The Sun.
London, England, 1870-06-15 00:00:00

CHARLES DICKENS IN THE ABBEY.

Charles Dickens (says the Telegraph) was yesterday
morning buried in "Westmidster Abbey, in accordance
with the feeling that so great an Englishman could not be
spared from the company of worthies resting there ; but
the ceremony was performed at an early hour, after the
manner indfcated by his unassuming spirit, with
privacy and the utmost simplicity. The place where
he lies well becomes him ; H„andel, Sheridan, and
the poet Gray, Cumberland, acid Garrick, sleep near at
hand ; Shakespeare's monument looks down upon the
spot; while the master of our present-day fiction rests
not far away from " Rare Ben Johnson." These be
"great company ;" and if any one regrets that the last
comer was added to the goodly fellowship of intellect
and art so quietly, it is, Heaven knows, a poor
and vain tribute, after all, to make a pageant out
of the heart's loss, and seek to express grief and
love by the sombre gewgaws of the undertaker's shop. We
have given Dickens a grave where the best and greatest
among our dead are laid, because the best and greatest do
generally receive such homage ; and it is, moreover, be-
coming and useful to have enriched the Santa Croce of
England with " all that can die " of a writer who, with so
much humour, so wide a knowledge of humanity, and so
sweet an eloquence, never penned an ignoble or impure
lino. This was done no less for our sake than for his,
because, as he made his own greatness, so, being dead, he
could have taken care of it by his own tombstone,. for—
we repeat. it—the place where his body rested could want
no previons history and no associations; it must have
become, by reason of that single grave, such as Stratford-
upon-Avon is—a burial-place consecrated for ever, and to
all the world, by a single presence and a singleinscrip-
tion. It is better, nevertheless to have him resting
among his peers, the first and greatest children of Britain;
and better still to have laid him there in the simplicity
and modesty which he preferred and desired.
The Daily News says that Charles Dickens lies in West-
minster Abbey, along with the great chiefs and peers of
English literature. It is his proper place. His surviving
relatives have known how to reconcile reverential
regard to the simplicity and humility, of mind
which expressed itsel in his funeral instructions,
with a recognition of the nation's title to pay
him the highest posthumous honour in its power.
He belonged to himself and to his family, but he
belonged also to the English people, of whose life in the
nineteenth century he was the truest of all interpreters.
It is creditable to the English people hard and
materialistic as they sometimes reproach themselves with
being, that their favourite should have been one whose
pages are not more remarkable for their unique genius
than for the humble and reverent faith, the olieerful
and genial hope, and the - large and penetrating
charity which they overywhere display. An age
and a people which have reverenced and loved-
Dickens have a right to respect themselves. But we will
not be betrayed into delivering, over his scarcely closed
grave, one of those funeral orations which he abhorred.
His true eulogy lies in the books which have delighted all
readers, and purified and softened the moral intellectual
atmosphere which we breathe every day. He is really
the author of far more than he wrote ; and his works at
once follow him, and remain behind him to continue their
beneficent influences. Vale, vale /