At
least its large high black roof rises above the other surrounding
buildings just as St. Paul's does.
What else I saw in this stately cathedral was only a wooden model of
this very edifice, which was made before the church was built, and
which suggests some not unpleasing reflections when one compares it
with the enormous building itself.
The churchyard is enclosed with an iron rail, and it appears a
considerable distance if you go all round.
Owing to some cause or other, the site of St. Paul's strikes you as
being confined, and it is certain that this beautiful church is on
every side closely surrounded by houses.
A marble statue of Queen Anne in an enclosed piece of ground in the
west front of the church is something of an ornament to that side.
The size of the bell of St. Paul's is also worthy of notice, as it
is reckoned one of those that are deemed the largest in Europe. It
takes its place, they say, next to that at Vienna.
Everything that I saw in St. Paul's cost me only a little more than
a shilling, which I paid in pence and halfpence, according to a
regulated price, fixed for every different curiosity.
Westminster Abbey.
On a very gloomy dismal day, just such a one as it ought to be, I
went to see Westminster Abbey.
I entered at a small door, which brought me immediately to the
poets' corner, where the monuments and busts of the principal poets,
artists, generals, and great men, are placed.
Not far from the door, immediately on my entrance, I perceived the
statue of Shakespeare, as large as life; with a band, &c., in the
dress usual in his time.
A passage out of one of Shakespeare's own plays (the Tempest), in
which he describes in the most solemn and affecting manner, the end,
or the dissolution of all things, is here, with great propriety, put
up as his epitaph; as though none but Shakespeare could do justice
to Shakespeare.
Not far from this immortal bard is Rowe's monument, which, as it is
intimated in the few lines that are inscribed as his epitaph, he
himself had desired to be placed there.
At no great distance I saw the bust of that amiable writer,
Goldsmith: to whom, as well as to Butler, whose monument is in a
distant part of the abbey, though they had scarcely necessary bread
to eat during their life time, handsome monuments are now raised.
Here, too you see, almost in a row, the monuments of Milton, Dryden,
Gay, and Thomson. The inscription on Gay's tombstone is, if not
actually immoral, yet futile and weak; though he is said to have
written it himself:
