appropriately cut from the heart of an oak, and protected by a beautiful inclosure of iron, moulded in the Gothic style. The head of the statue was of beaten silver, crowned; and a sceptre and other regalia of the same metal decorated the work; but every ornament that was valuable about it, was sacrilegiously pilfered, if the tradition of the guides be correct, in the turbulent time of Oliver Cromwell. Ascending from this chapel on either side, is a circular flight of stairs up a turret of wrought iron, spreading into roofs of unusual elegance, and leading to a chauntry, where a helmet, shield, and saddle, said to have been used by Henry at the battle of Agincourt, are preserved. The section of the Abbey, visible from this elevation, was executed from the designs of Sir Christopher Wren, and is never seen but with singular admiration. Here, too, are collected together all the models produced by that great architect and others for the repair and enlargement of parts of the Abbey, as time and circumstances favoured the labour of inprovement. The chapel of St. John, the Evangelist, was formerly thickly set wish ancient tombs, but now without a trace of any such foundations, with the exception of a curious brass figure, representing an abbot in full canonicals, and appropriated to the tomb of John D'Eastry, an eminent benefactor to the old church, who died in the year 1498. Amongst the more splendid of his recorded donations, were two images gilt for the altars of St. Peter and Paul, and another of the same kind for the chapter-house. The screen of this chapel was built by his liberality; and by his taste, too, was the fine window at the west of the church first studded with painted glass. In 1706, during some repairs of the chapel, the coffin of Abbot D'Eastry was discovered, and accidentally broken open. The appearance of the body upon this occasion was highly curious and interesting: the face was in some degree discoloured, but the legs and arms were whole, fresh, and firm. The corpse was dressed in a gown of crimson silk, girdled round the waste with a black belt; the legs were drawn into silk stockings, the face was covered with a clean napkin of fine weft, doubled up, and set cornerways; and the coffin was richly quilted with yellow silk. Supported by the western wall in the chapel of St. Nicholas, is a large monument to the memory of his wife, built by the Protector Edward, Duke of Somerset, who was himself allied to royalty, as the brother of the Lady Jane Seymour, third wife to the tyrant, Henry the VIII., and thereby uncle to the juvenile king Edward the VI. The composition of this monument is of varied marbles, and the effect stately. The inscription upon it recounts the nobility of the lady's line d age, and the circumstances of her premature death in the nineteenth year of her age. At a short distance is a tribute of the affection which another great man felt for a departed wife-it is the monument raised by Cecil, Lord Burleigh, to the memory of Milred, his wife. The work is striking: the design consists of a temple, raised upon two compartments, and composed of porphyry and marble gilt. Upon the higher tier an old man in the robes of the Order of the Garter is kneeling earnestly at his devotions; the figure is said to be designed for Lord Burleigh. In the compartment beneath, the deceased lady is seen folding her daughter, Lady Jane, in her arms; while the rest of her children are formally represented on their knees, some at her head, and others at her feet. The inscription is long and flattering: according to it, the lady was learnedly versed in scriptural writings, but more particularly in the Greek fathers, and highly charitable: amongst other remaining proofs of her liberality is the foundation she laid of a scholarship at St. John's College, Oxford. At the door of this chapel were interred the remains of Sir Henry Spelman, a man of unwearied application and deep learning, who died in the eightieth year of his age, with the reputation of being the greatest antiquary of the 17th century. The area near the chapel of St. Edmond contains the rough and moulding relics of some of the finest, and certainly the most ancient memorials of standard merit erected in Westminster Abbey. Of these the most venerable in years is that one which is pointed out as the monument of Sebert, the tributary king of the Eastern Saxons, who died in July, 616, and has been mentioned as the probable founder of this church. From several names of high royalty and note which are to be read within this area, those of two queens remarkable for their sufferings are peculiarly striking. The first is the grave of Anne of Cleve, married and divorced from Henry the VIII. She survived the indignity, and her unworthy husband; but lived and died in becoming seclusion. Close to her ashes are those of another, Anne, the daughter of the great Earl of Warwick, and wife of Richard the III., who poisoned her, to gain the hand of his own niece Elizabeth, daughter of Edward the IV., a union which his sudden death upon the defeat of Bosworth Field prevented him from consummating. Near these fair namesakes, and the suffering wives of tyrants, is the tomb of Edmond Crouchback, son of Henry the III., who gave the house of Lancaster their claim to the crown of England. This king is by some erroneously supposed to have derived his surname from a deformity in his person; but the probability is that he obtained it from the crouch or cross worn in the Holy Wars, in which both he and his brother took an active share. At the base of this tomb may be observed the relics of the oldest painting known to exist among us. It is much defaced, but evidently represents ten knights, cross-belted, and bearing banners and surcoats. of armour. This number corresponds with the attendants Edmond had on his expedition to the Crusade, which, according to Matthew Paris, consisted of himself, his brother, four earls, and four knights; it is a likely conjecture, therefore, that the painting was a commemoration of these parties, and their feats in this particular warfare. The monument itself must have originally been highly sumptuous; it was evidently richly gilt, as well as finely painted, and inlaid with varieties of stained glass. The canopy, which the effect of time has dulled into an unseemly shade of red, appears to have represented a starry firma ment. Within the chapel of St. Edmund is a tomb particularly remarkable for the rich style in which it is decorated, and the admirable character of the workmanship upon it. It lies to the right of the entrance, next to the antique grave of William de Valence, and was constructed to the honour of Edward Talbot, eighth Earl of Shrewsbury, and his Countess, Jane. The fabrication itself is of varied marble, surmounted with a tablet of alabaster, on which robed figures of the Earl and Countess are stretched in black marble. The inscription, after recording that the Earl died on the Sth of February, 1617, recites his titles, and gives his character in the most sounding terms. Here is also a royal tomb for John of Eltham, second son of Edward the II., who took his designation from Eltham, in Kent, where he was born. He died in Scotland, in the nineteenth year of his age; and is represented as an armed knight, in a statue of white alabaster, with a wreathed coronet on his brow, which has been remarked, as being the first of that kind which has both large and small leaves entwined together. The magnificence of his funeral must have been great indeed, as there is a record of a charge of 100%., which in that primitive age was a little fortune, exacted by the convent on account of the horse and armour used for the pomp of the occasion. Two monuments of William of Windsor, and Blanche of the Tower, children of Edward the III. who took sirnames from the places of their birth, and died in their infancy, deserve some attention, because they appear dressed after the manner of that time. The boy is habited in the loose short doublet, which Chaucer's Parson condemns as so indecent, and the girl has the horned headdress, so much censured for hideousness by Stowe. It is now left for us to take a short notice of the royal and noble remains which distinguish, what Leland terms the "Wonder of the World"Henry the VIIth's Chapel. Midway, in the east end of the nave, rises the tomb of the founder, and his queen Elizabeth; it is a splendid work of art, beautifully protected by a fine screen, wrought in brass, and ornamented with rows of statuary, which have been sadly mutilated and destroyed. Images of the royal couple reposing in their robes of state upon a table of basaltic stone are seen within. The head of the tomb is supported by a red dragon, which was the armorial ensign of Cadwallader, the last king of the ancient Britons, from whom Henry vainly traced his pedigree: at the foot lies an angel. The style of the work is richly variegated by various devices, appropriately distinctive of the subject, such as roses twined and crowned, in memory of the union of the long conflicting houses of York and Lancaster; portculles, in signification of the relationship of the Beaufort family, and crowns in bushes, in allusion to the head-piece of Richard III., which was found under a hawthorn, after the Battle of Bosworth. Within this brazen grate formerly stood an altar of basalt, which was subverted by the Puritans as a monument of papal superstition. To this altar Henry gave a relic, which may be best accounted interesting in the precise language of the gift. He styles it "our grete piece of the holie cross, which, by the high provision of our Lord God, was conveied, brought, and delivered to us from the Isle of Cyo, in Greece, sette in gold, and garnished with perles and precious stones: and also the preciouse relique of oon of the legges of St. George, set in silver pareel-gilte, which came into the hands of our broder and cousyn, Lewys of France, the time that he wan and recovered the citie of Millein, and given and sent to us by our cousyn, the Cardinal of Ambroise." No vestige of these superb curiosities is now to be seen. At the head of the grave of Henry the VII. were interred the remains of his grandson, Edward the VI. His memory was consecrated with a splendid monument, erected by the affection of his sister, Queen Mary, but afterwards demolished by the Puritans as the vain work of a Popish adherent. This wantonness of zeal is much to be regretted : whatever may have been the wilful sins, or misguided errors of Catholic Mary, the remembrance of her brother's virtues, and this memorial of his reign, was a grateful labour, which none but a demon can be supposed to quarrel with. The loss is still more to be regretted, for the merit with which we are told it was executed; the sculpture around was admirably chiselled in high relief, and represented the passion, death, and resurrection of our Saviour. Upon the tomb itself lay the youthful monarch, with an angel on either side, praying over the body. In the extremity of the north aisle is raised an interesting monument, of which the end and circumstance may best be collected from a translation of the Latin inscription upon it : Here Lie The remains of Edward the 5th, King of England, and his brother Richard, Duke of York, Imprisoned in the Tower, and there smothered with pillows. They were secretly and meanly interred by the command of their traitorous uncle, Richard, the Usurper. Their bones, Long sought for and desired, after lying For 201 years in the ruins of the stairs lately leading to the Chapel of the White Tower, were, on the 7th July, 1674, By undoubted proofs, recognised deeply buried in that place. Charles the II. ordered these unfortunate Princes to be here interred, In the twentieth year of his reign, and of our Lord the 1678th. Two monuments to rival beauties, and hostile queens, erected by the same forgiving mortal, James the I., must long continue to attract considerable attention. The first, surmounted by a lofty canopy, and finely worked, rises in honour of Queen Elizabeth, so celebrated for happy fortunes, and signal abilities; the second, magnificently executed, stands to the memory of Mary, Queen of Scots, so popular for her misfortunes and enviable beauty. The inscription upon the tomb of Elizabeth is a paradox of eulogy; no thoughtful visitor can possibly meditate upon the unparalleled excellencies of every sort here attributed to her person and her mind, without exclaiming in astonishment at the degeneracy of modern times, and the Christian perfection of the age, in which a son could thus admirably commend the destroyers of his mother. The tomb of that mother may be regarded with gentler feelings. It is well known, that after being beheaded at Fotheringay Castle, in Northamptonshire, she was pompously interred by Elizabeth's command in the Cathedral Church of Peterborough ; but the fact is not so often mentioned, that her son James, not satisfied |