All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley rock or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep;
The river glideth at his own sweet will.
Dear God, the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still.
Westminster Bridge is particularly wide, and has a low parapet. In the sudden gusts of wind that come sweeping down the river it is a marvel that no one has been caught up and tossed over into the rolling green torrent. These peculiarities also are noticeable when the bridge is seen from the Embankment, for the traffic looms up very high on it, and the omnibuses and cabs look almost as if they were careering along on the parapet itself.
From Westminster to Lambeth is but a short way, and what Westminster Palace was, while it existed, to the lord temporal, so Lambeth has been, and is, to the lord spiritual; from the very earliest times the Archbishops of Canterbury have lodged here.
In our peaceful days the holder of the highest dignity of the Church has not to fear the Tower and the "sharp medicine of the axe" as some of his predecessors did. Laud and Juxon were executed, and for Cranmer there was the worse horror of the torturing stake. Lambeth has seen much cruelty mingled with the name of religion in the time that it has stood above the flood. The Lollards, imprisoned within the tower which still bears their name, made deep incisions on the walls to wile away the weary hours of suspense, and the groans of prisoners have been stifled by these walls as well as by those of the grim Tower.