The Penn's Grove record., 1883-08-25
The Tower of London
its Exceptional Place Among the
Great Edifices ofthe World.

its Exceptional Place Among the
Great Edifices ofthe World.
London is slowly awakening to see
that it is not only the biggest and the
richest city in the world but in many
ways the grandest and the most his
toric. Rome has her ruins Paris has
her ~boulevards, palaces and quays /;
Moscow has her Kremlin, and CONSTANT
nople her minarets and domes. Each
of these, and, perhaps, some famous
cities in Italy or Spain, are superior to
London in the single element of beauty,
of magnidcence or age. But the great
ness of London lies in its historic con-
tinuity, in the survival of its true or
ganic centres in all their essential
character. 1t possesses in the Abbey,
in Westminster Hall, and in the Tower
three of the noblest buildings in the
world ; all of them have an unbroken
history of eight centuries all are still
devoted to the uses for which they were
designed, and for 800 years they have
all been the local seats of our national
existence. These three great monu
ments are bound up with each other as
well as bound up with the history of
England. As cathedral, hall and castle
no one of them has any superior in Eu-
rope. But, in the way that they are
inwoyen with the greatness, the genius,
the poetry, the destiDies of the country,
as also in length and continuity of ser
vice, no n has its equal in Europe.
The city which possesses all three has
at once a dignity of her own nor need
we think of st. Paul's and the Temple,
the Guildhall and the Palace of West
minister, the Parks, the bridges and
the docks, to believe that we are truly
citizens of 10 mean city, Neither mud,
nor smoke, nor stueco-neither vest-
ries nor railways can make London
mean. For in the mass, in the anti
guilty, in the historic splendor of her
national monument, in the halo which
the heroism, the crimes aud the imagi-
nation of eight centuries have shed over
them London remains to the thought |
full spirit the most venerable city OF the
modern world,
And now, it seems, London has an
Hdile. We have now a Minister of
the Crown who conceives it to be part
Of his duty to preserve, cherish and
open to the public our great public
monuments. 1t belongs to our nation
habits that an English Minister of
Pub c Works should regard his office
rs a sort of society for the preservation
of ancient buildings rather than as a
$ syndicate for the destruction and trans
Of ancient cities, which is
the fixed idea of the influential Hauss- |
mann, These Attilas and Genghis
Khans of modern society, with the aid
the railway and building companies
who form their natural allies, are
achieving the Haussmanniza-
ton, and not only Of Paris, but of Rome, |
Vienna, Milan. Florence and every
medieval city of Europe. 1t is a COM
to think that, where Projects,
Mayors and Town Councils everywhere |
the Continent are seeking to make
their cities a fair imitation of New
York, our First Commissioner of Works
ia occupied III preserving to us our anci-
ent monuments in the form in which
they We're built. And it is not a little |
that at the present moment he
il busy about the preservation of all
three of u great monuments. He
has just revealed to us what West |
minister Hall was in the days of the
He has still before him the |
cruel problem of refacing the Abby. |
And now he is showing us the Tower
not alas. as it was when it still served
the Tudor Kings as a palace, but freed
from the eyesore with which the stupid
vandalism of the last hundred years had
1t.
The Tower is the oldest of the three
great monuments of London, and
assuredly it stands at the head of all
buildings of its order in the world. 1t
is the most perfect extant example of a
feudal castle of the first class, contin-
uously used as a fortress by the same
dynasty, and as a seat of the same
since the times of the
Crusades. 1t is, in fact, the civil build |
ing in the world which can show the
longest and most splendid history. The
Pantheon at Rome, a few of the great
B~asilioas, the byzantine Church of the
Holy Wisdom, and a few religious |
buildings on the Continent, can show a |
longer life but there is no civic build
ing, being neither a ruin nor a restored
ruin, but still a great seat of govern
ment, which can show so vast a re-
cord.
The Tower of London has entered |
upon the ninth century of it's continu-
II life an the service of the English
Crown. When the White Tower first
rose beside the Thames, as the buttress
and symbol of the Conquest, the nations
we call France, Germany and Spain did
not exist. 1t had already seen centu.
ries of great and memorable things be-
fore the Oldest of the palaces and halls
of Europe had their foundations laid.
Men talk of the traditions of the Krem-
lin, the Vatican and the Escurial but
the first half of the wild history Of the
Tower was ove before a stone was
laid Of these vast piles. The races who
raised the fantastic domes of Moscow
or the minarets of Constantincple were
wandering herdsmen aud robaer tribes
IN Aoia xyhao the Tavro. a.. -.