Now turn to the west, look at the glade of arches stretching down the
nave, at the Statesmen’s Corner on the right, where under the Rose
Window Chatham’s fine figure stands out almost with an air of proud
satisfaction, and then towards the left to the monument of Oliver
Goldsmith, and the more imposing memorial to the great Duke of Argyll,
"an honest man, a constant friend, a general and an orator." Two
commanding statues of Campbell and Addison loom out in the half light,
Campbell casting a shadow over the graves of Abbot Litlington, Owen
Tudor, and Dean Benson, and hiding from our view the dignified,
thoughtful figure of William Shakespeare, who holds in his hands a
scroll on which are those lines of his from the "Tempest":—
"The cloud-capt towers,
The gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples,
The great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit
Shall dissolve,
And like the baseless fabric of a vision
Leave not a wreck behind."
Burns and Sir Walter Scott greet us from their niches; Grote and
Thirlwall, the truth-loving writers of history; Camden, the Westminster
master and antiquarian; Garrick the actor, Handel the musician, all
cluster around us as we look down the southern aisle; and we can just
see at the end the newest addition to the building, a bronze memorial to
John Ruskin, a great teacher and writer of our own day. Some words of
his come to my mind at this moment, as applying in a very special sense
to the Abbey: "The greatest glory of a building is not in its stones,
nor in its gold. The glory is in its age, and in that deep sense of
voicefulness, of stern watching, of mysterious sympathy, nay, even of
approval or condemnation, which we feel in walls that have long been
washed by the passing waves of humanity.... It is in the golden stain of
time that we are to look for the real light, and colour, and
preciousness of architecture; and it is not until a building has assumed
this character, till it has been entrusted with the fame and hallowed by
the deeds of men, till its walls have been witnesses of suffering, and
its pillars rise out of the shadows of death, that its existence, more
lasting as it is than the natural objects of the world around it, can be
gifted with even so much as those possess of language and of life.
Therefore, when we build, let us think that we build for ever.... God
has lent us the earth for our life; it is a great entail. It belongs as
much to those who are to come after us, and whose names are already
written in the Book of Creation, as to us."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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