re, huge
billows of sound. How well do their volume and grandeur accord with this
mighty building! With what pomp do they swell through its vast vaults, and
breathe their awful harmony through these caves of death, and make the
silent sepulcher vocal! And now they rise in triumph and acclamation,
heaving higher and higher their accordant notes, and piling sound on
sound. And now they pause, and the soft voices of the choir break out into
sweet gushes of melody; they soar aloft, and warble along the roof, and
seem to play about these lofty vaults like the pure airs of heaven. Again
the pealing organ heaves its thrilling thunders, compressing air into
music, and rolling it forth upon the soul. What long-drawn cadences! What
solemn, sweeping concords! It grows more and more dense and powerful--it
fills the vast pile, and seems to jar the very walls--the ear is
stunned--the senses are overwhelmed. And now it is winding up in full
jubilee--it is rising from the earth to heaven--the very soul seems rapt
away and floated upward on this swelling tide of harmony!...

I rose and prepared to leave the abbey. As I descended the flight of steps
which lead into the body of the building, my eye was caught by the shrine
of Edward the Confessor, and I ascended the small staircase that conducts
to it, to take from thence a general survey of this wilderness of tombs.
The shrine is elevated upon a kind of platform, and close around it are
the sepulchers of various kings and queens. From this eminence the eye
looks down between pillars and funeral trophies to the chapels and
chambers below, crowded with tombs; where warriors, prelates, courtiers
and statesmen lie moldering in their "beds of darkness." Close by me stood
the great chair of coronation, rudely carved of oak, in the barbarous
taste of a remote and Gothic age. The scene seemed almost as if contrived,
with theatrical artifice, to produce an effect upon the beholder. Here was
a type of the beginning and the end of human pomp and power; here it was
literally but a step from the throne to the sepulcher. Would not one think
that these incongruous mementos had been gathered together as a lesson to
living greatness, to show it, even in the moment of its proudest
exaltation, the neglect and dishonor to which it must soon arrive; how
soon that crown which encircles its brow must pass away, and it must lie
down in the dust and disgraces of the tomb, and be trampled upon by the
feet of the m