I Haunted The Abbey, And The More I Saw Of It The More I Loved
It.
The impression it had made on me during my former visits
had faded, or else I had never properly seen it, or had not
seen it in the right emotional mood.
Now I began to think it
the best of all the great abbey churches of England and the
equal of the cathedrals in its effect on the mind. How rich
the interior is in its atmosphere of tempered light or tender
gloom! How tall and graceful the columns holding up the high
roof of white stone with its marvellous palm-leaf sculpture!
What a vast expanse of beautifully stained glass! I certainly
gave myself plenty of time to appreciate it on this occasion,
as I visited it every day, sometimes two or three times, and
not infrequently I sat there for an hour at a stretch.
Sitting there one day, thinking of nothing, I was gradually
awakened to a feeling almost of astonishment at the sight of
the extraordinary number of memorial tablets of every
imaginable shape and size which crowd the walls. So numerous
are they and so closely placed that you could not find space
anywhere to put your hand against the wall. We are accustomed
to think that in cathedrals and other great ecclesiastical
buildings the illustrious dead receive burial, and their names
and claims on our gratitude and reverence are recorded, but in
no fane in the land is there so numerous a gathering of the
dead as in this place.
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