Daily tobacco leaf-chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1890-1895, 1890-03-27

1he Pit IN which byron Is Burted-Tho
last Resting Place of Scott, Burns and
Wordsworth.
And so they have buried Browning in
Westminster Abbey And this, too, when
it 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 litful
fever have such a bed for the last long
sleep.
But no. it must be in Westminster Abbey;
because, being famous poet lat least tempo
rarily), he must have grave among other
| famous folk-though the most famous poets
are not there Shakespeare is at Stratford,
| Milton in ST. Giles, Cripplegate; Pope at
/ Twickenham, Byron in Hucknall-Iorkard,
! Shelley and Keats in Rome, Wordsworth at
/ Grasmere and Burns at Dumfries But tho
company is good enough, though there is
some truth in what old Handel said: '"fhey
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 charnel house, as
/ all churches are which have long been places
/ of sepulture In Dean Stanleys most inter-
| esting book upon the sanctuary and mauso-
! leum, 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 cofiins are piled one upon another like
! plank in a lumber yard. No privacy, no
order, no sanctity-nothing that we natu-
rally 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 iostled 10y their
! illustrious predecessors
| Browning may we'll envy Shelley, Keats
and Wordsworth; who lie out in the open
! where the wind may woo the sod that covers
| them, and the sunshine brighten it, and the
rain bless it. He may envy any of the poets
who are not in Westminster, except Byron;
/ whose post mortem residence is, If possible,
/ more unpleasant than his own. For the an
| cient abbey is the center of great and glorious
memories, which partly redeem the charnel
house beneath; while Huclmall-Torllard has
no redeeming feature whatever. Standing in
the midst of the drtiest and most unprepos-
sessing village / have seen in England tho
/ little old church is hopelessly ugly and dismal
within and without. Yet they thrust poor
! Byron, who so dearly loved nature and sung
wretched pit where, as the sexton told me,
sixty corpses are rotting in space probably
! less than twenty-five feet square. Better have
him flung into the sea- which, of all nature,
he loved the most. Better have buried him
where he wanted TO be buried, close by his
| dog Boatswan, on the lawn Mt Newstead.
But there was one, and she the nearest and
dearest, who was not afraid nor ashamed to
follow him into this wretched pit, The
countess of Lovelace-'' Ada, sole daughter of
my house and heartn--was by her own ur-
gent dying request laid by the side Of the
father whom she never saw after earliest in
fancy; whom she knew only through his
books, and whom she had been taught from
childhood to distrust if nA to hate, OF all
the tributes which have been paid TO the sore
! ly abused memory of Byron, the love OF 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
abbey much larger than Merose, but not so
attractive. Why it was chosen as the last
house Of the Wizard Of the North, instead
of "fair Melrose,n which he has 50 gracefully
immortalzed, cannot guess. But so 1t Is,
! and the visitor is directed TO "St Mary's
| Aisle, shattered remnant of the original
| building, for the object of his pilgrimage. The
so called 'aisle" is perhaps twenty feet long
! by ten wide, and faces a lovely bit of green
sward as smooth and soft as velvet There
is an alcove, behind stout iron gate are four
| large slabs of granite in horizontal position,
raised little above the ground by side aud
end pieces of the same material. The one
farthest from the gate belongs to Lady Scott,
/ tho IA VT fol ,orf fntppIq hIcband and fha uaVf
considerably lower down--to their olly son,
Lieut.. Col Scott, who died while still young
man. At the feet Of these three lies John
Gibson Lockhart, the son-in-law and biogra-
pher of the great novelist.
BURNS AND WORDSWORTH.
Burns, we know, was not consulted as to
the disposition of the body which he was
only too glad TO lay aside. He was originally
buried in an obscure corner of the crowded
! little cemetery attached to st. Michael's
| church, Dumfries. But when his fame began
to fill the world the people who allowed him
| to be dunned on his deathbed for debt Of
/ 1856, gave the poet "mansGleum,n which
Burns would have unequivocally damned for
its bad taste and pretentious ugliness, IL is\
of light colored sandstone, octagonal in shape,
perhaps fifteen or twenty feet to the top Of
the dome and ten or twelve from side to side.
/ Here is another gate, strong enough for
prison, which has to be unlocked "for CON
sideration;" and then you see upon the floor
of the prison very large slab Of somber
tinted stone, bearing very matter of fact in
scripton.
To find what may with truth be called an
ideal grave, go to the little hamlet Of Gras-
mere, not far from Lake Windermere and
still nearer to Rydal, where Wordsworth
lived and died. This being pre-ennently
1 "the lake regionn of England (which, by the
way, has given the name to "the Lake Poetsi
| Wordsworth, Southey and the rest, Gras-
! mere has It's lake, Of course; "A very small one,
7 but very pretty. If it were IN New instead
/ of Old England it would be called pond.
/ A short walk from its bright waters, along
the high road, brings you to rude, low
/ browed stone church, which looks its age,
and it was dedicated eight years ago 10 st.
/ Oswald, whoever he may be. In its shadow
/ is the humble Gods Acre, where for these
/ 500 years graves have been dug by the living
to be filed by the dead.
A low, rustic gate stands inyitingly open,
and well trodden path leads to the south
east corner, where, inclosed by light iron
/ fence, is a group Of grassy mounds, The
/ one you kave come TO see has plain tomb
stone Of dark slate at its head, with this
simple inscription: "William Wordsworth.
1886. Mary Wordsworth, 1859
Husband and wife are evidently united in
I death as in life--buried IN the sanc grave.
! When / saw it, in the early days Of an Eng
/ lish june it was thickly covered with Wild
howers, among which the daisy was conspie-
uous: so that tile poet literally sleeps "ander
the daisiesH-iit canopy for him who 50 ar