# Pleasant Memories of Pleasant Lands 1842/Westminster Abbey

WESTMINSTER ABBEY.
Unclasp the world's close armor from thy heart,
 Dismiss the gay companion from thy side,
 And if thou canst, elude the practised art
 And dull recitative of venal guide;
 So shalt thou come aright, with reverent tread,
 Unto this solemn city of the dead;
 Nor uninstructed mid its haunts abide,
 But o'er the dust of heroes moralize,
And learn that humbling lore, which makes the spirit wise.
 How silent are ye all, ye sons of song,
 Whose harps the music of the earth did make!
 How low ye sleep amid the mouldering throng,
 Whose tuneful echoes keep the world awake,
 While age on age their fleeting transit take!
 How damp the vault, where sweeps their banner-fold,
 Whose clarion-cry made distant regions quake!
 How weak the men of might! how tame the bold!
Chained to the narrow niche, and locked in marble cold.
He of lost Paradise who nobly sang,
 Whose thought sublime above our lower sphere
 Soared as a star; and he, who deftly rang
 The lyre of fancy, o'er the smile and tear,
 Ruling supreme; and he, who taught the strain
 To roll Pindaric o'er his native plain;
 He too, who poured o'er Isis' streamlet clear
 Unto his Shepherd Lord the hymn of praise,
I bow me at your shrines, ye great of other days.
 "I know that my Redeemer liveth." Grave
 Deep on our hearts, as on thy stony scroll,
 That glorious truth which a lost world can save,
 Oh German minstrel! whose melodious soul
 Still in the organ's living breath doth float,—
 Devotion soaring on its seraph—note,—
 Or with a wondering awe the throng control,
 When from some minster vast, like thunder-chime,
 The Oratorio bursts in majesty sublime.
 Here rest the rival statesmen, calm and meek,
 Even as the child, whose little quarrel o'er,
 Subdued to peace, doth kiss his brother's cheek,
 And share his pillow, pleased to strive no more.
 Yes, side by side they sleep, whose warring word
 Convulsed the nations, and old ocean stirred;
 Slight seem the feuds that moved the crowd of yore,
 To him who now in musing reverie bends,
Where Pitt and Fox dream on, those death-cemented friends.
And here lies Richard Busby, not with frown,
 As when his little realm he ruled severe,
 Nor to the sceptred Stuart bowed him down,
 But held his upright course, with brow severe;
 Still bears his hand the pen and classic page,
 While the sunk features marked by furrowing age,
 And upraised eye, with supplicating fear,
 Seem to implore that pity in his woe,
Which to the erring child, perchance, he failed to show.
 Mary of Scotland hath her monument
 Fast by that mightier queen of kindred line,
 By whom her soul was to its Maker sent,
 Ere Nature warned her to His bar divine;
 It is a fearful thing, thus side by side
 To see the murderer and the murdered bide,
 And of the scaffold think, and strange decline
 That wrung the Tudor's weary breath away,
And of the strict account at the great reckoning day.
 Seek ye the chapel of yon monarch proud,
 Who rests so gorgeous mid the princely train?
 And sleeps he sweeter than the humbler crowd,
 Unmarked by costly arch or sculptured fane?
 I've seen the turf-mound of the village hind,
 Where all unsheltered from the wintry wind,
 Sprang one lone flower of deep and deathless stain;—
 That simple faith which bides the shock of doom,
When bursts the visioned pomp that decked the satrap's tomb.
Dim Abbey! 'neath thine arch the shadowy past
 O'ersweeps our spirits, like the banyan tree,
 Till living men, as reeds before the blast,
 Are bowed and shaken. Who may speak to thee,
 Thou hoary guardian of the illustrious dead,
 With unchilled bosom or a chainless tread?
 Thou breath'st no sound, no word of utterance free,
 Save now and then a trembling chant from those,
Whose Sabbath worship wakes amid thy deep repose.
 For thou the pulseless and the mute hast set,
 As teachers of a world they loved too well,
 And made thy lettered aisles an alphabet,
 Where wealth and power their littleness may spell,
 And go their way the wiser, if they will;
 Yea, even thy chisel's art, thy carver's skill,
 Thy tracery, like the spider's film-wrought cell,
 But deeper grave the lessons of the dead,
Their bones beneath our feet, thy dome above our head.
 A throng is at thy gates. With lofty head
 The unslumbering city claims to have her will,
 She strikes her gong, and with a ceaseless tread
 Circleth thy time-scathed walls. But stern and still,
 Thou bear'st the chafing of her mighty tide,
 In silence brooding o'er thy secret pride,
 The moveless soldiers of thy citadel;
 Yet wide to Heaven thy trusting arms dost spread,
Thine only watch-word, God! God and the sacred dead!
London, Monday, Oct. 19, 1840.
"Oh German minstrel."
The monument of Handel bears a full length statue, which is said to be a striking likeness of the original. The attitude is noble and expressive. One arm rests on a group of musical instruments, and the countenance displays the delighted abstraction of listening to an angel's harp from the clouds above. In allusion to his composition of the "Messiah," there is inscribed, on a scroll by his side, the sublime passage, "I know that my Redeemer liveth." Only his name, and the dates of his birth and death are added, the marble most happily comprehending in itself both his character and eulogy. Apart from its own fitness and beauty, it is viewed with interest as the last work of the eminent sculptor, Roubiliac.
"Nor to the sceptred Stuart bowed him down."
The anecdote of Dr. Busby walking with his hat on, when Charles the Second came to visit his celebrated school at Westminster, and the reason given by him to the king, that "if his boys supposed there was a man in the realm greater than himself, he should never be able to govern them," is well known. The severity of his sway as a teacher is equally well authenticated. Yet with whatever majesty he arrayed himself, it would seem to have been devoted to the interests of science, and to the improvement of those under ​his care. The mode by which he pursued those ends was not so peculiar two hundred years since, as now, nor would it be now so obnoxious in England, as among us. Some modification of his strictness is still retained there, and its good effects are still visible in every school that you visit, in the order, obedience, and acquisition of the pupils. Dr. Busby raised the character of Westminster school to a high rank, by his learning and indefatigable industry, and died on the verge of 90, in the possession of his intellectual faculties, with the reputation of profound learning and piety. Amid all the authority with which he surrounded his office, he showed kindness to studious pupils, and was anxious to advance their religious as well as scholastic improvement. The Rev. Phillip Henry, who was long under his care, while he bears testimony to the severity of his discipline, speaks of the affection with which he regarded dili- gent boys, and the zeal with which he strove to prepare those, who were religiously disposed, for the more solemn duties of their faith, "for which, he adds, the Lord recompense him a thousand fold into his bosom."
"A throng is at thy gates."
The contrast between the silence of this receptacle of the mouldering dead, and the ceaseless press and tumult of the living throng without, is strangely im​pressive. The restlessness and rush of the people, in the most populous parts of London, are among the best helps to a stranger in forming an idea of its magnitude. At first there is a dreaminess, an uncertainty whether one is, of a very truth, in the "world's great wilderness capital." Parts of it are so much like what have been seen at home, that we try to fancy we are still there. Names, too, with which we have been familiar from the lispings of our earliest lessons in geography, or whose imprint was in the most precious picture books of our nursery, assist this illusion. Paternoster Row, Temple Bar, Charing Cross, The Strand, Fleet Street, Bolt Court, from whose sombre windows it is easy to imagine Dr. Johnson still looking out, are to us as household words. But when you see the press and struggle of the living mass, at high noon, through some of the most frequented streets, or when, on some thronged Sabbath in St. Paul's, listen to the tread of the congregation, like the rush of many waters, upon the marble pavement of that vast ornate pile, you begin to realize that you are indeed in the midst of two millions of human beings. A kind of suffocating fear steals for a moment over you, lest you might never get clear of them, and breathe freely in your own native woods again; and then comes a deep feeling, that you are as nothing among them; that you might fall in the streets and die, unnoticed or trodden down; that with all your home-indulgence, self-esteem, and vanity about you, you are only a speck, a cypher, ​a sand upon the sea-shore of creation; a humiliating consciousness, heavy, but salutary.
Two millions of human beings! Here they have their habitations, in every diversity of shelter, from the palace to the hovel, in every variety of array, from the inmate of the royal equipage to the poor street-sweeper. Some glittering on the height of wealth and power, others sinking in the depths of poverty and misery. Yet to every heart is dealt its modicum of hope, every lip hath a taste of the bitter bread of disappointment. Death, ever taking aim among them, replenishes his receptacles night and day, while in thousands of curtained chambers, how many arms and bosoms earnestly foster the new-born life, that he may have fresh trophies. For earth and the things of earth, for fancies and forms of happiness, all are scheming, and striving, and struggling, from the little rill, working its way under ground in darkness and silence, to the great crested wave, that with a thundering echo breaks on the shore of eternity.