Though you entered the Abbey expecting to see the tombs only
of the illustrious, you are content, at last, to read many names, both
in literature and history, that have now lost the reverence of mankind,
if, indeed, they ever really possessed it. Let these men rest in peace.
Even if you miss a name or two that you hoped to find there, they
may well be spared. It matters little a few more or less, or whether
Westminster Abbey contains or lacks any one man's grave, so long as the
Centuries, each with the crowd of personages that it deemed memorable,
have chosen it as their place of honored sepulture, and laid themselves
down under its pavement. The inscriptions and devices on the walls
are rich with evidences of the fluctuating tastes, fashions, manners,
opinions, prejudices, follies, wisdoms of the past, and thus they
combine into a more truthful memorial of their dead times than any
individual epitaph-maker ever meant to write.
When the services were over, many of the audience seemed inclined to
linger in the nave or wander away among the mysterious aisles; for there
is nothing in this world so fascinating as a Gothic minster, which
always invites you deeper and deeper into its heart both by vast
revelations and shadowy concealments. Through the open-work screen that
divides the nave from the chancel and choir, we could discern the gleam
of a marvellous window, but were debarred from entrance into that more
sacred precinct of the Abbey by the vergers.
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