THE TOMBS IN THE ABBEY

IN A LETTER TO R---- S----, ESQ.


Though in some points of doctrine, and perhaps of discipline I am
diffident of lending a perfect assent to that church which you have
so worthily _historified_, yet may the ill time never come to me,
when with a chilled heart, or a portion of irreverent sentiment, I
shall enter her beautiful and time-hallowed Edifices. Judge then
of my mortification when, after attending the choral anthems of
last Wednesday at Westminster, and being desirous of renewing my
acquaintance, after lapsed years, with the tombs and antiquities
there, I found myself excluded; turned out like a dog, or some profane
person, into the common street, with feelings not very congenial to
the place, or to the solemn service which I had been listening to. It
was a jar after that music.

You had your education at Westminster; and doubtless among those dim
aisles and cloisters, you must have gathered much of that devotional
feeling in those young years, on which your purest mind feeds
still--and may it feed! The antiquarian spirit, strong in you, and
gracefully blending ever with the religious, may have been sown in
you among those wrecks of splendid mortality. You owe it to the
place of your education; you owe it to your learned fondness for the
architecture of your ancestors; you owe it to the venerableness of
your ecclesiastical establishment, which is daily lessened and called