The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1874-04-25 00:00:00

THE ABBEY.

But a small proportion of the applications for admis-
sion to the Abbey could he granted, although every
available nook and corner of the grand old pile was
turned to account. Those fortunate enough to obtain
tickets had to go early to secure good places. Some of
the spectators, ladies among the number, were perched
in the giddy Clerestory ; but those posted in the narrow
gallery over the partition between the Nave and the
Choir, whence they could command an admirable view
of what was passing in either division of the vast
edifice, were perhaps the most favourably located. At
first the sombre garb of all present was relieved only
by the white surplices of the officiating clergy and
the gowns of the choristers. By and by the Oriental
costume of the Rev. Narayan Sheshadri, an Indian
missionary of the Free Church of Scotland, imparted
a solitary touch of colour to the solemn scene. The
bright morning sun poured through the richly-storied
windows of the Choir and Lantern a flood of light,
which brought out sharply the minutest details of the
architecture. Under the Lantern. immediately in
front of the Sacrarium, was the sable-covered stand on
which the coffin was to rest during the first part of the
Burial Service. In pews close by sat the two daughters
of the illustrious dead, and his other lady connexions.
Shortly before one the bell of the adjacent Church of
St. Margaret's began to toll, and a few minutes later
the mournful procession, approaching the Abbey
through the Dean's Yard, entered the Abbey by the
Porch of the western cloisters. There it was met by
Dean Stanley and Canons Conway and Leighton, with
four or five of the Minor Canons and the full Abbey
choir, reinforced for the occasion by picked voices from
the Chapels Royal, St. Paul's, and the Temple Church,
who, as it passed into the Nave, chanted to Croft's
music the opening words of the Service—" I am
the resurrection and the life." The Nave was car-
peted with black cloth, the broad expanse of sable re-
lieved only by a rim of white, indicating the dais on
which the black-encased reading-desk was fixed. On this
dais a similar edging of white, tracing in outline the
shape of a coffin, marked out the newly-dug grave.
The spot selected for the great explorer's last resting.
place is the centre of the west part of the Nave, imme-
diately opposite the monument of Field-Marshal
Wade; and at Livingstone's feet lies the head of
Major Reynell, himself a noted African traveller. In
fact, a line drawn from the great Western Porch
through the centre of the Nave would almost intersect
the " lion-crunched" arm, the ununited fracture of
which enabled Sir W. Fergusson to silence for ever the
most obstinate doubter of Livingstone's decease.
Moving slowly past this open grave, so soon to re-
ceive its tenant, the procession advanced through the
Choir, the whole assemblage rising to greet it, the
great organ the while pealing forth. The pall-bearers,
eight in number, might be said to represent three dis-
tinct epochs in the great traveller's career. First
among them were Major-General Sir T. Steele and
Mr. W. Oswell, who, in the earlier days of Living-
stone's mission work, travelled and hunted with him
in Africa. In conjunction with Mr. Oswell, after
whom one of his sons is named, Livingstone dis-
covered Lake Ngami. Towering a head and shoulders
above all around, was Mr. F. W. Webb, a kind of
African Nimrod, while staying under whose hospi-
table roof at Newstead Abbey the Doctor wrote his
second book on Africa. The second period was repre-
sented by Dr. Kirk, Consul-General of Zanzibar,
whose explorations and whose struggles to put down
slavery are so well known by the Rev. Horace
Waller, who joined Bishop M'Kenzie's mission in 1860,
and seconded that lamented prelate's and Livingstone's
efforts to suppress slavery in the Shirb Highlands;
and also by Mr. E. D. Young, the navigating officer
of the Pioneer on the Zambesi and Shin?, rivers, who
afterwards disproved the story of Livingstone's murder
invented by Moos,' and the other Johanna deserters.
The third and last period was illustrated by Mr. H.
M. Stanley, who so gallantly led the famous Relief
Expedition to Ujiii. But among the pall-bearers the
figure which appeared to excite most curiosity was
Jacob Wainwright, the manumitted and Christianized
young African, whose presence symbolized the bene-
ficent work of the master whom he tended so faithfully
to the loot.