pagan-looking monuments marred the purity or masked the grandeur of its exquisite outline. The slender clustered columns which supported the exquisite arches and noble vaults were as majestic as the cedars of Lebanon of which David sang. Untarnished by the smoky influence of modern London's atmosphere, they were as white as lilies. The subdued light, which streamed through windows filled with the unrivalled jewelled glass of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, toned and warmed an effect which might otherwise have been somewhat garish and cold.

A richly carved rood-screen separated the nave from the choir, and high above it, on the cross bar, stood the three sacred figures of the Crucified, Mary, and John. The monks' stalls are still in their old places, and are used by the Canons. In the choir sleeps the founder Sebert, King of the East Saxons, and with him rests in peace his consort Ethelgoda, and his sister Ricula. His monument, however, was erected by the Abbot of Westminster in 1303, probably out of the material of the older tomb. Hard by are the two superb tombs of Edward Crouchback, Earl of Lancaster, second son of Edward III., and of Aymer de Valance, one of the grandest funereal monuments in England. It is only a little superior to that of Edward the Third's son, being a trifle more ornate. Both possess the same solemn dignity, and are replete with the same intensely Christian spirit. Consider the touching groups, the deceased's relations expressing with varied emotions their sorrow for the loss they have sustained, and then gaze upon the noble reposefulness of the principal figures, serenely asleep in death. Above both figures soar angels, bearing their souls heavenwards. Flaxman was quite right when he admired these two tombs above any in the Abbey-"they carry the thoughts not only to other ages," said he, "but to other states of existence"! If now the visitor wishes to realise the depths of degradation to which a great Christian art can descend, let him contrast these splendid, but thoroughly orthodox, monuments, not indeed with the pagan Mrs. Siddons and the theatrical John Kemble, in the far-off chapel opposite, but with the two remarkable monuments by Roubilliac-the one to Mrs. Nightingale and the other to Shakespeare. Both are in their way excellent, but absolutely unecclesiastical. The Shakespeare, for instance, which looks so ridiculously out of place

in Poets' Corner, reproduced in marble cuts an admirable figure in Leicester Square, where its dandified elegance seems quite appropriate in the midst of a pretty garden overlooked by the Moorish Alhambra and the gay nondescript Empire. The Nightingale monument has undoubted merit. The figure of the dying lady, who has sunk back affrighted in her husband's arms to avoid Death's dart, is admirable, but is no more suited to a Christian church than a Gothic monument would be to the Parthenon. Roubilliac himself appreciated at their true value the monuments of an earlier period. Being one day at work upon this very monument, he pointed to the recumbent figure of Sir Francis Vere, and in his enthusiasm interrupted Gayfere, the Abbey mason, who was about to speak to him, “Hush! Hush! he vil speak presently!" Roubilliac's "Shakespeare" makes an excellent Chelsea figure-but no ceramic artist has ever attempted to reproduce in his pretty material the sublime beauty of such a monument as that of Aymer de Valance. To do so would be sheer blasphemy, and the result atrocious! I am not at all sure that the Nightingale tomb would not look admirable in Dresden china ! 1

The High Altar stood on the spot now occupied by the modern altar and reredos. It was enriched with innumerable alabaster statuettes touched with gold. Gorgeous damask and cloth-of-gold curtains spread off on either side of the altar, which was centred by a Crucifix of pure gold. The display of church plate, the intrinsic value of which in gold and gems was exceeded by the artistic elaboration and beauty of its design, was so great as almost to excuse King Henry's sacrilegious greed. If the arrangement of the choir was beautiful, the service conducted therein was not less magnificent and stately. No church in Europe was richer in vestments than the Westminster Abbey of pre-Reformation times, and the elaborate embroidery of its altar

1 Although we are certain that a rood-loft, with its accompanying figures of Christ, Mary, and John existed before the Reformation in Westminster Abbey, as indeed it did in every cathedral church and chapel throughout the country, it is a mistake to imagine that this particular piece of ecclesiastical furniture dates back to early medieval times. There is apparently no con. temporary mention of a rood-loft existing anywhere in England before the first quarter of the fifteenth century, excepting in St. Paul's Cathedral, where, it seems, the rood was in its place at a much earlier date.

linen was renowned. The organ was, for the age, a noble one, and the choir was admirable, though its chanting would possibly have seemed to our taste a trifle monotonous. There was certainly nothing operatic about it, though the cadenzas performed by the singers were exceedingly, nay strangely, elaborate.

In those days the Sacrarium, still so lovely, was a marvel, which reminded visitors, who were readers of the Scriptures, of the inspired descriptions of Solomon's Temple. Then, as now, the Confessor's shrine stood in the centre, resting on that beautiful marble and mosaic monument, evidently of Italian design and workmanship, which was set up in Henry the Third's time. But over this tomb, again, there rose an edifice of gold and silver in form like a miniature church, which flashed with jewels-the accumulated treasure of nearly seven hundred years. On either side were figures in pure gold-SS. Edward and Peter-standing on twisted marble columns.1

A girdle of royal tombs still surrounds the mutilated shrine of the Holy Founder of the church. But in King Hal's day these tombs, so time-stained and dimmed in colour now, were white as alabaster, and shone with the subdued fires of burnished brass and bronze. Over each royal figure hung rich palls of clothof-gold. Lights innumerable burned night and day in the various chantries. In the softened radiance, King Henry the Fifth's glistening silver effigy shimmered like some pale shadow that had

1 At the Reformation it is probable that the relics of the Confessor were pilfered by degrees; these depredations did not, however, extend to the interior of the tomb until the reign of James II., when one Keep, employed in the Abbey, discovered the lid of the coffin broken, as he supposed, from a beam having fallen on it. On examination the head was found solid and firm, with a fillet of gold round it and the jaws full of teeth. A crucifix, richly adorned and enamelled, with a gold chain, was taken out, presented to the King, and accepted by him. He ordered a new coffin for the body, two inches thick, and clamped with iron. This tomb, among others, suffered much during the usurpation; soldiers were quartered in the church and committed the most shocking excesses; whatever of any value was portable on the monuments they took away; "they pulled down the organ, and sold the pipes at several ale-houses." Another disgraceful scene took place here on the Restoration, when the graves were opened, and the greatest indignities offered to the remains of the Republicans. These little-known facts are given in greater detail in that scarce book, William Barnard Cook's The Thames (1811).