eremony. I could almost hear him
saying, "Get on! get on!" in the parts of the service that dragged. When
the sun--such a splendid, tawny sun--burst across the solemn misty gray
of the Abbey, at the very moment when the coffin, under its superb pall
of laurel leaves,[1] was carried up the choir, I felt that it was an
effect which he would have loved.

[Footnote 1: Every lover of beauty and every lover of Henry Irving must
have breathed a silent thanksgiving that day to the friends who had that
inspiration and made the pall with their own hands.]

I can understand any one who was present at Henry Irving's funeral
thinking that this was his best memorial, and that any attempt to honor
him afterwards would be superfluous and inadequate.

Yet when some further memorial was discussed, it was not always easy to
sympathize with those who said: "We got him buried in Westminster Abbey.
What more do you want?"

After all it was Henry Irving's commanding genius, and his devotion of
it to high objects, his personal influence on the English people, which
secured him burial among England's great dead. The petition for the
burial presented to the Dean and Chapter, and signed, on the initiative
of Henry Irving's leading fellow-actors, by representative personages of
influence, succeeded only because of Henry's unique position.

"We worked very hard to get it done," I heard said--more than once. And
I often longed to answer: "Yes, and all honor to your efforts, but you
worked for it between Henry's death and his funeral. _He_ worked for it
all his life!"

I have always desired some other memorial to Henry Irving than his
honored grave, not so much for _his_ sake as for the sake of those who
loved him and would gladly welcome the opportunity of some great test of
their devotion.

Henry Irving's profession decided last year, after much belated
discussion, to put up a statue to him in the streets of London. I
believe that it is to take the form of a portrait statue in academic
robes. A statue can never at any time be a very happy memorial to an
actor, who does not do his work in his own person, but through his
imagination of many different persons. If statue it had to be, the work
should have had a symbolic character. My dear friend Alfred Gilbert, one
of the most gifted sculptors of this or any age, expressed a similar
opinion to the committee of the memorial, and later on wrote to me as
follows:

"I should never have attem