An Architectural Triumph.
Westminster Abbey is not wanting in architectural interest. Indeed, it is pronounced by Mr. Freeman the most glorious of English churches, and is said to be the one great church of England which retains its beautiful ancient coloring undestroyed by so-called "restoration." The exterior is singularly impressive, whether viewed from the east, where the exquisite lacework of Henry VII.'s Chapel, with its richly decorated buttresses, rivets the attention at the first glance; or from the north, where we face the north transept, the front of which, with its niches, its rose-window, and its great triple entrance, is pronounced by Mr. Hare the richest part of the building externally; or even from the west, where, in spite of the two comparatively late and feeble towers, we have a noble front, the loftiness of which is well brought out by "the low line of grey wall which indicates the Jerusalem Chamber." The interior is still more beautiful, and, as we have already seen, this beauty culminates in Henry VII.'s Chapel, the loveliness of which is absolutely unrivalled in the whole world. In his very sympathetic essay on Westminster Abbey in The Sketch Book, Washington Irving says of this wonderful chapel: "On entering, the eye is astonished by the pomp of architecture and the elaborate beauty of sculptured detail. The very walls are wrought into universal ornament, incrusted with tracery, and scooped into niches, crowded with the statues of saints and martyrs. Stone seems, by the cunning labor of the chisel, to have been robbed of its weight and density, suspended aloft, as if by magic, and the fretted roof achieved with the wonderful minuteness and airy security of a cobweb."
Coronations and Burials.
But the intrinsic beauty of the building is only a small part of the explanation of the unique place which it holds in the interest of mankind. The two real reasons are suggested by Waller's lines:
"That antique pile behold,
Where royal heads receive the sacred gold:
It gives them crowns, and does their ashes keep;
There made like gods, like mortals there they sleep,
Making the circle of their reign complete,
Those suns of empire, where they rise they set."