But Raleigh, and Leicester, etc., etc.—lions couldn’t a-kep’ ’em from the prettiest woman—no, indeed!
In the same vault is Bloody Mary, who burnt up about seventy folks a year durin’ her rain.
Al Faizi took out his little book with a cross on’t, and wrote quite a lot here, and he also did before Mary, Queen of Scots. I d’no, mebby he, too, bein’ a man, felt some of the subtle charm that surrounds her memory, even to-day, and keeps men from ever doin’ plain jestice to her, and always will, I spoze.
Not fur off is the restin’-place of the little princes murdered in the Tower by Richard III.
Al Faizi writ sunthin’ here, too, in his book—quite a lot.
There are nine chapels in the Abbey, each one full of the tombs of ’em whom the world has delighted to honor; and the guide told us that many a king and prince lay here who had not any memorial to mark his last sleep.
One of these wuz the “Merry Monarch,” Charles II. Among the great crowd who surrounded him, like a swarm of hungry insects, feedin’ upon him, and buzzin’ out their praise and compliments and loyalty to him, and flatterin’ his vices and weaknesses, not one of ’em thought enough of him to rare up the least little mark to his memory—
A deep lesson of the worthlessness of worldly praise or blame. A great contrast to this is the monument to Charles and John Wesley. They worked on all their lives, a-preachin’ and a-warnin’ aginst the vices of the great, as well as the humble, and here they have their monument amongst the royal dead.
Another thing that interested me in the Abbey wuz the Coronation Chair, in which every sovereign in England, from Edward the Confessor down to Queen Victoria, has been crowned.
