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Show IMPRESSIONS OLD AND NEW j The Chapels The Tomb of Mary Queen of Scots and Queen Elizabeth Edward the Confessor A 'Bus Ride The j Catholic Cathedral. I ... : 'V Thr Abbey guides an' courteous mid gifted with ? a fair knowledge, of their business. They toll you i about kings ami queens, warriors and statesmen. . I as if these diguitiiries were personal friends and boon companions of theirs. They have a set speech jj for every chapel and tombtone, and like the preach- ; er who commits his sermon to memory. I fear if the j guides were interrupted in these set sermons of i theirs they would break down. However, they speak : hard for their money, and no doubt earn what they J got. ; ' The first chapel we entered was St. Benedict's, and our guide points us out the tomb of tho unfortunate unfor-tunate and castoff queen of the cruel and. lustful king Henry VIII Anne of Cleves. As we gaze upon the tomb back to our mind comes rushing tho words which Shakespeare puts into the mouth of another wife of his Anne Boleyn " 'Tis better to be lowly born And herd with humble livers in content. Than to be perked up in glittering grief To wear a golden sorrow." Passing on to tho next chapel. St. Edmund's, we have the beautiful monuments of the brother and sister of the valiant Ulaek Prince, with that, of Jano Seymour, another of Henry VIII's darlings. dar-lings. He was an affectionate husband, surely, according ac-cording to all accounts. Watching over the tombstones tomb-stones of these great dead is a Crusader. He is harmless enough, though, for in his armour and all over him names, initials and dates are out. Some visitors knowing that their bodies would never rest in the Abbey, determined that some portion of them should have a snug resting place there, so they buried their names in the big Crusader. The chapel chap-el of St. Xicholas is very pretty and here rest the warlike Percys side by side with that of the great Burleigh. To my thinking thi-t Burleigh must have been the greatest man in history. Why? you ask me. A man that was Prime Minister to sweet Queen Bess for so long, and kept his head so well. despite the machinations of her favorites and her well known jealousy, must indeed have been prrcat. We now come to the most beautiful chapel in the Abbey that of Henry VIT. The wood work and stone work is indeed marvelous and the bracing of the eeilingNs as light and a delicate as lace, and here too rest the greatest and some of the most unfortunate monarch in English history. I was thinking our guide had some very interesting things to tell us by the way he shuffled his note's and puckered his mouth. Ves, he had. for. pointing his finger sadly and tragically at a beautiful tombstone, tomb-stone, he whispered: "Mary Queen of Scots." Every Ev-ery visitor in the group leaned forward to gaze upon the tomb of the ill-fated queen, and a little French boy. looking upon the monument and then at his mother, murmurs. "La pciuvre Reine." He voices the mind of every one of us. Alas! poor queen, thy life had but few bright hours, and those were spent in sunny France. Edinborough. Linlithgow and Scotia's other royal palaces were for thee, but, so many gilded cages and thy end the headman's axe. I was awakened from my reverie by the voice of the guide, saying: "The tomb of England's great queen Elizabeth." Eliza-beth." I looked. Ves. it was a splendid tomb, but I j turned away from it. . She may have been and was England's great queen the queen of Clay, of Drake. Raleigh, Essen and Burleigh, but to an Irishman her name is synonymous with persecution in all its direct forms. Yonder slab of General Monk and the plain one that marks the grave of Joseph Addison, the creator of Sir Rofrer do- Cov-erley, Cov-erley, has more fascination for me. Near by are two stone pillars supporting the altar above the grave of Henry VII, whose remains rest side by ; side with those of James J. The Hanoverians are buried here too. but no tomb marks their resting rdaee. "This is the tomb of the Duke of Buckingham." remarks our guide, pointing toa magnificent mon- ' ument encircled by a row of children and weeping women. Yes, roue Duke of Buckingham, many women had cause to weep because of thee, and children, chil-dren, ah! well, such innocent ones should not be nlaced even in stone near the remains of one whose touch in life meant moral contamination. We pas to the next chapel and yonder slab once held beneath be-neath it the body of grim Cromwell, the regicide. When th" monarchy was restored in the reign of Charles II the Protectors body was removed from the Abbey and decapitated. The trunk was thrown into a pit at Tyburn and the head placed in West- minster Hall, where it remained for over twenty years, a gruesome spoctaole. But how men and things change! Cromwell's statue with tho Ibm at his foot now ptands beneath the shadow of Westminster West-minster Hall. The most interesting chapel to my mind is that : of Edward tho Confessor. His tomb is an embodiment embodi-ment of the man. the largest and plainest in the Abbey, and by his side rests the faithful Eleanor, ' his wife. Tradition tells us that when she died and her body was being conveyed from the Xorth of England to the Abbey, Edward caused a cross to be erected at every spot where the body rested, and Charing Cross was the last. Henry V rests here too, and above his plain monument are the saddle, 9word and helmet he used in the famous battle of Agincourt. A very interesting object, too, 13 the (Continued on Page 5.) ' . .1 j IMPRESSIONS OLD AND NEW I (Continued from page 1.) ' Coronation Chair in which every king and queen i have sat since the days of Edward I. j So much for the chapels, but to mention the j names of the mighty dead that sleep in the other j parts of the abbey would fill a volume. Stroll j around and look at them as I did. and then come j out into the sunshine again, with the words on your j lips, sic transit gloria mundi. Yes, to m? the sun- j shine was welcome after ihe gloom of chapels and j tombstones, and to shake off the depression which j was clinging to me I mounted a bu. It did not I matter to me where its destination was. Take my j advice and mount a buss if you feel a fit of the blues steal over you. I seated myself beside thej driver. He was a good, jolly fellow, and after a j few moments we were in the depths of conversation. conversa-tion. Do you want to know London and its streets and the famous houses on these streets '. Well, mount a buss, seat yourself by the driver, win his good graces, give him a tip. and you will find out more in two days about London than you would j find out in a lifetime from books. The busies ply ! to all parts of London from the Strand, and their j destination is written on the outside. It was Queen j Maud of Norway. I believe, who said that one of , her happiest recollections was a buss ride. You can study London life there, for every profession I from the bootblack and flower girl to the lord is ; found on the top of London's bus-es. I know no ; enjoyment equal to a buss ride down Fieet street i into the Strand, by Trafalgar square, ami then on to Victoria with the Houses of Parliament and j Westminster Abbey to your left, if I except a fine ! country dotted with stiff fences, the hounds in full ; cry and a good horse under you. I enjoyed to the j j full my London buss rides. ' The next interesting place I visited after the ; abbey was the new Catholic Cathedral which lies ! near Victoria station. It was the lifework of the1 late Cardinal Vaughan and is indeed a wonderful ; Byzantine building, the only drawback being iM 1 j situation. You can see the lofty fVcr from all i parts of London, but the general view of it is hid-i hid-i den owing to its being placed in the heart of tip ; flat land. It was not finished when I saw it last, j j but from the beauty of one or two of its ch-apels. the gift of the late Lord Brampton. I gleaned some I notion of how magnificent the edific? will be 'when ; completed. You can torin sonic idea of its propor- j lions when you arc told that you could pack Wesi- j ' minster abbey and one or two adjoining churches ; into it. As you look upon it you cannot help think- j ing of the great change which has conic over Eng i laud as rej;arls Catholicity. A hundred years ago- ! ; who could havf dreamed thai on ihe very Capital of I ; Protestant Kughiud a Catholic Cathedral such aj i ! St. Margaret's, would rear its head as proudly and i ' as majestically as St. Paul's f Last year members j , of the- cuchnrislic congress from all parts of th i world assembled within its walls and anionirt th--' cardinals, bishons and priests were England's no- ; blest and best Norfolk. Ripen. Local. Bute, Goi- i mai.town and Radeliffe. Yc. llpf beautiful. mighty edifice has a great future before it. and the 'Cat holies of England and England's capital may i jiisil- feel proud of it. Xc;r veek wc will visit M id.-"ue Tu-.sajid s wax- work exhibition. XAPPER TANDY. London. May lOoo. OLD" MOTHERS. I love old mothers mothers with white hair. And kindly eyes, and lip grown softlv svi?ct i Wilh murmured blessings over sleeping babe-. ' There is something in their quiet grace That speaks ihc calm of Sabbath afternoons; A knowledge in their dep. unfaltering eye-That eye-That far otitreaehes all philosophy. Time, with caressing touch, about then weaves The silvt'l-tln'eaded fairy-shawl of age. While, all the echoes of forgotten songs ! Seem joined to lend a sweetness to their speech. Old mothers! as they pass with tdow-timcd step, j ' Their trembling hands cling gently to youth's strength; j Swret mother I as 1 hey pass, one sees again j ; Old garden walks, old roses, and old low. I The Century. |