The conservative principle in the English mind, if it has saved some trash, has saved more treasure. At the foot of Buckingham Street, in the Strand,—where was situated an estate of George Villiers, first Duke of Buckingham, assassinated in 1628, whose tomb may be seen in the chapel of Henry the Seventh in Westminster Abbey,—still stands the slowly crumbling ruin of the old Water Gate, so often mentioned as the place where accused traitors were embarked for the Tower. The river, in former times, flowed up to that gate, but the land along the margin of the Thames has been redeemed, and the magnificent Victoria and Albert embankments now border the river for a long distance on both sides. The Water Gate, in fact, stands in a little park on the north bank of the Thames. Not far away is the Adelphi Terrace, where Garrick lived and died (Obiit January 20, 1779, aged 63), and where, on October 1, 1822, his widow expired, aged 98. The house of Garrick is let in "chambers" now. If you walk up the Strand towards Charing Cross you presently come near to the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, which is one of the works of James Gibbs, a pupil of Sir Christopher Wren, and entirely worthy of the master's hand. The fogs have stained that building with such a deft touch as shows the caprice of nature to be often better than the best design of art. Nell Gwyn's name is connected with St. Martin. Her funeral occurred in that church, and was pompous, and no less a person than Tenison (afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury) preached the funeral sermon.†
† This was made the occasion of a complaint against him, to Queen Mary, who gently expressed her unshaken confidence in his goodness and truth.
That prelate's dust reposes in Lambeth church, which can be seen, across the river, from this part of Westminster. If you walk down the Strand, through Temple Bar, you presently reach the Temple; and there is no place in London where the past and the present are so strangely confronted as they are here. The venerable church, so quaint with its cone-pointed turrets, was sleeping in the sunshine when first I saw it; sparrows were twittering around its spires and gliding in and out of the crevices in its ancient walls; while from within a strain of organ music, low and sweet, trembled forth, till the air became a benediction and every common thought and feeling was purified away from mind and heart. The grave of Goldsmith is close to the pathway that skirts this church, on a terrace raised above the foundation of the building and above the little graveyard of the Templars that nestles at its base. As I stood beside the resting-place of that sweet poet it was impossible not to feel both grieved and glad: grieved at the thought of all he suffered, and of all that the poetic nature must always suffer before it will utter its immortal music for mankind: glad that his gentle spirit found rest at last, and that time has given him the crown he would most have prized—the affection of true hearts. A gray stone, coffin-shaped and marked with a cross,—after the fashion of the contiguous tombs of the Templars,—is imposed upon his grave.
One surface bears the inscription, "Here lies Oliver Goldsmith"; the other presents the dates of his birth and death. (Born Nov. 10, 1728; died April 4, 1774.) I tried to call up the scene of his burial, when, around the open grave, on that tearful April evening, Johnson, Burke, Reynolds, Beauclerk, Boswell, Davies, Kelly, Palmer, and the rest of that broken circle, may have gathered to witness
"The duties by the lawn-robed prelate paid,
And the last rites that dust to dust conveyed."