England -- Description and travel; Literary landmarks -- England; Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Homes and haunts -- England
Illustration: "Gresham's Monument."
How calmly they sleep--those warriors who once filled the world with the
tumult of their deeds! If you go into St. Mary's, in the Temple, you
will stand above the dust of the Crusaders and see the beautiful copper
effigies of them, recumbent on the marble pavement, and feel and know,
as perhaps you never did before, the calm that follows the tempest. St.
Mary's was built in 1240 and restored in 1828. It would be difficult to
find a lovelier specimen of Norman architecture--at once massive and
airy, perfectly simple, yet rich with beauty, in every line and scroll.
Illustration: "Goldsmith's House."
There is only one other church in Great Britain, it is said, which has,
like this, a circular vestibule. The stained glass windows, both here
and at St. Helen's, are very glorious. The organ at St. Mary's was
selected by Jeffreys, afterwards infamous as the wicked judge. The
pilgrim who pauses to muse at the grave of Goldsmith may often hear its
solemn, mournful tones. I heard them thus, and was thinking of Dr.
Johnson's tender words, when he first learned that Goldsmith was dead:
"Poor Goldy was wild--very wild--but he is so no more." The room in
which he died, a heart-broken man at only forty-six, was but a little
way from the spot where he sleeps.¹ The noises of Fleet Street are heard
there only as a distant murmur. But birds chirp over him, and leaves
flutter down upon his tomb, and every breeze that sighs around the gray
turrets of the ancient Temple breathes out his requiem.
¹ No. 2 Brick Court, Middle Temple.--In 1757-58 Goldsmith was employed
by a chemist, near Fish Street Hill. When he wrote his Inquiry into the
Present State of Polite Learning in Europe he was living in Green Arbour
Court, "over Break-neck Steps." At a lodging in Wine Office Court, Fleet
Street, he wrote The Vicar of Wakefield. Afterwards he had lodgings at
Canonbury House, Islington, and in 1764, in the Library Staircase of the
Inner Temple.
Illustration: "A Bit from Clare Court"
CHAPTER XV
LITERARY SHRINES OF LONDON
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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