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Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

A Walk Round Westminster Abbey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

FACING PAGE

INTRODUCTION

With the last of the Tudors there is no doubt that the strong and living bond between the palace and the Abbey was slackened, although it has never been altogether snapped, nor will it be as long as the coronation of our sovereigns continues to take place in Westminster Abbey. Then and then only does the king resume all his ancient rights, the collegiate body is practically deposed, and people realise that their national church is really a royal peculiar. For while the kings came less and less to St. Edward's shrine, their subjects in ever-increasing numbers, like the pilgrims in olden times, were and are drawn hither as by a magnet, till Westminster has become the sanctuary of a nation, and is no longer the sepulchre of the seed royal. A plain English squire, one of that "happy breed of men" to whom his native land--"this little world, this precious stone set in a silver sea"--was dearer than the blood of kings, was destined to inaugurate a new epoch in the annals of the Abbey. To this man, Oliver Cromwell, it is that we owe the first conception of this church as a fitting burial-place for our national worthies. From the State obsequies of Admiral Blake, which were held here by Cromwell's command, has germinated the seed which has borne fruit in the public funerals and in the monuments, ordered and paid for by Parliament, of statesmen, soldiers and sailors. The nineteenth century has closed, and there is little space available in the Abbey for the worthies of the twentieth, but the national feeling still turns instinctively to Westminster on the death of a great man. For a long time past memorial services have been substituted for the grave or cenotaph, so lavishly granted to practically the first comer only a hundred years ago. Yet although the material fabric of this ancient foundation can no longer receive her sons within her bosom, her spirit is perhaps more alive than it has ever been since her altars were demolished and the images of her saints torn from their high places. No longer do the smoke of innumerable candles and the fumes of incense blacken and obscure her arches, but the spiritual breath of supplication and of thanksgiving still as of yore ascends to heaven from this ancient church, consecrated by the prayers of so many past generations. The old order has changed, and a Protestant form of worship has long taken the place of the florid mass; what further changes the future has in store no man can prophesy. But at present churchmen of all shades of religious feeling may worship in this church with no extreme ritual to disturb their minds, and at the same time with none of that irreverent and jarring carelessness in the ordering of the services which vexed the souls of many in the days long ago, before any of the present generation were born. On one festival in the year, the Translation of St. Edward the Confessor, the 13th of October, Roman Catholics return in ever-increasing numbers to the West Minster, which was once their own, and pilgrims may be seen kneeling round the shrine, offering their devotions to the saint. On this historic day the Abbey clergy, mindful also of the founder's memory, keep his feast at their own service in the choir, by a sermon preached in his honour, Protestants and Catholics thus uniting in a common homage to the memory of the sainted English king.

There are several points of view whence the group of buildings formed by the Abbey, St. Margaret's Church, Westminster Hall, and the Houses of Parliament, can be seen above the roofs of the houses, or without any intervening obstruction. The foreigner who arrives at Charing Cross first sees Westminster from the railway bridge, and gets another and a nearer aspect as he reaches the bottom of Whitehall. Now that passenger-steamers ply once again upon the river, many persons are familiar with the unrivalled water approach, but no longer does the wayfarer coming from the south or east hire a boat from the Lambeth side, and thus follow the traditional route taken by St. Peter, when he came to consecrate the original church on Thorneye. Although the Roman road, which led from north to south of England, and crossed the river here, is entirely lost sight of in London, the intending visitor will be well advised if he walk to the Abbey by the parks. From the bridge over the Serpentine he gets a distant view, and all the way, by Green Park and St. James's, there are glimpses of the Westminster Towers. At present, in the temporary absence of any building where the old aquarium used to be, he has but to cross Birdcage Walk, take the old Cockpit passage into Queen Anne's Gate, and from Dartmouth Street, just across the way, he will see a magnificent view of the Abbey Church with her small daughter, St Margaret, by her side. As he approaches nearer, down Tothill Street, the ugly Western Towers, which we owe in the first instance to Wren's incapacity to understand Gothic architecture, in the second to his successor Hawkesmore's want of taste in the execution, become too prominent.

GENERAL VIEW OF THE ABBEY FROM WHITEHALL

The traveller who approaches Westminster from this direction has a fine view of the whole extent of the Abbey from east to west. St. Margaret's Church, while it certainly somewhat hides the more ancient building, adds to the impression of size. The statues of statesmen on the green in front prepare the minds of those who enter the north transept by the triple doorway, which we have already seen in the frontispiece, for the galaxy of politicians within, and when we stand beneath the lantern we can realise the plan of the whole far better after this general view than we could if we had entered immediately by the west door at the farther end.

The exterior of the church has suffered much from the ravages of time and of smoke. Before entering, it is well to take a survey of the outside, and so prepare ourselves for a more exhaustive ramble round the interior.

THE WEST FRONT

At that time, with the approval of Dean Atterbury, the decaying tracery of the north rose window was completely destroyed and remodelled. The south had already been tampered with, and Wren anathematises the little Doric passage, which in Atterbury's time was patched on before the northern window, and the "cropping of the pyramids." In the first years of the eighteenth century Wren was himself Surveyor of the fabric, and, while he saved much of the stone-work from irretrievable ruin, fresh havoc called by the name of restoration was wrought under his directions and after his time by his successors. The decaying stone all round the nave and both transepts was in urgent need of repair, if not actually in ruins, and, probably in order to save trouble and expense, the small Early English pilasters supporting the window tracery were remorselessly cut off, and an acorn was substituted in every case. These pilasters have since been restored again under Mr. Pearson's supervision. As we walk along the green to the north front, we see the whole north side of the nave, but before leaving the west end we may note that repairs have recently been carried out, as one or two of the crockets were showing signs of immediate ruin, and even the eighteenth-century towers required new faces. The north fa?ade was completely restored and, in fact, practically rebuilt about twenty years ago: the portico from designs left by Sir Gilbert Scott, who was Surveyor of the fabric for some time, and the upper part by his successor, Mr. Pearson, who carried out the whole work. Both north and west fronts recall Wren, who remodelled the north and restored the west. Whether he or Hawkesmore was guilty of finally sweeping away the last vestiges of Richard the Second's northern entrance and such of the figures which still remained intact at the west end, we do not know. In any case, Crull, writing in 1713, says that a few of the statues of the twelve apostles which adorned Richard's portico were still in a fair state of preservation, as were many of the "benefactors" on the west, "all undeniable witnesses of their former excellency." It is impossible to enter into the history of the fabric fund and the many restorations of the Abbey. Enough for our present purpose to call attention to the fact that the soft stone is constantly corroding, and that frequent supervision is necessary. The saying that "the arch never sleeps" is only too true, and the Clerk of the Works has to keep a constant and vigilant eye over the church which he so dearly loves, ever ready to report any sign of change in stone-work or actual fabric to the Dean and to the architect.

A WALK ROUND WESTMINSTER ABBEY

The most usual way to enter the church is by the north doorway, but the more convenient trysting-place is the west end of the nave. Our purpose in the following pages is to picture a morning spent in the Abbey with a party of tourists, who have been collected in a somewhat haphazard manner before a start is made, and are now assembled beneath the statue of the younger Pitt. Although the majority are probably of British and American nationality with a sprinkling no doubt of our colonial brothers, in the minority will very likely be found more than one stranger from the West or from the East, perchance even a coloured man. But as we pass along the aisles, now one, now another, whatever his nationality, is sure to be reminded by some grave or monument of his own country, and we shall hope to awaken the interest of all alike. Before a start is made we would recall the memory of Dr. Bradley, who made it one of his chief duties and pleasures to show people round the church he loved so well, thus following a custom set by Stanley, and continued by the present Dean and his colleagues. Royal princes, distinguished foreigners, tourists from every part of the world, working men and women, and his own friends, all were equally welcome to Westminster Abbey. On every Saturday during the spring and early summer the late Dean made fixed engagements to take parties round, and on the Bank holidays was rarely absent from the Abbey, but held himself ever ready to help the chance sightseer and show him places which are not easily accessible to the public. His ground plans of the church and its precincts were hung up in the Jerusalem Chamber on the days when he expected parties, and here, before beginning their round, he would tell his eager listeners something of the general history of the foundation. After that the Dean used to lead the way into the building itself, by the little door beneath the Abbot's Pew, and show them all the most notable tombs and monuments. He now lies at rest beneath the very stones which his feet so often passed over on these happy Saturday afternoons, close to the vault of an eighteenth-century Dean, whose heart was broken by his banishment from the Deanery, and of whom we shall have occasion to speak later.

THE INTERIOR OF THE NAVE, LOOKING EAST

Thus we start on our pilgrimage with some idea of the shape and the history of the church which lies before us. First let us look into the baptistery called Little Poets' Corner, where Wordsworth's seated statue and some memorials of literary men are to be seen, such as the great teacher, Dr. Arnold, who is close to his gifted son Matthew, in the company of three notable divines, Maurice, Kingsley, and Keble. The entrance is blocked by two huge eighteenth-century erections, the one to Cornewall, a valiant sea-captain, put up by Parliament, the other to Craggs, a young statesman, whose posthumous fame was sullied by his share in the South Sea Bubble. The elder Craggs committed suicide when the Bubble burst, but the son died first, and Pope wrote a wordy epitaph and superintended the erection of the monument. From this side we turn to the other tower, but make no exhaustive survey of the "Whig Corner," for statesmen galore are to be found in the north transept, and we mention the chief of these in connection with their contemporaries there. The latest name here is that of General Charles Gordon, a bronze given by the Royal Engineers seven years after the fall of Khartoum, but before the fall of the Mahdi wiped out England's dishonour. It is not likely that a Chinaman has joined our party; were one with us we would point out Gordon's services to the Chinese government and the honours he received from the Emperor. There is only one other memorial connected with China , put up a century ago to Sir George Staunton, who went as Secretary on our first embassy to China. His son, a boy of eleven, accompanied him, and actually learned enough Chinese on the voyage to interpret for the party; he afterwards became a learned Chinese scholar. We linger yet a moment to point out one of the few German names in the Abbey, William Horneck, whose father, a Westminster Prebendary, was a German by birth; he was himself one of the earliest of our Engineers, and won honour in the Duke of Marlborough's campaigns. When we reach the south transept we shall see a more familiar German name on the bust of Grabe, the well-known Oriental scholar.

We pass out now by the statue of a modern philanthropist, Lord Shaftesbury, who fought as energetically for the freedom of the white slave as did Zachary Macaulay, whose tablet is behind us in the tower, for that of the black. Shaftesbury's efforts on behalf of the overworked women and of the children in mines and factories will never be forgotten, nor is the distinguished statesman Charles James Fox, whose connection with the abolition of slavery is marked by the tasteless monument before our eyes, in any danger of oblivion. The life-size group represents Fox's dying agony in the arms of Liberty; a negro slave is kneeling at his feet.

A few steps further and we stand above the grave of David Livingstone, another ardent worker for the black man's cause, a personality dear to white and black alike. Should some traveller from South Africa be with us, he will be familiar with Livingstone's work amongst the natives and the opposition he met with from the ignorant Boer farmers, who could not understand his enthusiasm for the coloured race. He lost his life for their cause, and so greatly was he loved by his "boys" that two of them carried the body through hardships and dangers innumerable across the continent of Africa to the West Coast, where it was shipped for England and finally brought safely here. Immediately in front, to our left, we see the names of engineers and architects. To the engineers we allude later; of two architects, Scott and Pearson, we have already spoken, and may pass on to the men who crushed the Indian Mutiny, first, however, pointing out the brass of Barry, the designer of the present Houses of Parliament. Sir James Outram, Colin Campbell, Lord Clyde, and John, Lord Lawrence, rest in close proximity to one another, even as they worked together for a common object in India. On Outram's monument, which is against the right-hand wall, near Lawrence's bust, is represented the meeting of the three Generals, Outram, Havelock, and Campbell, when the latter finally relieved the Lucknow Residency, a task bravely attempted by the two former, who were themselves beleaguered after bringing in stores and ammunition to the garrison. Lord Wolseley's recent Autobiography has vividly recalled the whole scene, and bears witness also to the valour of many a forgotten hero, with most of whom he had previously fought in the Crimea. Seven of these officers are commemorated by the very inharmonious painted glass below the rose window of the north transept; amongst them may be mentioned in this connection Lord Clyde's brigadier, Adrian Hope, who took a foremost part in the relief of Lucknow, and was killed during the subsequent reconquest of Oude. While Clyde may be styled the conqueror of Oude, Lord Lawrence, a civilian not a soldier by profession, performed the task of reducing the Punjab. In the north transept is the bust of Sir Herbert Edwardes, who co-operated with the Lawrence brothers at the outbreak of the Mutiny, and continued to support John in his arduous work after Henry's death at Lucknow. Ten years before the Mutiny, Edwardes had already won undying fame in the same district, the Punjab, when he stamped out the Multan rebellion, and prevented that dangerous conflagration from assuming serious proportions. A grave west of Clyde's, that of Sir George Pollock, is a reminder of another part of our Indian Empire--an ever-present source of anxiety--Afghanistan, where Pollock retrieved England's lost prestige after the Cabul disaster.

Immediately before us now, on either side of the choir screen, two eighteenth-century monuments attract attention. The one to the right commemorates several of the Earls Stanhope, notably the first Earl, whose dashing valour might well be compared with Dundonald's, but whose military career ended in disaster and imprisonment. The feat usually connected with his name is a brilliant charge of cavalry at Almenara, one of the battles in the Peninsular War, when he killed a Spanish general in single combat. On the left is a man of peace, Sir Isaac Newton, whose discovery of the law of gravitation brought him world-wide fame, and whose reputation as a natural philosopher and mathematician was unrivalled in his generation. His funeral was attended by "the chief men of the nation," and many distinguished foreigners; amongst them was the French philosopher, Voltaire, who carried his enthusiasm for Newton to such a height that he placed the English scientist at the head of all the geniuses in the universe. Those who are familiar with Roubiliac's portrait-statue at Trinity College, Cambridge, will note the extreme inferiority of this one , which represents the great Newton reclining on a couch, wrapped in a dressing-gown, and surrounded by the allegorical figures and emblems so dear to eighteenth-century artists.

ST. EDMUND'S CHAPEL, SHOWING THE TOMB OF THE DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK, LADY JANE GREY'S MOTHER

Beyond the gate, to our left, another pictorial monument appeals to Londoner and countryman alike, for here is represented the assassination of Tom of the Ten Thousand, a younger member of that well-known Dorset family the Thynnes, Marquesses of Bath. His murderers were hired by a notorious foreign count who desired to gain Thynne's rich young bride for his own wife, but failed to persuade the lady to recognise his claims. The cockney gazes in wonder at Pall Mall as it appeared in 1682, when it was a lonely road between meadows, where highwaymen were apt to demand your money or your life. The Welshman, if one be here, is pleased to recognise a countryman in the coachman, whose descendants long boasted that their ancestor was to be seen in the Abbey, on the box of Squire Thynne's carriage. A little further is the recumbent tomb of one of the same family, William Thynne, who was Receiver of the Marches for many years under the Tudor sovereigns. As yet we have been unable to single out one of the many sailors whose memorials surround us in the nave, but now we are brought up short, so to speak, by a monstrous figure with a huge periwig and lolling on cushions, which, we are almost ashamed to explain, is meant for one of our most noted eighteenth-century admirals, Sir Cloudesley Shovel to wit.

While most of our party are attracted towards the last two conspicuous monuments, the Non-conformists, should any be amongst us, are sure to linger by the mural tablet, with medallion portrait heads, which Dean Stanley allowed the Wesleyans to put here in memory of the brothers John and Charles Wesley. Upon it are the appropriate words: "I look upon all the world as my parish," which John Wesley literally interpreted. Near by was already the memorial to Dr. Isaac Watts, the great dissenting minister of an earlier generation, whose hymns are still popular in church and chapel alike, as are to a greater degree those of Charles Wesley.

To a Frenchman or Italian a humbler tablet on the opposite side with a long inscription is of more interest, for it commemorates Pasquale de Paoli, the champion of Corsican independence, who took refuge in England, the home of liberty, and died here in 1807. The ladies, leaving the men to their study of the seamen and soldiers, with whose names the walls are covered, ask for information about the bust of a young woman, just beyond Paoli. Grace Gethin, although the only authoress in the Abbey who has a monument to herself,--for the learned Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle, shares her husband's tomb in the north transept,--has no real claim to this distinction. Her immortal work, which she bequeathed to an admiring circle of blue-stockings, proved to be a mere book of extracts culled from popular writers. The playwright, Congreve, whose own medallion is below the Abbot's Pew in the nave, showed his want of literary cultivation by not only composing a poem in praise of the young writer, but allowing it to be published as a preface to the book, which went through several editions before the fraud was discovered. The annual sermon, which was long preached in the Abbey in memory of the youthful heiress who left a bequest for the purpose in her will, has become a thing of the past.

While the artistic persons with us have been bewailing the ruthless destruction of the wall arcading and will have cause to lament still louder in the transepts, the student of heraldry is attracted to some defaced shields which repay a closer attention, and have helped antiquaries to fix the dates of the choir and nave. The Confessor's, with the familiar five birds, and Henry the Third's arms with three lions are easily identified in this aisle, and the learned in such matters point out many others, chiefly the coats of Henry's relations, such as his father-in-law, Raymond de Beranger, Count of Provence, and his brother Richard, King of the Romans, one of the royal princes selected to carry St. Edward's coffin from the palace to the new shrine.

We have now reached the crossing, and should all our party desire to make an exhaustive circuit of the church to-day, the south transept is our next goal. When time presses it is wisest for the guide to pause here, merely point out the Statesmen's Aisle and the Poets' Corner, and then pass on at once through the iron gates to the royal chapels.

INTERIOR OF THE SOUTH TRANSEPT

The illustration shows the south transept proper, looking towards the great rose window. On our right we see the historical side, to our left is Poets' Corner; from here the statue of Shakespeare is the most conspicuous, standing out from the mass of other memorials which commemorate poets and literary men. The glass in the window above and the lights below it are quite modern, placed there as a memorial to the late Duke of Westminster in 1902.

The "burlesque" statue of the famous actor, David Garrick, with "a farrago of false thoughts and nonsense inscribed below," must ever be associated with Charles Lamb, who thus appropriately described it. With Garrick himself is indissolubly connected the memory of his lifelong friend, Dr. Samuel Johnson, whose familiar form, with its brown coat and tie wig, was conspicuous at the funeral, standing close to Shakespeare's monument, tears coursing down his cheeks for the loss of his dear Davy. Five years later, Mrs. Garrick herself, once a brilliant, graceful dancer, now a little shrivelled old woman, stood by the doctor's open grave in this same transept, bowed with age and overcome with grief.

In this transept there are monuments to another actor and an actress, celebrated in their own day. Barton Booth, a Westminster scholar under Dr. Busby, rose to a high place in his profession; his wife, once like Mrs. Garrick a popular dancer, put up the tablet. His memory still survives in two Westminster streets, called Barton Street and Cowley Street, after his name and the place where he was buried. Mrs. Pritchard was honoured by a memorial near Shakespeare's statue, upon which the poet-laureate of the day wrote a florid inscription. She began her professional career after Booth's death, but lived long enough to tread the same boards as Garrick, whose grave is just below; she predeceased the younger actor by ten years. Only one actress, Ann Oldfield, who belonged to an earlier generation , was buried actually within the Abbey; a woman of no character but of some talent, she lies near the Deanery door in the nave. We must not forget, when we reach St. Andrew's Chapel, to point out the colossal statues of Mrs. Siddons and her brother, John Kemble, upon whose shoulders fell the mantles of Mrs. Barry and Garrick, and who carried on the old traditions at Drury Lane and Covent Garden during the first quarter of the nineteenth century.

Life is a jest and all things show it; I thought so once and now I know it.

O rare Ben Jonson, what a turncoat grown, Thou ne'er wast such till thou wast carved in stone.

While roystering Ben waited a hundred years before his literary distinction was recognised by this memorial in Poets' Corner, the strength of Royalist feeling kept Milton's name out of the Abbey altogether for the same period after his death. Thus, although both men died in the seventeenth century, their monuments date from the middle of the eighteenth. Milton's name was regarded as anathema by the loyal Chapter, and it was not till long after the Jacobite Atterbury's exile, that a Dean was broad-minded enough to acknowledge Milton's genius, and allow an admirer of his, one Benson, to put up a monument. The lyric muse above Gray's medallion close by, points to the bust of that master of poetry and prose, to whom he and all the poets ever since Milton's time owe so much. Gray himself must always be remembered in the Abbey, for who can stand amongst the kings and look upon the "mighty conquerors, mighty lords," who made this island kingdom, without recalling the words of his historic ode?

CHAUCER'S TOMB

Before us is the monument, put up one hundred and fifty years after his death, to Geoffrey Chaucer, the father of English poetry, and we see upon the pavement wreaths which mark the graves of our two most distinguished modern poets, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and Robert Browning, and were placed there no doubt by some visitor to the Abbey, who desired thus to show honour to their memory. This spot is the very centre of the famous Poets' Corner, and close by is the vault where lie the bones of Spenser, and the pens and funeral odes of the poets who attended his funeral.

We turn to the west and see the present choir, which stretches to the organ screen. The stalls are of no artistic merit, and were designed in part by Wyatt, early in the nineteenth century; later on they were added to by Blore, who was also responsible, in 1848, for the wooden casing of the ancient stone wall between choir and nave. Beneath the black-and-white pavement, his own gift, lie the remains of Dr. Busby.

VIEW OF THE CHOIR AND NAVE, LOOKING WEST FROM THE HIGH ALTAR

Facing east we look directly towards the Holy of Holies, the Sanctuary, where, raised high on a mound of sacred earth, brought from Palestine, is the shrine of Edward the Confessor, girdled by a half circle of royal tombs. Between us and the saint's feretory is a fifteenth-century screen, which is faced on this side by a modern reredos, designed by Sir G. Scott. In front of this is the high altar. Some way below the level of the floor, on either side of the altar, are the bases of two pillars, which formed part of the original Norman church, and have helped the experts to fix the exact proportions of the Confessor's building.

THE SOUTH AMBULATORY, LOOKING WEST DOWN THE SOUTH CHOIR AISLE

ST. EDMUND'S CHAPEL

A large mural monument close by recalls a happy marriage and records the grief of the heart-broken husband. Elizabeth's trusted Minister, the great Lord Burleigh, is here depicted in his robes of state, kneeling above the recumbent effigies of his wife, a lady noted for her learning and for her active benevolence, and of their unhappy daughter, Anne, Countess of Oxford. At his mother's feet is the figure of Robert Cecil, the first Lord Salisbury of that name, who succeeded his father as confidential adviser to their sovereign. Neither father nor son is buried here. Lord Burleigh lies at Stamford, his country place, and on the day of the funeral a stately service was held in the Abbey, a mark of respect repeated recently when his descendant, the late Lord Salisbury, was laid to rest at Hatfield.

THE WEST END OF THE CONFESSOR'S SHRINE, SHOWING THE MODERN ALTAR

THE CORONATION CHAIR

His sword was in its sheath, His fingers held the pen, When Kempenfelt went down, With twice four hundred men.

To the right as we pass back again is a mural memorial to Sir John Franklin, the discoverer of the North-West Passage. The loss of himself and of his brave crew amidst impenetrable walls of snow and ice is portrayed upon it; beneath is an oft-quoted epitaph by Tennyson--lines which stir the hearts of all who pause to read them.

The circle of the apse has now been completed, and we pass through the iron gate into the Statesmen's Aisle. Around us on every side are the graves and statues of British politicians, whose names are for the most part household words at home and still remembered abroad. With these are also the memorials of soldiers, sailors, lawyers, and a few others, to some of which we shall allude in passing. Conspicuous against the first column is Sir Robert Peel's statue, inappropriately draped in a Roman toga. Beyond his was placed in 1903 Brock's figure of William Ewart Gladstone, who is represented in an attitude familiar to those who have heard him speak, when addressing the House of Commons, or at a political meeting. Gladstone's Life has already been in the hands of the reading public, but the official biography of Benjamin Disraeli, Lord Beaconsfield, the leader of the opposite party, is only now being written, although twenty-five years have elapsed since his death. Beaconsfield's statue stands by the next pillar, and, if it be a day in late April, we should see primrose wreaths arranged around the feet, a homage from those who cherish the imperialist ideas which were inaugurated by Disraeli. Before very long a memorial, also voted by Parliament, to Robert Cecil, Marquess of Salisbury, Beaconsfield's successor as head of the Tory party, is also to be placed with his compeers in this temple of silence and reconciliation.

INTERIOR OF THE NORTH TRANSEPT

The north transept is called the Statesman's Aisle, and is filled with the statues of ministers of State and of other politicians; besides these we find lawyers, soldiers, and sailors. From this point there is a good view of Sir Robert Peel's statue in the right foreground, with Gladstone and Beaconsfield prominent behind him. We look down the aisle and see the rose window, which was filled with painted glass in the eighteenth century under Dean Atterbury's rule, and the fine early wall arcadings below. In the spandrels are two beautiful stone angels, which are just visible in the illustration.

In another place we have already dwelt at some length upon these makers of our Empire in war and peace alike, whose names may be seen upon the walls on every side. While the tariff question is the topic of the hour, and Cobden, the original champion of free trade, is constantly appealed to by our modern politicians, we must not omit to look at that statesman's bust, which will be found, with a number of other interesting memorials, at the back of Chatham's monument. Near this the tablet to Warren Hastings records a page in the history of our Indian Empire which it is best to leave unturned, for it is stained with the life-blood of a man's broken heart, a heart broken by a trial dragged out interminably till the culprit, whether he were innocent or guilty, was punished far beyond his deserts. Macaulay's famous description of Hastings's trial is well known, and we are reminded of his no less familiar essay on Lord Clive by the monuments of two men, a soldier and a sailor, who co-operated with Clive in the foundation of our Indian Empire. The East India Company is responsible for the inartistic, grotesque erections which traduce the memory of these gallant men, Admiral Watson and Sir Eyre Coote, while they also perpetrated the scarcely less offensive, although smaller monument which commemorates Major Stringer Lawrence, Clive's intimate friend and valued comrade, the hero of Trichinopoly, which is near the west end of the nave. The Admiral sits unclothed, save for a Roman toga, amongst palm-trees and allegorical figures above the ancient doorway, while his chief achievements are recorded in the inscriptions "Calcutta freed," "Ghereah," and "Chandernagore taken," with the dates 1756 and 1757. Coote expelled the French from the Coromandel coast in 1761, and twenty years later defeated them again with their ally, Hyder Ali, in the Carnatic. The General masquerades as a Roman warrior, with a native captive and a figure of Victory on either hand. Such was, in fact, the taste of the period when these preposterous groups were all the fashion. We turn from this with pleasure to the fine bust of Richard Kane, which is against the opposite wall, and single him out for a passing mention on account of his connection, as Governor, with the Island of Minorca, one of "the lost possessions" of England.

Facing us now, as we make our way westward, is the seated figure of Sir Fowell Buxton, and a little further to the left Joseph's extraordinarily vivid but unpleasing figure of William Wilberforce. Both men are indissolubly connected in our minds with the abolition of Slavery. With them are associated the pioneer of the anti-slavery agitation, Granville Sharp, and their fellow-worker, Zachary, father of Lord Macaulay. Sharp's tablet is not far from the latter's bust in the south transept, and we have already noticed the elder Macaulay in the Whigs' Corner. Between the philanthropists is Sir Stamford Raffles, the founder of Singapore, a man no less zealous than they in the struggle for the suppression of slavery. To us Londoners his name must ever be dear, for we owe the Zoological Gardens to his initiative.

We are standing now in the aisle dedicated to the memory of that great English composer, Henry Purcell, and thus often called the "Musicians' Aisle," although the memorials to musicians are comparatively few. Purcell's modest tablet with the well-known epitaph, "Here lyes Henry Purcell, Esq., who left this life, and is gone to that blessed place, where only his harmony can be exceeded," hangs against the pillar near Raffles. We passed a modern one hard by to Balfe, a composer of many popular ballads; while on the north wall are the monuments of Purcell's master, Dr. Blow, who first preceded and then succeeded his young pupil at the Abbey organ, and Dr. Croft, who followed after Blow. Stones in the floor mark the graves of Dr. Samuel Arnold, another Abbey organist, and Sterndale Bennett, who is considered by some authorities worthy to rank with Purcell as a musical composer. A tablet to Dr. Burney detains us for a moment, while we remind the lovers of literature in our party of his daughter, the novelist, Fanny Burney, and of their friendship with Dr. Johnson, whose grave we saw in Poets' Corner. Other memorials, chiefly those to sailors, are upon this wall, but we cannot tarry much longer, our friends are craving mercy for tired brains and aching limbs. Just before the iron gate the portrait medallion of Charles Darwin, which is closely companioned by tablets to three other modern scientists, Joule, Adams, and Stokes, attracts notice, and the next moment we tread upon the graves of Darwin and Herschel, all placed purposely in the vicinity of Sir Isaac Newton. Doctors of medicine as well as men of science will be found in the nave. We have already referred to the fashionable Dr. Mead, and his no less popular intimate, Dr. Freind, is also here. Freind's brother was headmaster of Westminster School, and many of the Latin inscriptions on contemporary monuments were written by him, including the one under his brother's bust; so many in fact that Pope, whose own pen was ever busy commemorating his cronies with fulsome laudations, such as those on Kneller and Craggs, wrote the following mocking lines:--

Freind, for your epitaphs I'm grieved Where still so much is said, One half will never be believed, The other never read.

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