Henry the Seventh's reign marks a great break in English History. It is the close of the Middle Ages. And the Abbey tells the story of this break in a strangely vivid and emphatic fashion. As we walk up the wide flight of steps beyond the Confessor's Chapel at the extreme east end of the Abbey, we find ourselves in a new world. The grave, stately, mediæval church is left behind. And, entering Henry the Seventh's matchless chapel, a sense of fervor and richness in the architecture seizes on us. Our eyes feast on the bayed windows with their innumerable little diamond panes; the traceries and mouldings on the walls--not a foot left unwrought--the niches with figures of saint and martyr; the grand bronze gates with their Tudor arms--the rose and portcullis, the falcon and fetterlock--the rich dark wood carving of the stalls, with the banners of the Knights of the Bath hanging motionless above each; and then the roof, that marvelous stone cobweb, with its bosses, carvings and coats of arms, its vaultings springing from the slenderest pillars imaginable like graceful palm stems, and spreading out into the exquisite fan-tracery that covers the whole--a network of stone lace. As Washington Irving says in his unrivalled description of Westminster, Stone seems, by the cunning labor of the chisel, to have been robbed of its weight and density, suspended aloft as if by magic; and the fretted roof achieved with the wonderful minuteness and airy security of a cobweb. [Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE CHAPEL OF HENRY THE SEVENTH.] Those prodigious pendants of stone, richly carved over their whole surface, which hang poised aloft in airy splendor, may well fill the mind with wonder almost akin to terror. How do they hold together? How has the cunning of man been able to counteract the force of gravity? What keeps them from falling on us as we stand gazing up at the stone miracle, and grinding us to powder? Not only we, but many wise architects have marvelled at that "prodigy of art,"--at the "daring hardihood" which keyed that roof together, every block depending on the next, and the whole structure cohering by the perfection of each minutest part. The very richness of the work, the seemingly lavish tracery, the perforated ornaments behind the spring of the main arches, all help to weld it into one abiding whole. It is a fit type of the noble strength of perfect unity. For, so say the masons, if one stone were to give away, if one pendant were to fall, the whole roof would collapse.