The party entered at the western entrance, which commands an awesome, almost oppressive, view of the interior. In the softened light of the stained windows rose a forest of columns, rich with art and grandly gloomy with the associations of antiquity. Far, far away it stretched to the chapel of Edward the Confessor, a name that led the mind through the faded pomps of the past almost a thousand years.
Monuments of kings and queens, benefactors and poets, beginning with old Edward the Confessor and coming down to the Stuarts; of Eleanor, who sucked the poison from her husband’s wounds, and Philippa, who saved the heroes of Calais. Here Bloody Mary, Queen Elizabeth, and Mary, Queen of Scots, sleep in peace in the same chapel; and here the merry monarch, Charles II., lies among the kingly tombs without a slab to mark the place.
The new Houses of Parliament which stand between the Abbey and the Thames are the finest works of architecture that have been erected in England for centuries. They form a parallelogram nine hundred feet long and three hundred feet wide. The House of Lords and House of Commons occupy the centre of the building. Between these two halls of State rises a tower three hundred feet high. At each end of the building are lofty towers; the Victorian Tower, three hundred forty-six feet high, and a clock tower, in which the hours are struck on a bell called Big Ben, which weighs nine tons.
The entrance to the Houses of Parliament is through old Westminster Hall, ninety feet high and two hundred and ninety long, whose gothic roof of wood is the finest specimen of its kind in English art, and is regarded as one of the wonders of human achievement.
It was in this hall that Charles I. was tried for treason, and condemned; and it was here, at the trial, that the words of a mysterious lady smote Oliver Cromwell to the heart.
“The Prisoner at the bar has been brought here in the name of the People of England,” said the solicitor.
“Not half the people!” exclaimed a mysterious voice in the gallery. “Oliver Cromwell is a traitor!”
The assembly shuddered.
“Fire upon her!” said an officer.
They did not fire. It was Lady Fairfax.