Should ‘Echo round his bones for evermore.’
Do you know how his body was brought through the streets of London? Look at this enormous funeral car standing under this dark arch, and you will see. It looks so strange and fantastic that at first sight you hardly know what it is meant for; but you must remember that it was not made out of ordinary wood, like carts and waggons. It was made out of iron—out of old cannon which had done their part in the great soldier’s victories. Look at the names of these victories, twenty-four of them, engraved upon the body of the car.
You can think what a solemn procession it must have been, as the mighty soldier and prudent statesman was borne upon it, through more than a million silent onlookers, to his last long rest in St. Paul’s.
Here is another grave that we must look at ere we leave the Crypt. ‘It cannot be an important one,’ you say, ‘for there is no monument over it, only an inscription.’
Ah yes, but read the inscription—‘Lector, Si Monumentum Requiris, Circumspice.’[A] That tells us at once whose grave it is. It is Christopher Wren’s. And, as we do his bidding, and look around and above us, and as we ascend the stairs once more, and enter the magnificent Cathedral and walk down the nave to the great west door, we feel that no smaller monument could have been erected to the man whose marvellous skill planned it all.
FOOTNOTE:
[A] ‘Reader, if thou requirest a monument, look around.’
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE: