On one of those sober and rather melancholy days in the latter part of Autumn, when the shadows of morning and evening almost mingle together and throw a gloom over the decline of the year, I passed several hours in rambling about Westminster Abbey.  I spent some time in Poet’s Corner, which occupies an end of one of the transepts or cross aisles of the abbey.  The monuments are generally simple; for the lives of literary men afford no striking themes for the sculptor.  Shakespeare and Addison have statues erected to their memories; but the greater part have busts, medallions, and sometimes mere inscriptions.  Notwithstanding the simplicity of these memorials, I have always observed that the visitors to the abbey remained longest about them.  A kinder and fonder feeling takes the place of that cold curiosity or vague admiration with which they gaze on the splendid monuments of the great and heroic.  They linger about these as about the tombs of friends and companions; for indeed there is something of companionship between the author and the reader.  Other men are known to posterity only through the medium of history, which is continually growing faint and obscure; but the intercourse between the author and his fellow men is ever new, active and immediate.

From Poet’s Corner I continued my stroll toward that part of the abbey which contains the sepulchers of the kings.  I wandered among what once were chapels, but which are now occupied by the tombs and monuments of the great.  At every turn I met with some illustrious name; or the cognizance of some powerful house renowned in history.  As the eye darts into these dusky chambers of death, it catches glimpses of quaint effigies; some kneeling in niches, as if in devotion; others stretched upon the tombs, with hands piously prest together; warriors in armor, as if reposing after battle; prelates with croziers and miters; and nobles in robes and coronets, lying, as it were, in state.  In glancing over this scene, so strangely populous, yet where every form is so still and silent, it seems almost as if we were treading a mansion of that fabled city where everything had been suddenly transmuted into stone.

In the opposite transept to Poet’s Corner stands a monument which is among the most renowned achievements of modern art, but which to me appears horrible rather than sublime.  It is the tomb of Mrs. Nightingale, by Roubillac.  The bottom of the monument is represented as throwing open its marble doors, and a sheeted skeleton is starting forth.  The shroud is falling from its fleshless frame as he launches his dart at his victim.  She is sinking into her affrighted husband’s arms, who strives, with vain and frantic effort, to avert the blow.  The whole is executed with terrible truth and spirit; we almost fancy we hear the gibbering yell of triumph bursting from the distended jaws of the specter.  But why should we thus seek to clothe death with unnecessary terrors, and to spread horrors round the tombs of those we love?  The grave should be surrounded by everything that might inspire tenderness and veneration for the dead; or that might win the living to virtue.  It is the place, not of disgust and dismay, but of sorrow and meditation.