Now that we have seen the Queen pass by, we will go and look at her
home in London. Buckingham Palace is not far from Hyde Park Corner,
and when we reach it we see a big, rather dull-looking building, with a
courtyard before it, and red-coated soldiers marching up and down on
guard. This palace of the King and Queen is, in truth, not very
handsome outside, but it is very splendid within, its fine rooms being
adorned with the paintings of great artists.
A noble road, called the Mall, leads from the front of Buckingham
Palace, and if we follow it we shall come out on a wide, open space
laid with gravel, the Horse Guards' Parade. Or if we do not care about
walking along the Mall, we can come through St. James's Park, with its
pretty piece of ornamental water, where ducks and other water-birds fly
about, and watch eagerly for crumbs flung to them by the visitors.
Crossing the Horse Guards' Parade, we go through a small archway into
the great street called Whitehall. The archway is watched without by
two Life Guards--tall men in shining steel breastplates and helmets,
and mounted on tall horses--while others on foot march up and down
within.
In Whitehall may be seen the room from which Charles I. stepped out to
the scaffold on the day of his execution. It was once the
banqueting-hall of a royal palace, and is now a museum, and anyone may
go into it. The scaffold had been built outside the walls, and he
stepped through a window to reach it, and there his head was struck off
before a great crowd which had gathered in Whitehall.
The broad street is lined with tall buildings, where the business of
Government is carried on; and at its foot stand the Houses of
Parliament, where laws are made for the nation. This noble range of
buildings is crowned by three great towers, two square and one pointed.
The pointed one is the Clock Tower, and there, high above our heads, is
the great clock with its four faces. It is the largest clock in
England; its figures are 2 feet in length; its minute-hand is 16 feet
long, and weighs 2cwt. The hour is struck on a great bell called "Big
Ben," and when Big Ben booms out over London it tells the people what
o'clock it is, and they set their watches and clocks by it.
As we look round, we see at a short distance from us a majestic old
church, its walls grey and time-worn. It is Westminster Abbey, the
place where our kings and queens have been crowned for a thousand
years, and where lie the remains of Britain's famous dead. No sooner
do we enter the venerable building than we see on every side monuments
and inscriptions to the memory of great men and women--kings, queens,
princes, statesmen, famous writers, soldiers, sailors, travellers, all
are there--some with a mere line or so of inscription, some with a huge
sculptured monument. For many hundreds of years Westminster Abbey has
been used as a burial-place, and to name those that lie there and to
tell the story of their lives would be to narrate the history of
England.
This noble church is built in the form of a Latin cross, and contains
beautiful chapels opening from the main building, the finest of all
being the Chapel of Henry VII. at the eastern end of the abbey. In
these chapels lie many kings and queens of England, beginning with
Edward the Confessor, who founded the abbey, and whose shrine stands in
the interesting chapel behind the choir.
Near at hand is the famous Coronation Chair, an old wooden chair, with
a large stone let in under its seat. The stone was brought to England
by Edward I., who seized it at Scone in Scotland. It is the sacred
stone on which all the Scottish kings had been crowned for many
centuries, and when Edward placed it in the Coronation Chair he meant
it to show that the English king was ruler of Scotland also. And yet
it was a Scottish king who first joined the two kingdoms, and not an
English one, for James VI. of Scotland became James I. of England, and
the two kingdoms were united under the name of Great Britain. Our
King, Edward VII., was, of course, the last to be crowned, seated in
that famous old chair.
There is one corner of Westminster Abbey which all visit, no matter
what other part they may miss, and that is the south transept, which
everyone knows as Poets' Corner. Here have been buried some of the
most famous writers of our land, and there are monuments to others who
lie elsewhere.
From Westminster Abbey we will cross to Westminster Hall, and glance
for an instant into the greatest room in Europe. This fine old hall
was built by William Rufus, and consists of one huge apartment, and the
span of its wooden roof is greater than any other room in Europe not
supported by pillars. The hall was built for banquets and festivities,
and coronation feasts were held in it for ages. At these feasts a
champion, clad in full armour and mounted on a war-horse, would ride
into the hall, and challenge anyone to dispute the king's title to the
crown.
Westminster Hall was also used for law-courts, and continued to be so
used until very recent times, when the courts were moved to the great
building in the Strand. Next we will look at Westminster Bridge, the
largest and finest of all London bridges. Here we see the broad Thames
rolling down to the sea, and have a splendid view of the river-front of
the Houses of Parliament. On a summer afternoon the river-front looks
very gay, for there is a long terrace beside the Thames, and the
members come out to take tea there. They form parties with their
friends, and the bright dresses of the ladies, and the movement to and
fro, and the laughing groups at the little tables, form a very bright
and cheerful scene.
Looking downstream from the bridge, we see on our left hand the
Embankment, one of the biggest pieces of work that even London has ever
done. Every day the river rises and falls with the tide, and sometimes
when there has been much rain a great flood comes down from the country
and makes it rise much higher still. Now, sometimes when the river
rose very high it ran into houses and did a great deal of damage, so a
great wall was built to keep Father Thames in his right place. "It was
a wonderful piece of work. It is difficult to think of the number of
cart-loads of solid earth and stone that had to be put down into the
water to make a firm foundation, and when that was done the wall had to
be built on the top, and made very strong. And after this was finished
trees were planted. Thus there was made a splendid walk or drive for
miles along the riverside."