I
love it for its simplicity and antique nakedness, and deem it worthy to
have been the haunt and home of History through the six centuries since
it was built. I wonder it does not occur to modern ingenuity to make a
scenic representation, in this very hall, of the ancient trials for life
or death, pomps, feasts, coronations, and every great historic incident
in the lives of kings, Parliaments, Protectors, and all illustrious men,
that have occurred here. The whole world cannot show another hall such
as this, so tapestried with recollections of whatever is most striking in
human annals.
Westminster Abbey being just across the street, we went thither from the
hall, and sought out the cloisters, which we had not yet visited. They
are in excellent preservation,--broad walks, canopied with intermingled
arches of gray stone, on which some sort of lichen, or other growth of
ages (which seems, however, to have little or nothing vegetable in it),
has grown. The pavement is entirely made of flat tombstones, inscribed
with half-effaced names of the dead people beneath; and the wall all
round bears the marble tablets which give a fuller record of their
virtues. I think it was from a meditation in these cloisters that
Addison wrote one of his most beautiful pieces in the Spectator. It is a
pity that this old fashion of a cloistered walk is not retained in our
modern edifices; it was so excellent for shelter and for shade during a
thoughtful hour,--this sombre corridor beneath an arched stone roof, with
the central space of richest grass, on which the sun might shine or the
shower fall, while the monk or student paced through the prolonged
archway of his meditations.
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