Over Abbot Islip's Chapel is a chantry, now used for keeping the few wax effigies which remain. For, as you remember, it used to be the custom at royal funerals, or indeed at any important funerals, to carry the likeness of the dead man or woman before the coffin; these painted effigies being made of boiled leather, wood, or wax, dressed up in the clothes of the person they represented. Only eleven of these remain, though at one time there must have been quite a collection of royal figures in the Abbey which were open to the public, gaze, and evidently left to the mercy of the public. Queen Elizabeth can still be seen, gorgeously dressed, but weary and sad-looking; Charles II. is there, and the beautiful Duchess of Richmond of the Stuart race, whose monument, with that of her husband, is in Henry VII.'s Chapel. Then there is the Duchess of Buckinghamshire, proud and pomp-loving, who insisted on seeing the canopy for her funeral hearse, that she might be sure it was magnificent enough, and who made her attendants promise that even when she became unconscious they would still stand in her presence. By her is her little son, and near her, her eldest son, who also died young. Queen Anne beams on us; William and Mary have the crown set between them, and he stands on a stool so as not to appear smaller than his wife. General Monk's armour is there, much the worse for wear; and Pitt, Earl of Chatham, is splendid in his Parliamentary robes. Nelson was put here from a very worldly point of view, for when he was buried in St. Paul's, such crowds went to see his grave, that Westminster Abbey was neglected, and as the pence of the sightseers were too valuable to be lost, it was decided that some memorial of the great hero must be placed in the Abbey to attract people back again. All the clothes except the coat, and certainly the hat, belonged to Nelson, but a waxwork effigy hardly seems a worthy monument to him in the place which he must have loved and honoured, nay, must have dreamt of, when he cried to his men as he led them to attack, "Westminster Abbey, or glorious victory."
And now, leaving monuments, sleeping figures, epitaphs, inscriptions, and effigies, come and stand for a moment on the steps leading up to the High Altar, that we may take our last look at the Abbey from what is perhaps the most interesting spot in it. For, as you will remember, it is in this part of the Church that the coronation service takes place, it is here that every sovereign of England has been crowned from the days of Harold onwards.
THE HIGH ALTAR. (SHEWING ABBOT WARE'S PAVEMENT.)
The pavement inside the rails is made of the mosaics brought back from Rome by Abbot Ware in 1267, where he went to be duly confirmed in his office by the Pope; the pillars near the altar are on the very bases which were put there when Edward the Confessor built his church. Here are the tombs of Aymer de Valence, of Edmund Crouchback, Earl of Lancaster, and of Aveline his young wife, who as a bride had stood in front of the altar but a few months before her death in the year 1269. Opposite, King Sebert is said to lie; under the pavement rests Abbot Ware, with other of his successors, and Richard the Second's sad helpless face looks at us from his portrait with its fine background of tapestry. The altar and the reredos which we see are both new, and just as the old frieze through in the Confessor's Chapel depicts scenes in the life of Edward, so the modern reredos gives us glimpses of Him in whose honour the Saxon king first raised these walls. From among the gold, four white figures stand out, "the four living creatures which have been thought worthy to stand round the central figure of our departing Master," as Dean Stanley described them when they were erected. On the right stands St. Peter, patron saint of the Abbey, holding in one hand the keys, and in the other a book, on which is written the great truth, "God is no respecter of persons," and next to him is Moses, the first statesman and lawgiver, looking towards the buried statesmen in the Abbey.
On the left stands St. Paul, grasping in his hand that Sword of the Spirit which he had named as the weapon of the Christian warrior, and by him is David, the sweet singer of Israel, whose face is turned towards the Poets' Corner as though he would claim those sleeping there for his brethren.
Through the glass we catch a glimpse of the Chapel of the Kings, and all around is a network of slender arches fashioned by master-hands into forms of stately but perfect beauty. High above are the three Eastern Windows, though in the course of the years these have been so constantly repaired with any scraps of glass available, that the effect is rather confusing. But the figure of a thorn-crowned Christ stands out, and near to Him are Edward the Confessor and St. John the Evangelist.
Now turn to the west, look at the glade of arches stretching down the nave, at the Statesmen's Corner on the right, where under the Rose Window Chatham's fine figure stands out almost with an air of proud satisfaction, and then towards the left to the monument of Oliver Goldsmith, and the more imposing memorial to the great Duke of Argyll, "an honest man, a constant friend, a general and an orator." Two commanding statues of Campbell and Addison loom out in the half light, Campbell casting a shadow over the graves of Abbot Litlington, Owen Tudor, and Dean Benson, and hiding from our view the dignified, thoughtful figure of William Shakespeare, who holds in his hands a scroll on which are those lines of his from the "Tempest":—
"The cloud-capt towers,
The gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples,
The great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit
Shall dissolve,
And like the baseless fabric of a vision
Leave not a wreck behind."
Burns and Sir Walter Scott greet us from their niches; Grote and Thirlwall, the truth-loving writers of history; Camden, the Westminster master and antiquarian; Garrick the actor, Handel the musician, all cluster around us as we look down the southern aisle; and we can just see at the end the newest addition to the building, a bronze memorial to John Ruskin, a great teacher and writer of our own day. Some words of his come to my mind at this moment, as applying in a very special sense to the Abbey: "The greatest glory of a building is not in its stones, nor in its gold. The glory is in its age, and in that deep sense of voicefulness, of stern watching, of mysterious sympathy, nay, even of approval or condemnation, which we feel in walls that have long been washed by the passing waves of humanity.... It is in the golden stain of time that we are to look for the real light, and colour, and preciousness of architecture; and it is not until a building has assumed this character, till it has been entrusted with the fame and hallowed by the deeds of men, till its walls have been witnesses of suffering, and its pillars rise out of the shadows of death, that its existence, more lasting as it is than the natural objects of the world around it, can be gifted with even so much as those possess of language and of life. Therefore, when we build, let us think that we build for ever.... God has lent us the earth for our life; it is a great entail. It belongs as much to those who are to come after us, and whose names are already written in the Book of Creation, as to us."