ts were only allowed on sufferance inside abbeys at
all. The Low Church party need not be considered, because they can have
no sentiment about what they regard as relics of superstition and Broad
Churchmen could hardly complain at the logical development of their own
principle. The Nonconformists, the backbone of the nation, could not be
otherwise than grateful. The decision about admitting busts, statues, or
bodies into the national and sacred 'musee des morts' (as the
anti-clerical French might call it under the new constitution) would rest
with the Home Secretary. This would be an added interest to the duties
of a painstaking official, forming pleasant interludes between
considering the remission of sentences on popular criminals: it would
relieve the Dean and Chapter at all events from grave responsibility. The
Home Secretary would always be called the Abbot of Westminster. How
picturesque at the formation of a new Cabinet--'_Home Secretary and Abbot
of Westminster_, the Right Hon. Mr. So-and-So.' The first duty of the
Abbot will be to appoint a Royal Commission to consider the removal of
hideous monuments which disfigure the edifice: nothing prior to 1700
coming under its consideration. A small tablet would recall what has
been taken away. Herbert Spencer's claim to a statue would be duly
considered, and, I hope, by a unanimous vote some of the other glaring
gaps would be filled up. If the Abbey is full of obscurities, very dim
religious lights, many of the illustrious names in our literature have
been omitted: Byron, Shelley, Keats--to mention only these. There is no
monument to Chatterton, one of the more powerful influences in the
romantic movement, nor to William Blake, whose boyish inspiration was
actually nourished amid that 'Gothic supineness,' as Mr. MacColl has
finely said of him. Of all our poets and painters Blake surely deserves
a monument in the grey church which became to him what St. Mary Redcliffe
was to Chatterton. A window adapted from the book of Job (with the
marvellous design of the Morning Stars) was, I am told, actually offered
to, and rejected by, the late Dean. To Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the
wonderful movement of which he was the dynamic force there should also be
a worthy memorial; to Water Pater, the superb aside of English prose; to
Cardinal Manning, _the_ Ecclesiastic of the nineteenth century; and
Professor Huxley, that master of dialectics.

A young actor of my acquain