in question through these practices--to speak aloud your sense of
them; never to desist raising your voice against them, till they be
totally done away with and abolished; till the doors of Westminster
Abbey be no longer closed against the decent, though low-in-purse,
enthusiast, or blameless devotee, who must commit an injury against
his family economy, if he would be indulged with a bare admission
within its walls. You owe it to the decencies, which you wish to see
maintained in its impressive services, that our Cathedral be no longer
an object of inspection to the poor at those times only, in which they
must rob from their Attendance on the worship every minute which they
can bestow upon the fabric. In vain the public prints have taken up
this subject, in vain such poor nameless writers as myself express
their indignation. A word from you, Sir--a hint in your Journal--would
be sufficient to fling open the doors of the Beautiful Temple again,
as we can remember them when we were boys. At that time of life, what
would the imaginative faculty (such as it is) in both of us, have
suffered, if the entrance to so much reflection had been obstructed
by the demand of so much silver!--If we had scraped it up to gain an
occasional admission (as we certainly should have done) would the
sight of those old tombs have been as impressive to us (while we had
been weighing anxiously prudence against sentiment) as when the gates
stood open, as those of the adjacent Park; when we could walk in at
any time, as the mood brought us, for a shorter or longer time, as
that lasted? Is the being shown over a place the same as silently for
ourselves detecting the genius of it? In no part of our beloved Abbey
now can a person find entrance (out of service time) under the sum of
_two shillings_. The rich and the great will smile at the anticlimax,
presumed to lie in these two short words. But you can tell them, Sir,
how much quiet worth, how much capacity for enlarged feeling, how
much taste and genius, may coexist, especially in youth, with a purse