University of Virginia Library

WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

I rose and prepared to leave the abbey. As I descended
the flight of steps which lead into the body of the building,
my eye was caught by the shrine of Edward the
Confessor, and I ascended the small staircase that conducts
to it, to take from thence a general survey of this
wilderness of tombs. The shrine is elevated upon a
kind of platform, and close around it are the sepulchres
of various kings and queens. From this eminence the eye
looks down between pillars and funeral trophics to the
chapels and chambers below, crowded with tombs; where
warriors, prelates, courtiers and statesmen lie mouldering
in their “beds of darkness.” Close by me stood
the great chair of coronation, rudely carved of oak, in
the barbarous taste of a remote and gothic age. The
scene seemed almost as if contrived, with theatrical artifice,
to produce an effect on the beholder. Here was
a type of the beginning and the end of human pomp and
power; here it was literally but a step from the throne
to the sepulchre. Would not one think that these incongruous
mementos had been gathered together as a lesson
to living greatness?—to shew it, even in the moment
of its proudest exaltation, the neglect and dishonour to
which it must soon arrive; how soon that crown which
encircles its brow must pass away; and it must lie down
in the dust and disgraces of the tomb, and be trampled
upon by the feet of the meanest of the multitude. For,
strange to tell, even the grave is here no longer a sanctuary.
There is a shocking levity in some natures, which leads
them to sport with awful and hallowed things, and there
are base minds, which delight to revenge on the illustrious
dead the abject homage and grovelling servility which
they pay to the living. The coffin of Edward the Confessor
has been broken open, and his remains despoiled
of their funeral ornaments; the sceptre has been stolen
from the hand of the imperious Elizabeth, and the effigy
of Henry the Fifth lies headless. Not a royal monument
but bears some proof how false and fugitive is the homage
of mankind. Some are plundered; some mutilated; some
covered with rihaldry and insult—all more or less outraged
and dishonoured!

The last beams of day were now faintly streaming

through the painted windows in the high vaults above
me; the lower parts of the abbey were already wrapped
in the obscurity of twilight. The chapels and aisles
grew darker and darker. The effigies of the kings faded
into shadows; the marble figures of the monuments assumed
strange shapes in the uncertain light; the evening
breeze crept through the aisles like the cold breath of the
grave; and even the distant footfall of a verger, traversing
the Poet's Corner, had something strange and dreary
in its sound. I slowly retraced my morning's walk,
and as I passed out at the portal of the cloisters, the
door, closing with a jarring noise behind me, filled the
whole building with echoes.

I endeavoured to form some arrangement in my mind
of the objects I had been contemplating, but found they
were already falling into indistinctness and confusion.
Names, inscriptions, trophies, had all become confounded
in my recollection, though I had scarcely taken my foot
from off the threshold. What, thought I, is this vast
assemblage of sepulchres but a treasury of humiliation;
a huge pile of reiterated homilies on the emptiness of renown,
and the certainty of oblivion! It is, indeed, the
empire of death; his great shadowy palace; where he
sits in state, mocking at the reliques of human glory, and
spreading dust and forgetfulness on the monuments of
princes. How idle a boast, after all, is the immortality
of a name! Time is ever silently turning over his pages;
we are too much engrossed by the story of the present,
to think of the characters and anecdotes that gave interest
to the past; and each age is a volume thrown aside
to be speedily forgotten. The idol of to-day pushes the
hero of yesterday out of our recollection; and will, in
turn, be supplanted by his successor of to-morrow.