. Shakespeare's England . y the thousands upon thousands of de-vout pilgrims who, in the days before the Reformation,crept up to weep and pray at the costly, resplendentshrine of St. Thomas. The bones of Becket, as all theworld knows, were, by command of Henry the Eighth,burnt, and scattered to the winds, while his shrine waspillaged and destroyed. Neither tomb nor scutcheoncommemorates him here, — but the cathedral itself is 1 St. Dunstans church was connected with the Convent of St. Roper family, in the time of Henry the Fourth, founded a chapel init, in which are two marble tomb
. Shakespeare's England . y the thousands upon thousands of de-vout pilgrims who, in the days before the Reformation,crept up to weep and pray at the costly, resplendentshrine of St. Thomas. The bones of Becket, as all theworld knows, were, by command of Henry the Eighth,burnt, and scattered to the winds, while his shrine waspillaged and destroyed. Neither tomb nor scutcheoncommemorates him here, — but the cathedral itself is 1 St. Dunstans church was connected with the Convent of St. Roper family, in the time of Henry the Fourth, founded a chapel init, in which are two marble tombs, commemorative of them, and under-neath which is their burial vault. Margaret Roper, Sir Thomas Moresdaughter, obtained her fathers head, after his execution, and buried ithere. The vault was opened in 1835, — when a new pavement was laidin the chancel of this church, — and persons descending into it saw thehead, in a leaden box shaped like a beehive, open in front, set in a nichein the wall, behind an iron <a:QUJXH < a;DCQ z <o KX A GLIMPSE OF CANTERBURY 229 his monument. There it stands, with its grand columnsand glorious arches, its towers of enormous size andits long vistas of distance, so mysterious and awful, itsgloomy crypt where once the silver lamps sparkled andthe smoking censers were swung, its tombs of mightywarriors and statesmen, its frayed and crumbling ban-ners, and the eternal, majestic silence with which itbroods over the love, ambition, glory, defeat, and an-guish of a thousand years, dissolved now and ended ina little dust! As the organ music died away I lookedupward and saw where a bird was wildly flying to andfro, through the vast spaces beneath its lofty roof, inthe vain effort to find some outlet of escape. Fit em-blem, truly, of the human mind which strives to com-prehend and to utter the meaning of this marvellousfabric !
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, bookidshakespeares, bookyear1895
