84

ST. EDWARD'S CHAPEL.

I will only speak of two of the chapels: St. Edward's and Henry the Seventh's. In the centre of the former stands the venerable shrine of St. Edward, which was once considered the glory of England. But the sepulchre was long ago broken open, and the ornaments stolen from his body. Edward was the last Saxon king of England. He died the year of the battle of Hastings (1066), and was canonized in 1269. Henry III. pledged the jewels belonging to the shrine of Edward to foreigners; being compelled, as the record still preserved in the Tower states, to take this course "by heavy emergencies." No very creditable way for a king to raise money.

XXIX.

ERE Matilda, Queen of England, daughter of Malcolm,

her custom every day in Lent to walk from her palace to the Abbey barefoot, clothed in a garment of coarse hair, kissing the feet of the poorest people she met in her way, and dispensing charities. In this chapel, in a large plain coffin of gray marble, lies the body of the great Edward, called the English Justinian. He died in 1307. Four hundred and sixty-seven years after his burial, his tomb was opened by the Dean of Westminster. "The body was perfect, having on two robes, one of gold and silver tissue, and the other of crimson velvet; a sceptre of gold in each hand, measuring near five feet; a crown on his head, and many jewels quite bright: he measured six feet and two inches."

Here, too, Henry V., of Jack Falstaff memory, and victor of Agincourt, sleeps. In this chapel are also to be seen the two coronation chairs. The most ancient of these chairs was brought with the regalia from Scotland, by Edward I., in 1697 (after overcoming John Báliol), and offered at St. Edward's shrine. In this chair the monarchs of England are crowned, and to this place they come for their sepulchres.

Henry the Seventh's chapel is called "the wonder of the

HENRY THE SEVENTH'S CHAPEL.

85

world." It stands at the east end of the Abbey, and is so neatly joined to it that it seems to be part of the main edifice. It is adorned with sixteen Gothic towers, beautifully ornamented, and jutting from the building in different angles. It is built on the plan of a cathedral, with a nave and side-aisles. The entrance to this chapel is through curiously-wrought ponderous gates of brass. The lofty ceiling is worked into an astonishing variety of designs, and my surprise may be imagined when I was told that it was all wrought in solid stone. A celebrated French architect afterward told me, that one man could not complete the work upon that ceiling in less time than a thousand years. The pavement is of white and black marble. This splendid chapel was designed to be a kingly sepulchre, in which none but the royal should sleep; and the will of the founder has been so far observed, that none have been admitted to burial here who could not trace their descent from some ancient family of kings. But nothing is so universally and justly admired, for its antiquity and fine workmanship, as the magnificent tomb of Henry VII. and his Queen Elizabeth, “the last of the House of York that wore the English crown." This tomb stands in the body of the chapel, enclosed in a curious chantry of cast brass, most admirably designed and executed, and ornamented with statues. Within it are the effigies of the royal pair, in their robes of state, lying close together, carved on a tomb of black marble.

H

XXX.

ERE at last found rest the remains of the two young princes who were basely murdered by their treacherous uncle, Richard III. The story is faithfully told in a Latin inscription over their grave. We remember that these two boys were confined in the Tower, stifled with pillows, and then privately buried. One hundred and ninety years passed away before their bones were discovered, and then they were found among the rubbish of the stairs leading to the White Tower.

86

TOMBS OF ELIZABETH AND MARY.

Charles II. removed their remains to this spot, where their ancestors lie. One of these princes was born in the old Sanctuary which once belonged to the Abbey, where his mother had taken refuge during the terrible Civil Wars of the houses of York and Lancaster.

"Two small aisles on each side of this chapel present a touching picture of the equality of the grave, which brings down the oppressor to a level with the oppressed, and mingles the dust of the bitterest enemies together. In one is the sepulchre of the haughty Elizabeth; in the other is that of her victim, the lovely and unfortunate Mary. Not an hour in the day but some ejaculation of pity is uttered over the fate of the latter, mingled with indignation at her oppressor. The walls of Elizabeth's sepulchre continually echo with sighs of sympathy heaved at the grave of her rival. A peculiar melancholy reigns over the aisle where Mary lies buried. The light struggles dimly through windows darkened by dust. The greater part of the place is in deep shadow, and the walls are stained and tinted by time and weather. A marble figure of Mary is stretched upon the tomb, round which is an iron railing much corroded, bearing her national emblem, the thistle. I was weary with wandering, and sat down to rest myself by the monument, revolving in my mind the checkered and disastrous story of poor Mary."

Time is the great regulator. How sure he is to do justice at last! Mrs. Jamieson has set this matter in its proper light. Mary Stuart needed no better defender of her fame. After waiting nearly three hundred years, justice was done to her name by the heroic and beautiful biographer of the imperious and hateful Elizabeth.

A

XXXI.

GREAT number of the tombs and shrines of the Abbey have been shockingly mutilated and defaced. Even the kings of England, not satisfied with grinding from their living subjects

all that oppression could exact, have entered this temple, and robbed the dead of those few choice jewels and treasures which surviving affection had placed in their coffins. But this, perhaps, should pass without censure, as the English Constitution declares the king can do no wrong! The sceptre has been stolen from the mouldered hand of Elizabeth, and there is hardly a royal monument which has not been plundered or mutilated. The grave is a sanctuary for the dead in the peaceful country churchyard; but not so in Westminster Abbey. They who are buried here have found no security against the rapacity and insult of the living.

I pity the man who lives and dies in the hope of being long remembered, who has no more enduring monument than the marble to perpetuate his fame. There are many inscriptions in the Abbey which cannot be read; they have faded away with the names and deeds of those they were intended to commemorate. Nothing ever appears to me so mournful as a gravestone with its epitaph obliterated by time. "Thus man passes away; his name perishes from record and recollection; his history is as a tale that is told, and his very monument becomes a ruin." This is one of those touching morals taught us by Irving, in writing about this hall of death.

One sces in Westminster Abbey almost as much as he would have seen had he lived in England for a thousand years. If a great person has died, or a great deed been done in this island, for centuries, they have brought some memento, and placed it within these walls. Here we read the story of the virtues and the crimes of England's great men; here we find their monuments, their escutcheons, and their ashes. In different ages, and from different scenes of action, England's kings have come to these solemn cloisters at last, to forget in the deep slumber of the grave, the troubles, the follies, and the guilt of the life just ended. No one of them, as he went to his sepulchre, stopped to listen to the clamors that swelled behind him; to the contentions of fierce and eager aspirants to his vacant throne.

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INSIGNIA AND RELICS IN THE ABBEY.

Even bluff Harry VIII. goes sturdily to his resting-place, without seeming, in his dying moments, to bestow a thought on his discarded wives or injured daughters.

BUT

XXXII.

UT they are not all of royal or noble blood that rest here. Greater Englishmen than English kings have a name and a grave within these solemn chambers. Bucklers, helmets and broadswords are spread over the tomb of the bold baron; the cross and the crosier mark the sepulchre of some pious bishop; and over this tomb are banners, streamers, and all the insignia of naval triumph, doing honor to some captain of the sea, who is here alike forgetful of the roar of battle and the terrors of the wreck. As you pass along those aisles, whose silence is unbroken save by your own footfall, and read the quaint epitaphs of heroes of olden time, insensibly will the impression steal over the imagination that it was but yesterday that all these dead were alive, and you, a stranger from the far future, have been carried back to the days of ancient chivalry to converse with walking shadows; to think of the present as though it were a prophecy, a dream, or a hope; and of the past as though it were a reality.

And yet, speak to that suit of armor which seems now to threaten as it once did in battle-it returns no answer; the voice is still that once spoke through those iron jaws, and the cold moisture which gathers on its rusted face seems like tears shed over the hero who once wore it.

When the mind is full of thoughts suggested by these relics of antiquity, and the heart full of emotions; when the images of great men who have long flitted around the fancy appear, and we see before us the very sword they once used in battle, and the very banner that once floated over them, there is no room left for other thought; we cannot contemplate modern times or our own existence. While we are lingering in a place where England has preserved all that she could of the great