I leave to courtly hands, to ecclesiastics of rank, to those who understand the pomp and dignity of history, the Abbey Church, with its royal memories and national associations. It is for Deans to dwell at length upon this stately shrine of England’s story. Those whose place is duly assigned and reserved for them at Coronations, Functions, and Funerals in this Church; those whose office brings them into personal relations with Kings and Queens, Princes and Princesses; those who belong to the Palace as much as to the Abbey, are the fittest persons to write on the events and episodes belonging to the Church, and to enumerate the chapels, altars, tombs, and monuments within its walls. Again, there is the building itself: this has been described over and over again by architects and the students of architecture; stone by stone the structure has been examined; hardly one that has not been assigned to its builder and its date. We have been taught all that remains of Edward the Confessor; all that Henry the Third began and his son continued; what Richard the Second raised; what is due to Henry the Seventh and what to Wren. We may leave aside, for the most part, the ceremonies of state, Coronations, [Illustration: ARMS OF THE ABBEY OF WESTMINSTER.] Weddings, Funerals, the monuments, and the architecture. Are they not written in the book of the Dean? Some of us, when we read of these great Functions, fall into the reflection that in that time, as in this, the place of the scholar, the poet, or the storyteller would have been outside among the crowd; the man of letters would have been distinguished beyond expectation had he been invited to stand somewhere far back in the nave--if he had secured a point of vantage near the North Porch, or anywhere in the Abbey Precinct where he could stand and see the Procession sweep past, the Procession of Heralds, Trumpets, Knights and Barons, and rich Lords, Bishops, and Mitered Abbots, Pursuivants and more Trumpets, splendid banners and canopies and shields borne by Nobles, Esquires, and the King’s Valets: lastly, their Highnesses the King and the Queen themselves. If he should happily stand near the Porch, he would hear the rolling of the organ and the voices of those who sing. When the soldiers rushed out of the church at William’s crowning to hack and cut down the people in suspicion of a tumult, the poet was among them and was glad to escape with a broken head; when King Richard’s men-at-arms slew the Jews, the poet who was then outside among them thought himself happy that he was not mistaken for one of those unfortunates; the poet was standing outside the Abbey Church--in a very good place too--when, with Pageant, songs, and flowers, the whole world turned out to welcome Good Queen Bess. At every Coronation before and since that festival he has formed part of the outside throng. When the Rejoicing and the Thanksgiving for the happy closing of Fifty Years were