A GLIMPSE OF CANTERBURY
One of the most impressive spots on earth, and one that especially teaches—with silent, pathetic eloquence and solemn admonition—the great lesson of contrast, the incessant flow of the ages and the inevitable decay and oblivion of the past, is the ancient city of Canterbury. Years and not merely days of residence there are essential to the adequate and right comprehension of that wonderful place. Yet even an hour passed among its shrines will teach you, as no printed word has ever taught, the measureless power and the sublime beauty of a perfect religious faith; while, as you stand and meditate in the shadow of the gray cathedral walls, the pageant of a thousand years of history will pass before you like a dream. The city itself, with its bright, swift river (the Stour), its opulence of trees and flowers, its narrow winding streets, its numerous antique buildings, its many towers, its fragments of ancient wall and gate, its formal decorations, its air of perfect cleanliness and thoughtful gravity, its beautiful, umbrageous suburbs,—where the scarlet of the poppies and the russet red of the clover make one vast rolling sea of colour and of fragrant delight,—and, to crown all, its stately character of wealth without ostentation and industry without tumult, must prove to you a deep and satisfying comfort. But, through all this, pervading and surmounting it all, the spirit of the place pours in upon your heart, and floods your whole being with the incense and organ music of passionate, jubilant devotion.
It was not superstition that reared those gorgeous fanes of worship which still adorn, even while they no longer consecrate, the ecclesiastic cities of the old world. In the age of Augustine, Dunstan, and Ethelnoth humanity had begun to feel its profound and vital need of a sure and settled reliance on religious faith. The drifting spirit, worn with sorrow, doubt, and self-conflict, longed to be at peace—longed for a refuge equally from the evils and tortures of its own condition and the storms and perils of the world. In that longing it recognised its immortality and heard the voice of its Divine Parent; and out of the ecstatic joy and utter abandonment of its new-born, passionate, responsive faith, it built and consecrated those stupendous temples,—rearing them with all its love no less than all its riches and all its power. There was no wealth that it would not give, no toil that it would not perform, and no sacrifice that it would not make, in the accomplishment of its sacred task. It was grandly, nobly, terribly in earnest, and it achieved a work that is not only sublime in its poetic majesty but measureless in the scope and extent of its moral and spiritual influence. It has left to succeeding ages not only a legacy of permanent beauty, not only a sublime symbol of religious faith, but an everlasting monument to the loveliness and greatness that are inherent in human nature. No creature with a human heart in his bosom can stand in such a building as Canterbury cathedral without feeling a greater love and reverence than he ever felt before, alike for God and man.
On a day (July 27, 1882) when a class of the boys of the King's School of Canterbury was graduated the present writer chanced to be a listener to the impressive and touching sermon that was preached before them, in the cathedral; wherein they were tenderly admonished to keep unbroken their associations with their school-days and to remember the lessons of the place itself. That counsel must have sunk deep into every mind. It is difficult to understand how any person reared amid such scenes and relics could ever cast away their hallowing influence. Even to the casual visitor the bare thought of the historic treasures that are garnered in this temple is, by itself, sufficient to implant in the bosom a memorable and lasting awe. For more than twelve hundred years the succession of the Archbishops of Canterbury has remained substantially unbroken. There have been ninety-three "primates of all England," of whom fifty-three were buried in the cathedral, and here the tombs of fifteen of them are still visible. Here was buried the sagacious, crafty, inflexible, indomitable Henry the Fourth,—that Hereford whom Shakespeare has described and interpreted with matchless, immortal eloquence,—and here, cut off in the morning of his greatness, and lamented to this day in the hearts of the English people, was laid the body of Edward the Black Prince, who to a dauntless valour and terrible prowess in war added a high-souled, human, and tender magnanimity in conquest, and whom personal virtues and shining public deeds united to make the ideal hero of chivalry. In no other way than by personal observance of such memorials can historic reading be invested with a perfect and permanent reality. Over the tomb of the Black Prince, with its fine recumbent effigy of gilded brass, hang the gauntlets that he wore; and they tell you that his sword formerly hung there, but that Oliver Cromwell—who revealed his iconoclastic and unlovely character in making a stable of this cathedral—carried it away. Close at hand is the tomb of the wise, just, and gentle Cardinal Pole, simply inscribed "Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord"; and you may touch a little, low mausoleum of gray stone, in which are the ashes of John Morton, that Bishop of Ely from whose garden in Holborn the strawberries were brought for the Duke of Gloster, on the day when he condemned the accomplished Hastings, and who "fled to Richmond," in good time, from the standard of the dangerous Protector. Standing there, I could almost hear the resolute, scornful voice of Richard, breathing out, in clear, implacable accents—
"Ely with Richmond troubles me more near
Than Buckingham and his rash-levied strength."
The astute Morton, when Bosworth was over and Richmond had assumed the crown and Bourchier had died, was made Archbishop of Canterbury; and as such, at a great age, he passed away.