embalms a principle, I venture to raise a thin small voice, and plead for
Herbert Spencer. 'The English people,' said a friendly French critic,
'do not admire their great men because they were great, but because they
reflect credit on themselves.' So on the score of national vanity I
claim space for Herbert Spencer. Very few Englishmen have exercised such
extraordinary influence on continental opinion, which Beaconsfield said
was the verdict of posterity. On the news of his death, the Italian
Chamber passed a vote of condolence with the English people. I suppose
that does not seem a great honour to Englishmen, but to me, an enemy of
United Italy, it seemed a great honour, not only to the dead but to the
English people. Can you imagine the Swiss Federal Council sending us a
vote of condolence on the death of Mr. Hall Caine or Mr. Robert Hichens?

Again, though it is ungrateful of me to mention the fact after my
experiences of October 13th, the Abbey was not built nor endowed by
people who anticipated the Anglican form of worship being celebrated
within its walls, though I admit it has been _restored_ by the adherents
of that communion. The image of Milton, to take only one instance, would
have been quite as objectionable to Henry III. or Abbot Islip as those of
Darwin or Spencer. The emoluments bequeathed by Henry VII. and others
for requiem masses are now devoted to the education of Deans' daughters
and Canons' sons. Where incensed altars used to stand, hideous monuments
of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries wound the Gothic
air with their monstrous ornaments and inapposite epitaphs. St. Paul's
may fairly be held sacred to Anglicanism, and I do not think any one
would claim sepulture within its precincts for one who was avowedly
hostile to Christian or Anglican sentiment. But I think the Abbey has
now passed into the category of museums, and might well be declared a
national monument under control of the State. The choir, and possibly
the nave, should, of course, be severely preserved for whatever the State
religion might be at the time. Catholics need not mourn the
secularisation of the transepts and chapels, because Leo XIII. renounced
officially all claims on the ancient shrines of the Catholic faith, and
High Churchmen might console themselves by recalling the fact that Abbots
were originally laymen.

My whole scheme would be a return to the practice of the Primitive
Church, when pries