The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle. — 1874-04-25 (Stourbridge, West Midlands, England)

THE ABBEY.  But a small proportion of the applications for admission to the Abbey could he granted, although every available nook and corner of the grand old pile was turned to account. Those fortunate enough to obtain tickets had to go early to secure good places. Some of the spectators, ladies among the number, were perched in the giddy Clerestory ; but those posted in the narrow gallery over the partition between the Nave and the Choir, whence they could command an admirable view of what was passing in either division of the vast edifice, were perhaps the most favourably located. At first the sombre garb of all present was relieved only by the white surplices of the officiating clergy and the gowns of the choristers. By and by the Oriental costume of the Rev. Narayan Sheshadri, an Indian missionary of the Free Church of Scotland, imparted a solitary touch of colour to the solemn scene. The bright morning sun poured through the richly-storied windows of the Choir and Lantern a flood of light, which brought out sharply the minutest details of the architecture. Under the Lantern. immediately in front of the Sacrarium, was the sable-covered stand on which the coffin was to rest during the first part of the Burial Service. In pews close by sat the two daughters of the illustrious dead, and his other lady connexions. Shortly before one the bell of the adjacent Church of St. Margaret's began to toll, and a few minutes later the mournful procession, approaching the Abbey through the Dean's Yard, entered the Abbey by the Porch of the western cloisters. There it was met by Dean Stanley and Canons Conway and Leighton, with four or five of the Minor Canons and the full Abbey choir, reinforced for the occasion by picked voices from the Chapels Royal, St. Paul's, and the Temple Church, who, as it passed into the Nave, chanted to Croft's music the opening words of the Service—" I am the resurrection and the life." The Nave was carpeted with black cloth, the broad expanse of sable relieved only by a rim of white, indicating the dais on which the black-encased reading-desk was fixed. On this dais a similar edging of white, tracing in outline the shape of a coffin, marked out the newly-dug grave. The spot selected for the great explorer's last resting. place is the centre of the west part of the Nave, immediately opposite the monument of Field-Marshal Wade; and at Livingstone's feet lies the head of Major Reynell, himself a noted African traveller. In fact, a line drawn from the great Western Porch through the centre of the Nave would almost intersect the " lion-crunched" arm, the ununited fracture of which enabled Sir W. Fergusson to silence for ever the most obstinate doubter of Livingstone's decease. Moving slowly past this open grave, so soon to receive its tenant, the procession advanced through the Choir, the whole assemblage rising to greet it, the great organ the while pealing forth. The pall-bearers, eight in number, might be said to represent three distinct epochs in the great traveller's career. First among them were Major-General Sir T. Steele and Mr. W. Oswell, who, in the earlier days of Livingstone's mission work, travelled and hunted with him in Africa. In conjunction with Mr. Oswell, after whom one of his sons is named, Livingstone discovered Lake Ngami. Towering a head and shoulders above all around, was Mr. F. W. Webb, a kind of African Nimrod, while staying under whose hospitable roof at Newstead Abbey the Doctor wrote his second book on Africa. The second period was represented by Dr. Kirk, Consul-General of Zanzibar, whose explorations and whose struggles to put down slavery are so well known by the Rev. Horace Waller, who joined Bishop M'Kenzie's mission in 1860, and seconded that lamented prelate's and Livingstone's efforts to suppress slavery in the Shirb Highlands; and also by Mr. E. D. Young, the navigating officer of the Pioneer on the Zambesi and Shin?, rivers, who afterwards disproved the story of Livingstone's murder invented by Moos,' and the other Johanna deserters. The third and last period was illustrated by Mr. H. M. Stanley, who so gallantly led the famous Relief Expedition to Ujiii. But among the pall-bearers the figure which appeared to excite most curiosity was Jacob Wainwright, the manumitted and Christianized young African, whose presence symbolized the beneficent work of the master whom he tended so faithfully to the loot.