I rose and prepared to leave the abbey. As I descended the flight
of steps which lead into the body of the building, my eye was
caught by the shrine of Edward the Confessor, and I ascended the
small staircase that conducts to it, to take from thence a
general survey of this wilderness of tombs. The shrine is
elevated upon a kind of platform, and close around it are the
sepulchres of various kings and queens. From this eminence the
eye looks down between pillars and funeral trophies to the
chapels and chambers below, crowded with tombs, where warriors,
prelates, courtiers, and statesmen lie mouldering in their "beds
of darkness." Close by me stood the great chair of coronation,
rudely carved of oak in the barbarous taste of a remote and
Gothic age. The scene seemed almost as if contrived with
theatrical artifice to produce an effect upon the beholder. Here
was a type of the beginning and the end of human pomp and power;
here it was literally but a step from the throne to the
sepulchre. Would not one think that these incongruous mementos
had been gathered together as a lesson to living greatness?--to
show it, even in the moment of its proudest exaltation, the
neglect and dishonor to which it must soon arrive--how soon that
crown which encircles its brow must pass away, and it must lie
down in the dust and disgraces of the tomb, and be trampled upon
by the feet of the meanest of the multitude.
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