National Republican. (Washington City (D.C.)) 1872-1888, 1874-03-11

not say well, that the great abbey was . place Of
peace, place 20 remind hard-vorked, parbiind,
Yes, ali old mirunderstandin9s are cleared mn
They live to God and th.rsiCrs the great .SSsy
for IS S1s " both worlds the
seen and the unseen; and Of the veil. as thin Is
ecexeb yet opaque as night which parts the I've;
grew, the life Of great nation growing slowly to
manhood, through ignorance and waywardness,
devious track tn through a Unknown wildernesses,
and struggling victorious, though with bleeding
feet, athwart the tangled woods and thorny
Awful il is. said, and should be- And there
fore ]! at least, do not regret that its very form
that delicate lightness, that airy joyousness Of
Salisbury and LItchneld. You viii see in its
which Believe orRnsil1 sonisd
from scenery with which you, as Americans, must
be even en-. more familiar than were the medieval
ests and across the Alps to Rome. True We have
our noble. high-pitched snow roof Our architect,
h.ss sne res. mad seen the mountain ranges int
pleak ana pare above the SHOWS of winter He
mad seen those SHOWS slip down in sheets, rush
doWn IN torrents from the SUM- of the steep slabs
Of roek which COPIED the hillside; and he, Ike the
resi-, mas copied in that roof, for use as we'll as
beauty, the mountain rocks. But he has not, as
many another medieval architect has done ,decked
spruce and mr. tree spires. which cling to the hill
side Of the crag, old above young, pinnacle above
ptnuacle, wh0rl above whorl, and clothed with
| !hem the sides and submits Of the stone noun
tains which he had raised till, like group Of frs
upon an Isolated rock every point Of the building
Should seem in act to point toward heaven; and
the gray leads Of the Minister roof stand out amid
peaks and turrets rich with craven foliage, - the
gray rocks stand out Of the primcval woods.
and grand propoftions: and he who snsers stoop
ing under the fow-browed arch Of the north door,
beneath the tee,ling erag g westher- worn and
old northern fairy tale enters cave in some lone
mountain side, where dragons guard the boards of
aasr has ,sa.a b ;
yet more SON behind the murky London air.
feel i: sad. when you perceive how richly success.
| sive architects have sluandered on 1t the treas
ures Of their fancy, and made II, rs they say per-
of those stone forests in which the men Of old
delighted toreproduce those leafy minister's which
God, not man, has built; where they sent the col
! wreathed their capitals, sometimes their very
| shafts, with vines and flowers, and decked with
foliage and with fruit the bosses above and the
corbels below; and sent mp out Of those corbels
upright shafts along the walls in likeness Of the
trees which sprang out Of the rocks above their
head; and raised those walls into great cliffs: and
pierced those cliffs with the arches Of the trifo-
rum as with Wild creatures caves or hermets'
cells and represented in tho horizontal string
courses and wndVw-sills the strata Of the rocks;
and opened the windows into wide and lofty
glades broken, as in the forest by the tracery Of
and bSu Which Which
For they eraved, As all true artists crave, for
light and color; and had the sky above been one
and Ss Su
our dark, dank, northern Cline rain and snow |
storm, BACK sl5ut And driving SNOW, were ali that
as
gave in her fe~ gayef moods, and set aloft, in |
their sest.:.grass r,rssws, .n. cues Of the noon
a5Se. o. thu me RSeRs and and
the saint, IN heaven, and the memories Of heroic |
up the eyes and the hearts Of men forever and |
ever out Of the dark, sad world Of the cold north
with all its coarsspess and its crimes, toward |
summer Of beauty and Of light; as one who, from |
between the black jaws Of q marrow glen, or from
beneath the black shade Of gigantic trees, catches
tages. purple mountain ranges, and the hr-of
sea, and the hazy horizon melting into the haay |
blue, and finds his soul led forth into an infinite
at once Of freedom and rep0se.
Awful, he said, and yet not sad at least to an |
Englishman. was Westminster Abbey; while |
the names. the deeds Il men who had helped each
in his place. to make his country-and this country,
too-that which they are. Americans knew as |
much as the English people by every monument |
in that Abbey earlier than the civil wars, and by
most monuments Of later date, and especially BY |
valued the old abbey accordingly But day
might come-a generation might come In . nation
so rapidly increasing by foreign immigration as
might be forgotten for awhile: and orators might |
arise who would be glad that it should be 50 for
eHonId come then let them teach their Children
that the history and the independence of
America began neither with the war Of indepen-
denee nor with the settlement OF Virginia, but
/ 500 years and more before. when the great Cesar
walled in vain to his slain general, Give me back
Let them teach their children that the Congress
which sits at Washington was as much the child
Of Magma Charta as the Parliament which sits at
mands Of an English king and his councillor they
did that which the free Commons Of England held
right do, and did, not only after but before the
American as well as an Englishman might find
himself in the old abbey in right good company.
He did not hesitate to say that II they looked
since those of Pitt and Fox the great majority /
the children not Of obstruction but
ss.o Of 1se sr
to America, and therefore to their native land,
there were other Ren to whom he called American
sea, whose valiant deeds were the common inner
itance Of both countries. Among these were De-
We're and Norris, the fathers Of the English In
IA ltry: old Admiral Blake, who rested they knew
not where. He called attention to the tombs Of
the noble warriors who did their duty by and
and sea in the long series of wars from lsss to
1858.
OF those who fought against America he had
nothing TO say, but spoke eloquently Of those
of Bourbon, and smote with q continual stroke
the trans Atlantic power Of Spain, and who pre-
vented the French from seizing the valley of the
Woifes huge cenotaph, with its curious bronze
relief, of the taking Of the Heights Of Abra-
ham, he hoped that they remembered that not
haired corporal conquered and died. When they
saw the names Of Cornwall, Saumarez, Vernon,
Lord Aubrey, Beauclerk he hoped they would re-
and every convey they cut of made more porsi-
BILE that safe severance Of the colonies from Eng
gland. Remembering. these things. he asked
people that they are, that IT, in after years. Eng
lishmen seemed against them-and how heavy
his countrymen's sins were he knew too well,
side by side, as the old lion by the young.
After IN elaborate reference to the poets and
men of letters whose dust lies in Westminster Alb
hey. the lecturer concluded Is follows: "As with
the Princess in the Arabian Nights who fancied
that her fairy palace was imperfect until she had
20 decacv os her naaee
her treasures. SO !, as canon of Westminster ab-
hey, long for . rocs egg for our old abbey, fancy
help to preserve that grand old piace.even the
dust Of some American-that when an American
enters beneath that mighty shade he may tread
IS it to us, the symbol Of common descent, COM
mon development, common speech, common creed,
common laws, common literature, common ma
and affection such as only the wise feeltoward
The wise and the strong toward the strong. Is
this all sentiment? Remember what said Just
now-by well-used sentiment, as by well.u sor-
row. great nations exist, great individuals live
During the lecture Mr.. kingsly was frequently
interrupted with applause.
BOARD OF HEALTH.