is the figure of Astronomy, who has closed her book as though, for the time, her labors were over.

The very ingenious bas-relief below expresses in allegory the various spheres of Newton's labors. At the right three lovely little genii are minting money to indicate Newton's service to the currency; near them a boy looking through a prism symbolizes the discoveries of Newton respecting the laws of light; a fifth is weighing the sun