Rollo and Mr. George did come another day, and then they walked about entirely at their ease, and examined as many of the monuments, and deciphered as many of the ancient inscriptions, as they pleased. They also walked about to visit what are called the chapels. The chapels in a European cathedral are small recesses, opening from the main church, and separated from it by an iron railing, or a screen, or something of that sort. They are ornamented in various ways, and contain various monuments, and in Catholic cathedrals are used often for special services of religious worship. You will see the places of the chapels in Westminster Abbey by referring again to the plan on page 82. Most of them are built around the head of the cross. There are six small ones,—three on each side,—marked B, C, D, F, G, I, and another at the head—the largest and most splendid of all. This last is called Henry VII.'s Chapel. The tombs of Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth are in this chapel, one on each side of it, as marked in the plan. The names of the other chapels are as follows:
B, St. Benedict's; C, St. Edmond's; D, St. Nicholas's; F, St. Paul's; G, St. John the Baptist's.
There is also another chapel in the centre, which is, in some respects, the most interesting of all. It is marked H on the plan. Here the bodies of a great number of the ancient kings of England are interred.
As Rollo and Mr. George walked about among these monuments and tombstones, now that there was no congregation of worshippers present to give a living character to the scene, the whole aspect and feeling of the chapels and aisles through which they wandered seemed cold, and damp, and subterranean, so as to impress them continually with the idea that they were in chambers consecrated, not to the living, but to the dead. In fact, Westminster Abbey, whatever may have been its original design, is now little else than a tomb—a grand and imposing, but damp and gloomy, tomb. It is so completely filled in every part with funeral monuments that the whole aspect and character of it are entirely changed; so that, from being a temple consecrated to the service of God, it has become a vast sepulchre, devoted almost wholly to commemorating the glory of man.
Mr. George did not go to St. Paul's that afternoon
to church, as he had at first intended. He said that one such display as he had witnessed at Westminster Abbey was spectacle enough for one Sunday. He accordingly determined to postpone his visit to the great cathedral of the city till the next day; and on that afternoon he took Rollo to a small dissenting chapel in the vicinity of their lodgings, where the service consisted of simple prayers offered by the pastor as the organ of the assembled worshippers, of hymns sung in concert by all the congregation, and of a plain and practical sermon, urging upon the hearers the duty of penitence for sin, and of seeking pardon and salvation through a spiritual union with Jesus the Redeemer.
"Well," said Mr. George to Rollo, as he came out of the chapel when the congregation was dismissed, "the service at the abbey, with all those chantings and intonations of the performers, and all the ceremonies, and dresses, and solemn paradings, makes a more imposing spectacle, I grant; but it seems to me that the service that we have heard this afternoon is modelled much more closely after the pattern of the meeting which Jesus held with his disciples the night before he was betrayed. At any rate, it satisfies much more fully, as it seems to me, the spiritual hungerings and thirstings of the human soul."