een the death of Edward the Fifth and the coronation of another
boy-king, Edward the Sixth, Westminster Abbey saw momentous changes. Its
fabric and its constitution were alike altered by the stupendous
transformation through which England passed in those seventy years.

Henry the Seventh's reign marks a great break in English History. It is
the close of the Middle Ages. And the Abbey tells the story of this
break in a strangely vivid and emphatic fashion. As we walk up the wide
flight of steps beyond the Confessor's Chapel at the extreme east end of
the Abbey, we find ourselves in a new world. The grave, stately,
mediaeval church is left behind. And, entering Henry the Seventh's
matchless chapel, a sense of fervor and richness in the architecture
seizes on us. Our eyes feast on the bayed windows with their innumerable
little diamond panes; the traceries and mouldings on the walls--not a
foot left unwrought--the niches with figures of saint and martyr; the
grand bronze gates with their Tudor arms--the rose and portcullis, the
falcon and fetterlock--the rich dark wood carving of the stalls, with
the banners of the Knights of the Bath hanging motionless above each;
and then the roof, that marvelous stone cobweb, with its bosses,
carvings and coats of arms, its vaultings springing from the slenderest
pillars imaginable like graceful palm stems, and spreading out into the
exquisite fan-tracery that covers the whole--a network of stone lace. As
Washington Irving says in his unrivalled description of Westminster,

Stone seems, by the cunning labor of the chisel, to have
been robbed of its weight and density, suspended aloft as if
by magic; and the fretted roof achieved with the wonderful
minuteness and airy security of a cobweb.

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE CHAPEL OF HENRY THE SEVENTH.]

Those prodigious pendants of stone, richly carved over their whole
surface, which hang poised aloft in airy splendor, may well fill the
mind with wonder almost akin to terror. How do they hold together? How
has the cunning of man been able to counteract the force of gravity?
What keeps them from falling on us as we stand gazing up at the stone
miracle, and grinding us to powder? Not only we, but many wise
architects have marvelled at that "prodigy of art,"--at the "daring
hardihood" which keyed that roof together, every block depending on the
next, and the whole structure cohering by the perfection of each
minutest part.