parts. One comprises the
stately Abbey, with its adjacent palaces and its royal parks. To this
portion the duties and occupations of the dean and chapter are mainly
confined, and they shall range there undisturbed. To the venerable old
church I may repair, as I have been wont to do. But perhaps the dean and
chapter are not aware, that were I disposed to claim more than the right
to tread the Catholic pavement of that noble building, and breathe its air
of ancient consecration, another might step in with a prior claim. For
successive generations there has existed ever, in the Benedictine order,
an Abbot of Westminster, the representative in religious dignity of those
who erected and beautified and governed that church and cloister. Have
they ever been disturbed by this titular? Have they heard of any claim or
protest on his part touching their temporalities? Then let them fear no
greater aggression now. Like him, I may visit, as I have said, the old
Abbey, and say my prayer by the shrine of good St. Edward, and meditate on
the olden times, when the church filled without a coronation and
multitudes hourly worshipped without a service. But in their temporal
rights, or their quiet possession of any dignity and title, they will not
suffer. Whenever I go in I will pay my entrance fee, like other liege
subjects, and resign myself meekly to the guidance of the beadle, and
listen without rebuke when he points out to my admiration detestable
monuments, or shows me a hole in the wall for a confessional. Yet this
splendid monument, its treasures of art and its fitting endowments, form
not the parts of Westminster which will concern me; for there is another
part which stands in frightful contrast, though in immediate contact with
this magnificence. In ancient times the existence of an abbey in any spot,
with a large staff of clergy and ample revenues, would have sufficed to
create around it a little paradise of comfort, cheerfulness and ease.
This, however, is not now the case. Close under the Abbey of Westminster
there lie concealed labyrinths of lanes and courts, and alleys and slums,
nests of ignorance, vice, depravity and crime, as well as of squalor,
wretchedness and disease; whose atmosphere is typhus, whose ventilation is
cholera; in which swarms a huge and almost countless population, in great
measure, nominally, at least, Catholic; haunts of filth which no sewerage
committee can reach; dark corners which no lighting board can