MEDAL WORN BY THE CAPTAIN OF THE GREY COAT BOYS.
In the churchyard of St. Margaret’s were interred the remains of those persons who were turned out of the Abbey at the Restoration: the mother of Cromwell; his daughter; Admiral Blake, whose remains ought to have been taken back again long ago; and in this church, or this churchyard, have been buried a crowd of persons illustrious and of high degree in their generation, whose deeds have not survived them and whose memory is only kept alive by the monuments on the walls and nothing else. It is a church filled with monuments: it reminds one of such a
BLUE COAT SCHOOL, CAXTON STREET.
church as the Grey Friars’ in the City, which was crowded with tombs of the illustrious Forgotten.
Not far from the church is the old-new Burial Ground, in the Horseferry Road. It is now a public garden, and a pleasant garden, with seats and asphalted paths and beds of grass and flowers. Against the wall are ranged the tombstones of the obscure Forgotten. I suppose it makes very little difference to a man whether he has a headstone provided for him against the wall of a public garden, or a tablet—nay, a monument—against the wall of St. Margaret’s Church, as soon as he is properly and completely forgotten.