Eagle River review. [volume] (Eagle River, Wis.) 1890-1927, 1920-09-17

ing race" He got this phrase from an American
friend. The American being shown around the
Abbey by the DEAN exclaimed
"Can any sacred building in the British en-
pire compare with Westminster Abbeyf Is It not
! the unique and priceless treasure Of the English
speaking racer And using this explanation as
a text the dean says:
ut was not made In the tone Of rhetorical COM
pifment but with the intense conviction OF one
who had quite suddenly been awakened to full
sense of the significance of this great inheritance
from our common Ango-Saxon ancestry. 1t Is the
same story If you take round friends or visitors
who have Just come from Canada or Australia,
or New Zealand, or South Africa, and who have
never before been in the mother country. One
feels overwhelmed and Inundated In the pres
ence Of their delighted enthusiasm, their revef-
ence for the historic associations Of the building,
their appreciation Of it's antiquity. their emotion
at the sight Of places and things Of which they
have so often heard. Familiar as it is to some OF
us to them the abbey is the heart shrine of the
worldwide empire. The thought OF 1t Is inter-
twined with the most sacred feelings and deep
est affections Of brothers and sisters scattered
over the whole world"
Westminster Abbey has been called "the his
tory of the English race set in stone. In sense,
it is the symbol of English monarchy; for Harold,
the last Saxon king was crowned here; so was
William the Conqueror, in 1866; so was ever since
every English king. Yet as the Times says Of the
abbey:
ut lis no history Of dynasty or Of kingdom
that speaks here. 1t is the history of race in
every branch of human activity, told generation
after generation by the hands that through good
days and through evil, carried and handed down
the torch
"Deeply as these great repositories of the great
dead must move all educated men, the story they
have to tell is short and confined to that embodied
here That is all-embracing, unbToken widening
down from, Hastings to the great war, from the
Saxon Witan and the Kings council to the parlla-
ments Of the empire and not less truly if less d.
rectly to the congress of the United States.
There is a lot Of legend about the beginnings
of Westminster Abbey The first church is said
70 have been built about GIG by King Sebert Of
Essex. Edward the Confessor in 1O49-65 built a
church on the present site and gave it it's present
name. Henry III in the thirteenth century began
the reconstruction which was carried on by his
successors. The towers were not built until 1722-
40 The Abbey was disendowed during the Ref
ormation but was restored by Queen Mary. Its
present organization dean and II canOns, dates
from Elizabeth. The practice of interring the
great began under Richard III.
Lord Macaulay who himself lies in Westmin-
ster Abbey wrote of it "No other spot in the en-
pire contains within such space so many
iustrious citizens" His statement is undoubtedly
true and the list of the great is all the more in
teresting for the reason that Westminster is no
VaIhafla established by ordinance and decree. And
it is certainly interesting cOlection-Cecil, VII
ners, Blake, Monk Clarendon, Argyll, Ormond, the
two Pitts Fox, Canning Palmerston, Gladstone,
Chaucer Spenser Dryden, Beaumont, Ben JON
son, Prior Cay Dr. johnson, Browning Tennyson,
Dickens-and so on, theOlOgians, actors, must
clans. artists and scientists