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Show mf fir- t i A k i t i u i ! 1 l V ' f t 'f V T I 4 , ' i .y ' i ,ll s J? S 'f ; " ' - I , V 1 y ' .- t i I . - ' - -1 1 : s f ;" - - i - - - .- . - ; ' UiPU' ---i 3 ; . : - -i k . . ' - "T 4 ' - - I. 7r posrj' coca's? OXIi of the saddest things in life, perhaps, is the sight of an American tourist in Westminster West-minster abbey. Unconventional Unconvention-al as he may be in a thousand things, the American is the most conventional con-ventional of mortals in his attitude toward to-ward the historic show places of Europe. Eu-rope. There is but one proper way to view a monument, one proper opinion to express in regard to it. This is determined de-termined by tradition and, in the case of the abbey the Washington Irving tradiiton is the one' that must be regarded. re-garded. A hundred years ago Irving established a residence within the wall of the old minster and proceeded pro-ceeded to write some very charming, albeit a little florid, prose regarding its architecture and its memorials. His expressed feeling toward it was one of reverence and awe and melancholy, melan-choly, of admiration and respect. Now, this was both correct and natural in Irving's time, but that was before the day when visitors crowded the aisles like cattle at the herding, when the walls were placarded with instructions and warnings, even as the motor busses that pass the door are placarded placard-ed with advertisements, and before youthful verges lined up the curious ; in companies and collected a sixpence apiece for personally conducting them through the royal chapels. The atmosphere at-mosphere today, indeed, is not conducive conduc-ive to meditation and reverential ecstasy; ec-stasy; the abbey is as much a show place as the Albert Memorial or Earl's Court, and the sad sight referred to above is that of the hurried, bustling tourists of the twentieth century trying try-ing to adapt themselves to the tradi-I tradi-I tional pose of reverence and awe cre-' cre-' ated by Irving trying and not succeeding. suc-ceeding. I Women in the Ministsr. ' The sugestion that Florence Nightingale Night-ingale be accorded the highest honor I known to an Englishman, that of ' burial in the abbey, caused me to resurrect res-urrect from the scrap pile an old guide to the building, written in a tone that Irving himself would have approved. ap-proved. I wanted to find what women have heretofore bfen granted this distinction, or that of a tablet or monument mon-ument in this national place of sepulture, sepul-ture, and the reasons therefor. I discovered dis-covered that their name was legion, but that the honor given them, except in two or three cases was for no special spe-cial merit of their own. Their bodies rested there or the monument was raised to them because they were the wives or daughters of this dignitary or that, one taking the room for uo more valid reason than that she was the spouse of an estimable gentleman who was for "a time organist of the church. Two exceptions there were, indped the one, Jenny Lind, the other oth-er Sarah Siddons. But their tablets are of small comparative size and value, while to this or that lady of the court has been erected an imposing and colossal monument. One all visitors vis-itors to the abbey will remember because be-cause of the hideous skeleton that forms part of its composition, erected, as it happens, to the lady as well as the lord of the same name as the heroic he-roic Santa Filoment, who has just passed away. Vas an Age of Stilted Periods. The epitaphs quoted in the guide- book have a distinctive flavor, as if they were some special brand manufactured manu-factured for the abbey. The old kings in the splendid old tombs need no inscription, in-scription, and have none, but as the architectural merit of the tombs decreases de-creases so does the verbal decoration increase, and wfth the monstrous sculpture of the eighteenth century comes the florid and overwrought pe-rioas pe-rioas of the epitaph writers. You can almost tell the date of any individual specimen by the literary style. History His-tory records, I believe, that the morals mor-als of the eighteenth century were anything but above reproach in England, Eng-land, but if Westminster is to be taken ta-ken as the test that was an age of heroic he-roic saints and saintly heroes. Yet that these quaint old hypocrites were not self-deceived is suggested by the closing sentence of one of the epitaphs epi-taphs of a priod following that of the most stilted specimen. "Reader," it says, "if on perusing this tribute to a private individual thou should be disposed to suspect it as partial or censure it as diffuse, know that it is not panegyric, but history." True Sentiment Not Wanting. Upon the monument of Grace Scott, wife of Colonel Scott, a member of the honorable house of commons, 1844, are engraved these words: "He that will give my Grace but what is hers Must say that death has not Made only her dear Scott, But virtue, worth and sweetness, widowers." wid-owers." Punning, indeed, wa3 highly esteemed es-teemed by the ancient eulogists, as instanced in-stanced in the epitaph to Sir James Fullerton: "He died fuller of faith than of fear; fuller of consolation than of pains; fuller of honor than of days." Yet there are not wanting specimens of true and ingenious sentiment, sen-timent, as that in the case of Mrs. Mary Kendall, whose friendship for Lady Catherine Jones was such that "she desired that even their ashes after death might not be divided and therefore ordered herself here to be interred where she knew that excellent excel-lent lady designed one day to rest near the grave of her beloved and religious re-ligious mother," and also the little marble cradle over the grave of the daughter of James I., who died at the age of three days, with verses by Susan Coolidge, which do not wholly lose their pathos in spite of the fact that they are placarded on the walls with the "Keep Order" and other signs. When Abbey Becomes Impressive. And, moreover, there-are times when the abbey does regain some of the majesty and awe that the early writers tell of of a late afternoon, perhaps, when the sight-seeing mob has gone and the light has grown dim and a faint but impressive radiance falls from the big rose window in the south transept. Then, having climbed to the little gallery wherein the effigies effi-gies are displayed not to see those abominations but to gain therefrom charming and varied vistas of nave and pillar, of arches so slender that they seem to sway and vaulting traced with delicate designs having got above the noise of shuffling feet and the clotter of light-hearted tourists, you hear in the dimness and silence the impressive strains of the Largo from the fingers of a belated organist and find a rare and appropriate harmony har-mony in the music, the light and the spirit of the place. And you walk out reverently, thinking that the abbey is, after all, still worth while. |