Morning journal and courier., 1890-03-13
FAMOUS GRAVES.
The Tom bs in She Famed Shrlnes of
 Westminster Abbey.

VI AUUCys
 Correspondence St. Louis Post Dispatch.1
 And 30 they have buried Browning in Westminster Abbey! And this, too, when 1t was his earnest and often expressed desire to be laid beside his dearly loved wife in the Protestant cemetery at Florence; that lovely spot have visited so many times, and never without envying those who, "after life's it- ful fever" have such bod for the last long sleep.
 because. being a famous poet (at least tsm- porarily), he must have grave among other famous folk-though the most famous poets are not there. Shakespeare is at Stratford, Milton in St. Giles, Cripplegats; Pope at Shelley and Keats in Rome, Wordsworth at Grasmere and Burns at Dumfries. But the company is good enough, though there is some truth in what old Handel said: "They do bury fools there"-at least as many fools as wise men.
 OBJECTION TO WESTMINSTER.
 But my objection is that Westminster, de. spite its glory, is horrible chsrnel house, as all churches are which have long been places of sepulturs. In Dean Stanley's most inter- esting book upon the sanctuary and mauso- 1eum, of which he was the greatest and best custodian, there are drawings which give some faint idea of the appearance of the crypt. In these dark and dungeon like vaults the coffins are piled one upon another like plank in lumber yard. No privacy, no or der, no sanctity-nothing that we naturally associate with the grave. For there are no graves; except that the whole crypt is a grave, into which the illustrious dead are huddled. to be crowded and jcstled by their illustrious predecessors.
 Browning may well envy Shelley, Keats and Wordsworth; who lie out in the open where the wind may woo the sod that covers l them, and the sunshine brighten it, and the rain bless 1t. He may envy any of the poets who are not iu Westminster except Byron; | whose poet mortem residence is, it possible, more unpleasant than his own. For the an cient abbey is the center of great and glori- l ous memories, which partly redeem the char nel house beneath; while Hucknall-Torkard has no redeemipg feature whatever. Stand 1 ing in the midst of the dirtiest and most un. prcpossessing village have seen in England, | the little old church is hopelessly ugly and dismal within and without. Yet they thrust poor Byron, who 50 dearly loved nature and sung it's praises ss no other poet has. into 8 l wretched pit where, as the sexton told me, sixty corpses are rotting in space probably
 less than twenty-five feet square. Better 1 have him flung into the sea, which, of all
 nature, he loved the most. Better have bur | fed him where he wanted to be buried, close
 by his dog Boatswain, on the lawn at New- stead.
 But there was one, and she the nearest and l dearest, who was not afraid nor ashamed to l follow him into this wretched pit. The Countess of Lovelace-"Ada, sole daughter of my house and heart"-was by her own
 urgent, dying request laid by the side of the
 father whom she never saw after her earliest ] infancy; whom she knew only through his books, and whom she had been taught from childhood to distrust if not to hate. Of all | the tributes which have been paid to the | sorely abused memory of Byron, the love of 1 his dying daughter is incomparably the
 finest, the most touching, the most tender
 and true.
 Scott is more fortunate than Byron in the
 matter of burial. but there is room for criti-
 cism even in his case. Dryburg is a ruined
 attractive. Why it was chosen as the last
 house of the sWizard of the North, i" inetead
 of "fair Melrose," which he has so gracefully
 immortalized, cannot guess. But so 1t is
 and the visitor is directed to "St. Aary't
 Aisle," a shattered remnant of the origina
 building, for the object of his pilgrimage
 The 50 called "aisle" is perhaps twenty feet long by ten wide, and faces @ lovely bit oi
 green sward as smooth and soft as velvet
 There is an above, behind stout iron gat,
 are four large slabs of granite in horizonta
 position, raised little above the ground bl
 side and end pieces of the same material
 The one farthest from the gate belongs t
 Lady Scott, the next to her famous husband
 and the next-considerably lower down-ts
 their only son, Lieutenant Colonel Scott
 who died while still young man. At tn feet of these three lies John Gibson Lock
 hart, the son in law and biographer of tn great novelist.
 BURNS AND WORDSWORTH. Burns, we know, was not oonsulted as t the disposition of the body, which he wa only too glad to lay aside. He was original ! ly buried in an obscure corner of the crowd | ed little cemetery attached to St. Michaeli
 church, Dumfries. But when his fame be gan to fill the world the people who allowed him to be dunned on his deathbed for debt of thirty-6ve dollars, gave tho poet 'msusoleum," which Burns would have un |, equivocally damned for it's bad taste ant pretentious ugliness. It is of light colorst sandstone, octagonal in shape, perhaps iii
 teen or twenty feet to the top of the dom
 and ten or twelve from side to side. Her
 is another gate, strong enough for a prison 3 which has to be unlocked 'for oonsidera , tion;" and then you see upon the floor of sh , prison a very large elab of somber ttnte' . stone, bearing very matter ot fact lnscrip , | ton.
 { To find what may with truth be called a ' ideal grave, go to the little hamlet of Ora. 1 mere, not far from Lake Windermere, an | still nearer to Rydal, where Wordswort
 lived and died. This being pre-emineatl ? way. I has has eiven % the n name to sths Lake Poeta !. -Wordsworth, southey and the rest). Gra. s mere has it's lake, of course; . very sma ! one, but very pretty. If it were in New il Il stead of Old England it would be called 8 pond. A short walk from its bright water e along the high road, brings you to . rud ' low browsd stone church, which looks i a age, and it was dedicated eight years ago ,e st. Oswald, whoever he may be. In V shadow is the humble Gods Acre." whe ia for these eight hundred years graves ha,