This section is from the book "England and London - John L. Stoddard's Lectures", by John L. Stoddard. Also available from Amazon: John L. Stoddard's Lectures 13 Volume Set.
The Tomb Of Dean Stanley.
The Avenue Of Statesmen.
Lord Palmerston.
Nor are the forms of heroes and philanthropists wanting here. We look, for example, on memorials of Colin Campbell, who recaptured Luc know; Sir James Outram, the "Bayard of India"; Livingstone, the African explorer; and Sir James Simpson, who, by his discovery of chloroform as an anaesthetic, has relieved incalculable suffering in the human race. Not far from these, Sir Charles Lyell, the distinguished geologist; Sir John Herschel, the eminent astronomer; Charles Darwin, the great naturalist; and Sir Isaac Newton, the philosopher, all lie within a few yards of one another.
Tomb Of David Livingstone.
But specially beautiful - both in its architecture and in the colored light which wraps the tombs and statues in a robe of glory - the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey seems the ideal resting-place of those rare souls selected by the Muses to be their interpreters. It is not strange that this part of the Abbey appeals to us more than any other, for every footstep on its marble pavement falls upon a grave, and its gray walls are lined with tablets, busts, and monuments containing names which have become to us household words. Great conquerors, wise ecclesiastics, and even gifted statesmen do not touch our hearts as do the poets and authors whose works are in our libraries, and whom, in many an hour by our firesides, we have learned to love and reverence as friends. Thus, close by the marble tomb of Chaucer, and hence associated with that "Father of English Poetry" over an interval of five hundred years, lie Robert Browning, and Alfred Tennyson; while, in proof of the kinship of all writers in our glorious Anglo-Saxon tongue, we see not far from these the kindly face of Henry Wads-worth Longfellow. Here, too, upon the wall is the bust of Shakespeare's friend and fellow-poet, "O rare Ben Jon-son"; and within its shadow is the grave of Edmund Spenser, who, though he died in misery, yet had a funeral here which kings might envy but could not obtain; for Beaumont, Fletcher, Ben Jonson, and probably Shakespeare attended it; and poems written by these men of genius, together with the pens that had inscribed them, were thrown into Spenser's open grave. Although the author of the "Elegy in a Country Churchyard" "rests his head upon the lap of earth," in the rustic cemetery of Stoke Pogis, a beautiful medallion of his face, beneath the bust of Milton, here "invokes the passing tribute of a sigh." Immortal Shakespeare, too, supreme and unapproachable, looks calmly down upon the tombs of his successors, and wonderfully solemn and impressive seem his lines from the "Tempest," carved on the scroll within his hand:
"The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind".
The Poets' Corner.
Chaucer's Tomb.
Memorials Of A Group Of Poets.
Shakespeare.
Here, also, we see the burial-place of David Garrick, the actor, whose death was said to have eclipsed the gaiety of nations, and at whose funeral Burke remarked that Shakespeare's statue seemed to be pointing to the grave where the great interpreter of his works was laid. Not far away is the tomb of the composer Handel, whose funeral was attended by three thousand people; and near him the marble bust of Thackeray looks on the grave of his great contemporary Dickens. It is, however, impossible to enumerate all of England's sons of genius who are represented here: Southey, Campbell, Coleridge, Thomson, Burns, Goldsmith, Dryden, Addison, greatest of English essayists; Samuel Johnson, the lexicographer; Bulwer Lytton, the novelist; Sheridan, the dramatist; and Macaulay, the historian and poet, - the pure white features of all these relieve the shadows of Westminster, as their immortal works give light and beauty to the world. And what a literature is that whose rep-resentatives slumber in this Necropolis of Genius!
 
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