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102

PEEPS INTO WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

Beeps into Westminster Abbey.

BY EVELYN L. FARRAR.

PEEP VII.

AM sure you have all heard of General Wolfe, and, I daresay, have greatly admired his courage. You will remember that he met with his death at the siege of Quebec, during the American war, in the reign of George II., when, after having bravely charged the French, he was struck down by two shots. They carried him out of the battle, and as he lay dying, an officer exclaimed, "They run! They run!" "Who run?" cried Wolfe. "The enemy," was the answer. "Then I die happy," said the hero, and expired. Here is his monument, at the entrance of the three chapels of St. John, St. Michael, and St. Andrew, which were formerly divided by screens, but have now been thrown into one, which is commonly called the Nightingale Chapel. Wolfe's monument represents his death, and below is a bronze relief of the landing of the British army, and the scaling of the Heights of Abraham, near Quebec.

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As we enter the chapel we are struck first by the beautiful tomb, on the right-hand side, of Sir Francis Vere (1619), who commanded the English army in the wars with the Netherlands. Four kneeling knights bear the dead man's arms on a canopy, and below he himself is represented, lying on a mat and clad in a loose gown. Sir Francis Vere died from an illness, not in battle, as he had always wished to do. In allusion to this, the following epitaph has been written on him :"When Vere sought Death arm'd with the sword and shield, Death was afraid to meet him in the field; But when his weapons he had laid aside, Death, like a coward, struck him, and he died."

The kneeling knights are beautiful figures. One of them has his mouth half open, as if about to address the spectator. It is said that the sculptor Roubillac was one day found standing before this figure with folded arms and rapt attention. "Hush! hush! he vill speak soon," he whispered, when interrupted.

On the wall, among many others, we must especially notice a small tablet to Grace Scot, wife of the regicide, Colonel Scot (1645). Her

husband, who was afterwards executed, commemorates her in these touching lines :—

"He that will give my Grace but what is hers,
Must say that Death hath not

Made only her deare Scot,

But Virtue, Worth, and Sweetnesse, widowers." Below this tablet is the statue of Sir George Holles (1626), in the dress of a Roman general. His is the first figure in the Abbey which is erect, instead of recumbent, and the first that does not wear the dress of the period.

Queen Elizabeth's court is here represented by the reclining figure of Lady Catherine St. John, one of her ladies.

Next comes the famous monument to Lady Elizabeth Nightingale, from which this chapel is named. It is one of the finest works of Roubillac, and is a most striking piece of sculpture. Death, a fearful skeleton figure, bursts out of a small door at the base of the tomb, and is about to hurl his dart at the bosom of the lady above. Her husband, with an expression of the utmost terror, tries to ward off the fatal dart with one hand, while, with the other, he clasps the sinking form of his dying wife, whose drooping head and languid hands show that life is gradually ebbing away from her. “It was whilst engaged on the figure of Death, that Roubillac one day, at dinner, suddenly dropped his knife and fork on his plate, fell back in his chair, and then darted forward and threw his features into the strongest possible expression of fear, fixing his eye so expressively on the country lad who waited as to fill him with astonishment. A tradition of the Abbey records that a robber coming into the Abbey by moonlight was so startled by the same figure as to have fled in dismay, and left his crowbar on the pavement." *

Sarah, Duchess of Somerset (1692), is buried next, and on each side of her figure kneels a weeping charity boy, in allusion to the many charitable institutions which she founded. Close beside this is a curious mural tablet to the memory of Anne Keary (1603). The grief of her mourners is quaintly expressed by tears, which are sprinkled all over the surface, flowing from an eye at the top of the tablet.

The next huge structure at the end of the chapel is the tomb of Henry, Lord Norris (1601), and his wife Margaret. I daresay you have never heard much about him, but he was a famous man in the time of Queen Elizabeth, and much favoured by her because his father, who with several others was executed, had defended the * Dean Stanley's "Memorials of Westminster Abbey."

PEEPS INTO WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

innocence of her mother, the unfortunate Anne Boleyn, with his last breath. The tomb is not an interesting one, except for the beautiful figures of the six sons of Lord Norris, who kneel round in prayer. Of these brave and distinguished men, Edward alone survived his parents. Thus, while his brothers are represented in attitudes of prayer, he is looking upwards with a joyful face.

Behind this is the statue of Sarah Siddons (1831), the celebrated actress ; a ind near her a tablet to the memory of Sir Humphry Davy, the inventor of the safety lamp for mines, by which inivention he consi derably lessened the danger of gas explosions, and pirobably saved the

lives of thousands
of poor miners.
Then comes the

large and ugly memorial of Thomas Telford (1634), the co nstructor of the Menai Bridge and Bridgewater Cana l.

Next we must notice the memorial to Richard Kempenfelt, who perished with his crew in the sinking of the

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Royal George" at Spithead in 17832. You know Cowper's lines on this event

"Toll for the brave,

The brave that are no moreAll sunk beneath the wave, Fast by their native shore."

Tomb of Edward III.

The bas-relief represents the admiral rising into heaven, where an angel is ready to receive him, while the ship is slowly sinking in the quiet waves, for

"It was not in the battle,

No tempest gave the shock; She sprang no fatal leak, She ran upon no rock. "His sword was in his hand, His fingers held the pen, When Kempenfelt went down, With twice four hundred men."

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The latest monument in this chapel is the one erected by Lady Franklin in memory of her husband, Sir John Franklin, who was lost with his crew: in the Arctic regions, where they had sailed to try and discover the North-West Passage. We cannot linger here on the details of the sad story-how Franklin's ships got imbedded in the ice;

how they waited many days in patient hope for the melting of the ice; how at last their brave hearts gave way, and one after another died of cold and starvation; how ships were sent again and again from England to discover news of the lost ones; and how at last they came upon the sorrowful traces of their friends-the ice-bound

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ships,

the boats which

they had vainly tried to drag over the ice, the little articles of personal property belonging to the men, here a Bible, there a watch or a pair of slippers, and a written record of the death of Franklin himself. On his memorial, which is of beautiful white marble, is his bust and a bas-relief of the ships among the ice, with the words, "O ye Frost and Cold, O ye Ice and Snow, bless ye the

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THE HOME OF THE SEA KINGS.

Lord, praise Him and magnify Him for ever," and Tennyson's lines :

"Not here! the white North has thy bones; and thou, Heroic sailor-soul,

Art sailing on thine happier voyage now

Toward no earthly pole."

Now let us come round to the south aisle of the choir, in which are the three chapels of St. Nicholas, St. Edmund, and St. Benedict. As we pass by Edward the Confessor's Chapel we get a beautiful view of the tomb of Edward III., with the little brass figures of six of his children, among them that of Edward the Black Prince. In the chapel of St. Nicholas there are few monuments of any In the centre is the tomb of Sir great interest. George Villiers, father of the famous Duke of Buckingham, who was assassinated at Portsmouth; and to the right, as we enter, is the tomb with the effigy of Philippa, Duchess of York, whose third husband was Edmund Plantagenet, fifth son of Edward III.

Here is an enormous monument to Lady Burleigh, wife of Elizabeth's famous statesman, and his daughter Anne, Countess Vere, whose deaths so overwhelmed Lord Burleigh with grief, that, but for the entreaties of the Queen, he would have retired altogether from public life. At the top of the monument is his figure "on bended knees, venerable from his hoary hairs, in his robes of state, and with the Order of the Garter, his eyes dim with tears for the loss of those who were dear to him beyond the whole race of womankind." *

Here are also buried two little children, Anne Sophia, infant daughter of Count Bellamonte, the French ambassador in the reign of James I., and Nicholas Bagnall (1687), a baby of two months old, "by his nurse unfortunately overlaid."

Willy's Gament.

H dear! I wish Mamma would come,
And see how I have cut my thumb.
That stupid stick, it was so tough!
The knife, too, wasn't sharp enough.
They said that I was much too small
To have a pocket knife at all;
But Uncle Charley gave me one,
And cutting sticks did seem such fun.
To think that it could give such pain!
I'll never touch the thing again.

It's getting worse. My thumb! my thumb!
Oh dear! I wish Mamma would come.

Translation of the Latin epitaph on the tomb, which is attributed to his own pen.

The Home of the Sea Kings.

BY ROBERT W. DIBDIN.

CHAPTER I.

LONDON TO CHRISTIANIA.

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T was night, and I lay o a little shelf in a very little cabin. I felt very warm and tired, but slee p was quite impossible. Nov a clock struck twelve, and then many other clocks did the same. After a little time

some of them struck the ne:<t quarter, and then the next, and on till morning. All this while there was a terrible noi se going on-for the sailors we re busy putting the cargo on board -and the crank, and the chain, and the shouting altogether, ma de the Isle of Dogs a very undesirable place in which to pass the night. The steamer was to sail ea rly next morning, and as I lived far away I had thought that it would be safer to sleep on board but I never tried that plan again. I was going to Norway, the "Home of the Sea Kings"; and next morning I started.

Down the Thames we went, passing hundred ; of ships coming and going. There was Greenwich, with its famous hospital for the old sailors; and further on the training-ships for the young sail prs. If there are any sea kings now, they must be the English, and all English boys and girls are interested in the sea-but I must not wait to give you a history of our adventures in crossing it on this occasion.

After two days we were awakened very early in the morning, and heard that we were close to land. It did not take long to put on a few things and rush on deck. We were in Norway, and just entering the quiet harbour of Christiansand, the fourth largest city in the country. One never forgets the first view of a new country, and though I have often been there since, Christiansand still comes back to me as it appeared that early morning.

The water was clear, and we could see the fish far down in its blue depths. There was an old fort to the right with some guns; but it looked very harmless, and more as if it was put there to produce a picturesque effect than with the idea of frightening anybody. Just above the houses was

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THE HOME OF THE SEA KINGS.

the spire of the cathedral, which has since, with a great part of the city, been destroyed by fire.

We got on shore for an hour. The people all had fair hair and blue eyes, and most of the houses were built of wood. The windows were full of bright flowers, of which the Norwegians are particularly fond, and everything looked very quiet and peaceful. Nobody ever seems in a hurry in Norway. They have a word, "strax," which the dictionary says means "directly." Travellers generally learn this word at once, and say it whenever they want anything; but I soon found that a much better word to use was the one that means "If you please." A lady told me she had found out by experience that" strax" really meant three-quarters of an hour.

We were sorry to have to go on board again; but we started presently, and were soon steaming up the Christiania Fjord. Of course you know that Christiania is the modern capital of Norway, as Bergen was the ancient one. Perhaps I had better explain at once what a fjord is. If you look at the map you will see that the coast of Norway is full of dents and inlets, up which the sea runs. These are called fjords, and some of them are more than a hundred miles long. They run up into the mountains, and you cannot easily imagine how grand is the scenery when they get narrower and narrower, and you have great walls of rock rising up sometimes for five thousand feet on each side of you. Very often waterfalls rush over the sides of the mountains. You see, too, many little houses perched on small green patches. You wonder how they got up there; and still more how the inhabitants get down. They do so, however, somehow, for you often pass a boat moored at the foot of the rocks; and, if the steamer stops, it pushes out, and perhaps a few passengers come on board. The fjords are really some of the principal highways of the country, and there are hundreds of steamers always making their way in and out of their curious nooks and

corners.

But we are approaching Christiania. To the left there is a pretty-looking little white castle, Oscar's Hall, the King's Summer Palace, and there are many spires and towers of churches and other buildings rising around you. It is very evident that a city is here, but what a different city from London, which we have left! It rises among woods and hills, and pretty villas scattered along the shore show that the descendants of the old Northmen know how to make themselves comfortable in their own land now.

There is a museum in Christiania, and a parliament house, and a university, and a palace; but I shall not trouble you with a description of these, as I want to tell you about the country and the people.

The politeness of everybody is very remarkable. If you go into a shop, you are expected to take off your hat, and acquaintances who meet each other in the streets always exchange elaborate bows. Some of the shop-windows are very tempting, being full of old silver ornaments, peasants' costumes, wood carvings, photographs, and various curiosities and pretty things.

In the Victoria Hotel breakfast and supper are served in a sort of covered balcony, which looks over the courtyard. I ordered a supper there, and told the waiters to bring what they liked, wishing to see what would come. You would have been astonished to see the variety of little dishes which arrived. There were more than a dozen. Several had thin slices of different kinds of sausages, others contained fish, such as sardines, Norwegian anchovies and prawns, then came ham, and cheese and butter of several sorts, and dark brown bread, and light brown bread, and white bread, which last is considered quite a delicacy. For all this I only paid a small sum.

In Paris once, at a very fine hotel, I remember finding that we were charged extra because we helped ourselves twice to butter. But to return to Christiania.

The sparrows are very amusing. They come hopping round your chair, and even on to your table, and scramble and fight for crumbs like a number of fowls in a farmyard.

There is only one other thing that I must tell you about in Christiania. It is the Viking ship. This is probably the oldest ship in the world, and is one of the identical vessels in which the old sea kings embarked on some of their piratical excursions, perhaps a thousand years ago. It was dug out of a mound of earth which belonged to a poor widowwoman of Sandefjord, in the south of Norway, by her sons in the winter of 1880, when, being fishermen, they had nothing to do. There was a tradition that the mound contained a treasure. What they did find was this old ship, almost as perfect as when it used to sail to distant countries so many years ago. Its master had been buried in it, for in those heathen days it was thought that at the Resurrection he would be ready to sail off to sea at once in his old war-vessel. No treasure was found by the widow's sons, as it was evident that many years before, some one else must have

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