westminster abbey.—legend of its consecration.—its single altar in bad taste.—gothic or english architecture.—monuments.— banks the sculptor.—wax-work.—henry the seventh’s chapel.—mischievous propensity of the people to mutilate the monuments.
all persons who come to london, from whatever part of the world they may, whether english or foreigners, go to see westminster abbey, the place of interment of all illustrious men; kings, admirals, statesmen, poets, philosophers, and divines, even stage-players and musicians. there is perhaps no other temple in the world where such practical testimony is borne to the truth, that “death levels all distinctions, except those of desert.”
257they continue to call this church an abbey, just as they continue to profess their belief in the most holy sacrament. originally it was the second religious establishment in the island; and, since glastonbury has been desecrated and destroyed, is now the first. lucius, the first christian king of the britons, founded it, to be the burial-place of himself and his successors. during the persecution of diocletian, it was converted into a temple of apollo, which sebert, king of the east saxons, demolished, and built a church to the honour of god and st peter in its stead. the place where it stands was then called thorney, and is said in a charter of king edgar’s to have been a dreadful place; not so much, it is supposed, on account of its rudeness, as because the wicked spirits who were there worshipped had dominion there. st augustine, the apostle of the saxons, had baptized sebert and his queen ethelgoda; and, being unable to remain with them himself, consigned the care of 258his converts to st mellitus, a roman abbot, whom pope st gregory the great had sent to his assistance, and whom he consecrated bishop of london. this holy bishop was to consecrate the new building; but on the night before the ceremony was to be performed, a fisherman, as he was about to cast his nets in the river, which runs within a stone’s throw of the abbey, was called to by one upon the opposite bank, who desired to cross in his boat. the fisherman accordingly wafted him over, little knowing, sinful man, how highly he was favoured, for this was the blessed apostle st peter. as soon as the saint landed he entered the church, and immediately a light brighter than the midday sun illuminated it, and the fisherman, almost bereft of his senses by fear, saw a multitude of angels enter, and heard heavenly music within, and perceived odours far more delicious than any earthly fragrance. in this state of terror st peter found him when he came out of the church, 259and cheered him, and desired to be taken back in the boat. when they were in the middle of the river, the saint told him to cast his net. he did so, and the draught of fish was prodigious. among them was one large salmon: st peter bade him take this to st mellitus, and keep the rest as his fare, and added that he and his children after him should always be prosperous in their employment, provided that they paid scrupulously the tithe of what they took, and never attempted to fish upon the sabbath day. he bade him likewise tell the bishop all that he had seen, and that st peter himself had consecrated the church, and promised often to visit it, and to be present there at the prayers of the faithful. in the morning, as st mellitus was going in procession to perform the ceremony, the fisherman met him, presented the fish, and delivered the message. the appearance of the church as soon as the doors were opened fully verified his story. the pavement was marked with greek and 260latin letters; the walls anointed in twelve places with holy oil; the twelve tapers upon twelve crosses still burning, and the aspersions not yet dry. that further testimony might not be wanting, the fisherman described the person whom he had seen to st mellitus, and the description perfectly agreed with the authentic picture of the apostle at rome.
i need not tell you that this miracle is suppressed by the heretical historians who have written concerning this building. it is their custom either to speak of such things with a sarcasm, or to omit them altogether, taking it for granted, that whatever they in their wisdom do not believe, must be false; as if it were not of importance to know what has been believed, whether it be true or not, and as if individual opinion was to be the standard of truth.
during the ravages of the danes the abbey fell to decay. king st edward the confessor rebuilt it upon a singular occasion. this pious prince had made a 261vow to god during his exile, that if ever he should be restored to the kingdom of his forefathers, he would make a pilgrimage to rome, and return his thanks at the throne of st peter. his subjects besought him not to leave them in performance of this vow, but to beg a dispensation from it; and this the pope granted on condition that he should build a new monastery to st peter’s honour, or rebuild an old one. at the same time it was revealed to a holy man, that it was god’s pleasure to have the abbey at westminster rebuilt. the king obeyed this divine intimation, and gave the full tithe of all his possessions to the work. the tomb of this third founder still remains: having been a king, he escaped some of the insults which were committed against the other english saints at the time of the schism; and though his shrine was plundered, his body was suffered to remain in peace. but though the monument was thus spared from the general destruction, it has been defaced by that spirit of barbarous 262curiosity, or wanton mischief, for which these people are so remarkable.
the high altar is of grecian architecture. i ought to observe that in these reformed churches, there is but one altar; and if it had not been for an archbishop whose head they cut off because they thought him too superstitious, they would have been without any altar at all. the mixture of these discordant styles of architecture has the worst effect imaginable; and what is still more extraordinary, this mark of bad taste is the production of one of the ablest architects that england ever produced, the celebrated sir christopher wren. but in his time it was so much the fashion to speak with contempt of whatever was gothic, and to despise the architecture of their forefathers, that, if the nation could have afforded money enough to have replaced these edifices, there would not now have been one remaining in the kingdom.—luckily the national wealth was at that 263time employed in preserving the balance of power and extending commerce, and this evil was avoided. since that age, however, the english have learned better than to treat the gothic with contempt; they have now discovered in it so much elegance and beauty, that they are endeavouring to change the barbarous name, and, with feeling partiality to themselves, claim the invention for their own countrymen: it is therefore become here an established article of antiquarian faith to believe that this architecture is of native growth, and accordingly it is denominated english architecture in all the publications of the antiquarian society. this point i am neither bound to believe, nor disposed at present to discuss.
this abbey is a curious repository of tombs, in which the progress of sculpture during eight centuries may be traced. here may be seen the rude saxon monument; the gothic in all its stages, from 264its first rudiments to that perfection of florid beauty which it had attained at the schism, and the monstrous combinations which prevailed in the time of elizabeth, equally a heretic in her heterogeneous taste and her execrable religion. after the great rebellion, the change which had taken place in society became as manifest in the number as in the style of these memorials. in the early ages of christianity, only saints and kings, and the founders of churches were thought worthy of interment within the walls of the house of god; nobles were satisfied with a place in the galilee, and the people never thought of monuments: it was enough for them to rest in consecrated ground; and so their names were written in the book of life, it mattered not how soon they were forgotten upon earth. the privilege of burial within the church was gradually conceded to rank and to literature; still, however, they who had no pretensions to be remembered by posterity were content to be forgotten. 265the process may satisfactorily be traced in the church whereof i am now writing, and thus far it had reached at the time of the great rebellion; during that struggle, few monuments were erected; they who would have been entitled to them were mostly on the unsuccessful side, and the conquerors had no respect for churches; instead of erecting new tombs, their delight was to deface the old. after the restoration the triumph of wealth began. the iron age of england was over, and the golden one commenced. an english author has written an ingenious book, to show that the true order of the four ages is precisely the reverse of that in which the poets have arranged them: the age in which riches are paramount to every thing may well be denominated the golden, but it remains to be proved whether such an age of gold be the best in the series. with the restoration, however, that golden age began. money was the passport to distinction during life, and they who enjoyed this distinction 266were determined to be remembered after death, as long as inscriptions in marble could secure remembrance. the church walls were then lined with tablets; and vain as the hope of thus perpetuating an ignoble name may appear, it has succeeded better than you would imagine; for every county, city, and almost every town in england has its particular history, and the epitaphs in the churches and church-yards form no inconsiderable part of their contents.
the numerous piles of marble which deface the abbey are crowded together, without any reference to the style of the building or the situation in which they are placed; except two which flank the entrance of the choir, and are made ornamental by a similarity of form and size, which has not confined the artist in varying the design of each. one bears the great name of newton: he is represented reclining upon a sarcophagus; above him is astronomy seated in an attitude of meditation 267on a celestial globe. this globe, which certainly occupies so large a space as to give an idea of weight in the upper part of the monument, seems principally placed there to show the track of the comet which appeared, according to newton’s calculation, in the year 1680. on a tablet in the side of the sarcophagus is an emblematic representation, in relief, of some of the purposes to which he applied his philosophy. the inscription concludes curiously thus,
sibi gratulentur mortales
talem tantumque extitisse
humani generis decus.
the corresponding monument is in memory of the earl of stanhope, as eminent a warrior and statesman as newton had been a philosopher. he is represented in roman armour, reposing on a sarcophagus also, and under a tent; on the top of which a figure of pallas seems at once to protect him, and point him out as worthy of admiration. both these were designed by 268an english artist, and executed by michael rysbrack.
england has produced few good sculptors; it would not be incorrect if i should say none, with the exception of mr banks, a living artist, whose best works are not by any means estimated according to their merit. i saw at his house a female figure of victory designed for the tomb of a naval officer who fell in battle, as admirably executed as any thing which has been produced since the revival of the art. there were also two busts there, the one of mr hastings, late viceroy of india, the other of the celebrated usurper oliver cromwell, which would have done honour to the best age of sculpture. most of the monuments in this church are wholly worthless in design and execution, and the few which have any merit are the work of foreigners.
one of the vergers went round with us; a man whose lank stature and solemn deportment would have suited the church in its best days. when first i saw him in the 269shadow he looked like one of the gothic figures affixed to a pillar; and when he began to move, i could have fancied that an embalmed corpse had risen from its cemetery to say mass in one of the chauntries. he led us with much civility and solemnity to edward the confessor’s chapel, and showed us there the tomb of that holy king; the chairs in which the king and queen are crowned; the famous coronation stone, brought hither from scotland, and once regarded as the palladium of the royal line; and in the same chapel certain waxen figures as large as life, and in full dress. you have heard j— mention the representation of the nativity at belem; and exclaim against the degenerate taste of the portuguese, in erecting a puppet-show among the tombs of their kings. it was not without satisfaction that i reminded him of this on my return from westminster abbey, and told him i had seen the wax-work.
the most interesting part of the edifice 270is the chapel built by henry vii. and called by his name. at the upper end is the bronze tomb of the founder, surrounded by a gothic screen, which was once richly ornamented with statues in its various niches and recesses, but most of these have been destroyed. the whole is the work of torregiano, an italian artist, who broke michel angelo’s nose, and died in spain under a charge of heresy. since the reign of elizabeth, no monument has been erected to any of the english sovereigns: a proof of the coldness which their baneful heresy has produced in the national feeling. a plain marble pavement covers the royal dead in this splendid chapel, erected by one of their ancestors. no one was here to be interred who was not of the royal family: cromwell, however, the great usurper, whose name is held in higher estimation abroad than it seems to be in his own country, was deposited here with more than royal pomp. it was easier to dispossess him from the grave than from 271the throne; his bones were dug up by order of charles ii. and gibbeted: poor vengeance for a father dethroned and decapitated, for his own defeat at worcester, and for twelve years of exile! the body of blake, which had been laid with merited honours in the same vault, was also removed, and turned into the church-yard: if the removal was thought necessary, english gratitude should at least have raised a monument over the man who had raised the english name higher than ever admiral before him.
one thing struck me, in viewing this church, as very remarkable. the monuments which are within reach of a walking-stick are all more or less injured, by that barbarous habit which englishmen have of seeing by the sense of touch, if i may so express myself. they can never look at any thing without having it in the hand, nor show it to another person without touching it with a stick, if it is within reach; i have even noticed in several collections 272of pictures exposed for sale, a large printed inscription requesting the connoisseurs not to touch them. besides this odd habit, which is universal, there is prevalent among these people a sort of mischievous manual wit, by which mile-stones are commonly defaced, directing-posts broken, and the parapets of bridges thrown into the river. their dislike to a passage in a book is often shewn by tearing the leaf, or scrawling over the page, which differs from them in political opinion. here is a monument to a major andré, who was hanged by washington as a spy: the story was related in relief: it had not been erected a month before some person struck off washington’s head by way of retaliation; somebody of different sentiments requited this by knocking off the head of the major: so the two principal figures in the composition are both headless! from such depredations you might naturally suppose that no care is taken of the church, that stalls are set up in it, that old women 273sell gingerbread nuts there, and porters make it a thoroughfare, as is done in hamburgh. on the contrary, no person is admitted to see the abbey for less than two shillings; and this money, which is collected by twopences and sixpences, makes part of the revenue of the subordinate priests in this reformed church. there is a strange mixture of greatness and littleness in every thing in this country: for this, however, there is some excuse to be offered; from the mischief which is even now committed, it is evident that, were the public indiscriminately admitted, every thing valuable in the church would soon be destroyed.
