Though in some points of doctrine, and perhaps of discipline I am
diffident of lending a perfect assent to that church which you have
so worthily _historified_, yet may the ill time never come to me,
when with a chilled heart, or a portion of irreverent sentiment, I
shall enter her beautiful and time-hallowed Edifices. Judge then
of my mortification when, after attending the choral anthems of
last Wednesday at Westminster, and being desirous of renewing my
acquaintance, after lapsed years, with the tombs and antiquities
there, I found myself excluded; turned out like a dog, or some profane
person, into the common street, with feelings not very congenial to
the place, or to the solemn service which I had been listening to. It
was a jar after that music.
You had your education at Westminster; and doubtless among those dim
aisles and cloisters, you must have gathered much of that devotional
feeling in those young years, on which your purest mind feeds
still--and may it feed! The antiquarian spirit, strong in you, and
gracefully blending ever with the religious, may have been sown in
you among those wrecks of splendid mortality. You owe it to the
place of your education; you owe it to your learned fondness for the
architecture of your ancestors; you owe it to the venerableness of
your ecclesiastical establishment, which is daily lessened and called
in question through these practices--to speak aloud your sense of
them; never to desist raising your voice against them, till they be
totally done away with and abolished; till the doors of Westminster
Abbey be no longer closed against the decent, though low-in-purse,
enthusiast, or blameless devotee, who must commit an injury against
his family economy, if he would be indulged with a bare admission
within its walls. You owe it to the decencies, which you wish to see
maintained in its impressive services, that our Cathedral be no longer
an object of inspection to the poor at those times only, in which they
must rob from their Attendance on the worship every minute which they
can bestow upon the fabric. In vain the public prints have taken up
this subject, in vain such poor nameless writers as myself express
their indignation. A word from you, Sir--a hint in your Journal--would
be sufficient to fling open the doors of the Beautiful Temple again,
as we can remember them when we were boys. At that time of life, what
would the imaginative faculty (such as it is) in both of us, have
suffered, if the entrance to so much reflection had been obstructed
by the demand of so much silver!--If we had scraped it up to gain an
occasional admission (as we certainly should have done) would the
sight of those old tombs have been as impressive to us (while we had
been weighing anxiously prudence against sentiment) as when the gates
stood open, as those of the adjacent Park; when we could walk in at
any time, as the mood brought us, for a shorter or longer time, as
that lasted? Is the being shown over a place the same as silently for
ourselves detecting the genius of it? In no part of our beloved Abbey
now can a person find entrance (out of service time) under the sum of
_two shillings_. The rich and the great will smile at the anticlimax,
presumed to lie in these two short words. But you can tell them, Sir,
how much quiet worth, how much capacity for enlarged feeling, how
much taste and genius, may coexist, especially in youth, with a purse
incompetent to this demand.--A respected friend of ours, during his
late visit to the metropolis, presented himself for admission to Saint
Paul's. At the same time a decently clothed man, with as decent a
wife, and child, were bargaining for the same indulgence. The price
was only two-pence each person. The poor but decent man hesitated,
desirous to go in; but there were three of them, and he turned away
reluctantly. Perhaps he wished to have seen the tomb of Nelson.
Perhaps the Interior of the Cathedral was his object. But in the state
of his finances, even sixpence might reasonably seem too much. Tell
the Aristocracy of the country (no man can do it more impressively);
instruct them of what value these insignificant pieces of money, these
minims to their sight, may be to their humbler brethren. Shame these
Sellers out of the Temple. Stifle not the suggestions of your better
nature with the pretext, that an indiscriminate admission would expose
the Tombs to violation. Remember your boy-days. Did you ever see,
or hear, of a mob in the Abbey, while it was free to all? Do the
rabble come there, or trouble their heads about such speculations?
It is all that you can do to drive them into your churches; they do
not voluntarily offer themselves. They have, alas! no passion for
antiquities; for tomb of king or prelate, sage or poet. If they had,
they would be no longer the rabble.
For forty years that I have known the Fabric, the only well-attested
charge of violation adduced, has been--a ridiculous dismemberment
committed upon the effigy of that amiable spy, Major André. And is it
for this--the wanton mischief of some schoolboy, fired perhaps with
raw notions of Transatlantic Freedom--or the remote possibility
of such a mischief occurring again, so easily to be prevented
by stationing a constable within the walls, if the vergers are
incompetent to the duty--is it upon such wretched pretences, that
the people of England are made to pay a new Peter's Pence, so long
abrogated; or must content themselves with contemplating the ragged
Exterior of their Cathedral? The mischief was done about the time that
you were a scholar there. Do you know any thing about the unfortunate
relic?--