Peeps at Many Lands: England

by John Finnemore

IN LONDON TOWN—III.

Now that we have seen the Queen pass by, we will go and look at her home in London. Buckingham Palace is not far from Hyde Park Corner, and when we reach it we see a big, rather dull-looking building, with a courtyard before it, and red-coated soldiers marching up and down on guard. This palace of the King and Queen is, in truth, not very handsome outside, but it is very splendid within, its fine rooms being adorned with the paintings of great artists.

A noble road, called the Mall, leads from the front of Buckingham Palace, and if we follow it we shall come out on a wide, open space laid with gravel, the Horse Guards' Parade. Or if we do not care about walking along the Mall, we can come through St. James's Park, with its pretty piece of ornamental water, where ducks and other water-birds fly about, and watch eagerly for crumbs flung to them by the visitors.

Crossing the Horse Guards' Parade, we go through a small archway into the great street called Whitehall. The archway is watched without by two Life Guards—tall men in shining steel breastplates and helmets, and mounted on tall horses—while others on foot march up and down within.

In Whitehall may be seen the room from which Charles I. stepped out to the scaffold on the day of his execution. It was once the banqueting-hall of a royal palace, and is now a museum, and anyone may go into it. The scaffold had been built outside the walls, and he stepped through a window to reach it, and there his head was struck off before a great crowd which had gathered in Whitehall.

The broad street is lined with tall buildings, where the business of Government is carried on; and at its foot stand the Houses of Parliament, where laws are made for the nation. This noble range of buildings is crowned by three great towers, two square and one pointed. The pointed one is the Clock Tower, and there, high above our heads, is the great clock with its four faces. It is the largest clock in England; its figures are 2 feet in length; its minute-hand is 16 feet long, and weighs 2cwt. The hour is struck on a great bell called "Big Ben," and when Big Ben booms out over London it tells the people what o'clock it is, and they set their watches and clocks by it.

As we look round, we see at a short distance from us a majestic old church, its walls grey and time-worn. It is Westminster Abbey, the place where our kings and queens have been crowned for a thousand years, and where lie the remains of Britain's famous dead. No sooner do we enter the venerable building than we see on every side monuments and inscriptions to the memory of great men and women—kings, queens, princes, statesmen, famous writers, soldiers, sailors, travellers, all are there—some with a mere line or so of inscription, some with a huge sculptured monument. For many hundreds of years Westminster Abbey has been used as a burial-place, and to name those that lie there and to tell the story of their lives would be to narrate the history of England.

This noble church is built in the form of a Latin cross, and contains beautiful chapels opening from the main building, the finest of all being the Chapel of Henry VII. at the eastern end of the abbey. In these chapels lie many kings and queens of England, beginning with Edward the Confessor, who founded the abbey, and whose shrine stands in the interesting chapel behind the choir.

Near at hand is the famous Coronation Chair, an old wooden chair, with a large stone let in under its seat. The stone was brought to England by Edward I., who seized it at Scone in Scotland. It is the sacred stone on which all the Scottish kings had been crowned for many centuries, and when Edward placed it in the Coronation Chair he meant it to show that the English king was ruler of Scotland also. And yet it was a Scottish king who first joined the two kingdoms, and not an English one, for James VI. of Scotland became James I. of England, and the two kingdoms were united under the name of Great Britain. Our King, Edward VII., was, of course, the last to be crowned, seated in that famous old chair.