The New Orleans bulletin. [volume] (New Orleans [La.]) 1874-1876, 1875-08-01
A Call at Westminster Abbey BY Grace
Greenwood.
lLondon Correspondence N. Y. Tines


The Abbey is the first shrine toward which
all good Americans wend their pious way.
found it little changed from the time of m,
first visit What is quarter of century Il
this Methuselah of ministers? We sought i
| in right worshipful spirit, true and tende
reverence. which proved that trausplantine
had failed to kill old English root Of senti
ment--that many waters cannot quench love
Coming back to the temple of our father
faith, to the ancient monuments Of our elo
rious dead, looking into the solemn arches
still dim with the morning twilight of oul
history, we felt like so many lost sheep of the
house of Israel returning 10 the old fold.
After attending service, which surely did
not lessen our reverential feeling. We walked
directly to the Poets Corner, and in q brief
moment were standing on the very slab which
covers the grave of Charles Dickens. 1t is a
most unobtrusive stone, bearing only his name
and the date of his birth and death. I had
come that morning from Tavistock Square,
where had gszed wistfully at the house in
which, on my first visit to London, had seen
MIR. Dickens-young, happy, brilliant, sur
rounded by all his loving family and troops
of royal friends, and it all seemed so recent
that the bright scene almost effaced from NV
memory the later picture Of Charles Dickens
IN America, 30 sadly changed looking so
worn end over.trsined, yet so strangely rest
iess-so resolutely and preternaturally act.
and brain. to receive and give QUITO enjoy
and to suffer. -
SO it seemed to me as stood there, that he
had gone before his prime, in the morning
splendor OF his fame, and could not be rec
onclled to his lying there in the somber twi-
light, which better BELTS the soberness of AGE
and the pomp and exclusiveness of what Is
called noble birth. It is o grand thing.
doubtless, to be buried in Westminster Abbey.
but it Is dreary sort of isolation in death for
social, kindly man like Dickens. No friend
can come to keep him company; no child
may be laid at his side. He loved light and
warmth and color; all cheerful sights and
sounds. Change was necessary to his alert
spirit, and he should have been laid in some
pleasant, open burial ground in or near the
great city, with the sounds and moveme hts Of
svery day life about him. That was the life
be loved to paint. He never was at home
with lords and ladies. syt
He has gone into magnificent Punishment
here, where the perpetual tramp of strange
eet, coming and going is like the ebb and
low OF sea across the granite which shuts
aim down among unkindred dust, where no
alntest influence of the sun, no sintimations
VI the changing seasons can come. But thew |
ay his coffin was heaped nigh with flowers.
Midsummer went down with him into the |
rave, and was hid away with him in fragrant
darkness there Aud on each anniversary of |
us death there are placed on that cold, gray
lab the sweetest and brightest flowers of this
estal month crosses of white lilies and
oses, ''pansies for thought" rosemary for
and always a peculiar Offering
rom some unknown hand-a wreath of scar.
ct geraniums, looking in that shadowy cor.
er like Towering flame, the very expression
passionate love and sorrow.
In strong contract with the simplicity of
he inscription over Dickens is the pomnons
nd elaborate epitaph of Bulwer. The yerv
,arble groans under the letters and pedigree
the dead patrician.
CANON KINGSLEY AND HIS MEMORY
When one day last summer We parted with
anon Kingsley in the Rocky Mountains he
AID: "Now remember when you come to Eng
md am to show you over the Abbey. am
home there, if nowhere elss." God rest
Is great soul, he is now at home in grander
linster-"a house not made with hands -
bout whose affairs Turk no shadow of death.
o mold OF decay, from whose arches droop
battle-torn banners, without whose chapel
ands no monument of tyranny. In that
temple eternal in the heavens" there are,
lank God, no money-changers.
While the English Government is 80 nobly
rowing open to the public its magnificent
useum-so costly in their creation and
aintenance-the richly endowed English !,
hurch still taxes heavily the love and rever- !,
ace Of the pilgrims TO its holy shrines. After
the things we wonder at most worshipfully
slonged to the old unreformed Babylonian
stltution. which, whatever its SINS never /,
'acted tribute from the stranger within it's
ties in SO shockingly systematic and mercen-
manner. think can understand the !
cling of English Romanists when they see
is establishment trading in the dust of a
stholic saints, kings and heroes, while she +
$ complacsntly like cuckoo ia the mag. t
icent nests of the proud old mother bird. S
'ich brooded over the whole Christian
rid.
1t was fearful come down from the once =
erlsned hope Of being shown over the 2
'bey by, the poet canon, having pleasant
inverse by the way, to find ourselves hurried a
m chapel to chapel "like dumb driven L