My whole scheme would be a return to the practice of the Primitive Church, when priests were only allowed on sufferance inside abbeys at all.  The Low Church party need not be considered, because they can have no sentiment about what they regard as relics of superstition and Broad Churchmen could hardly complain at the logical development of their own principle.  The Nonconformists, the backbone of the nation, could not be otherwise than grateful.  The decision about admitting busts, statues, or bodies into the national and sacred ‘musee des morts’ (as the anti-clerical French might call it under the new constitution) would rest with the Home Secretary.  This would be an added interest to the duties of a painstaking official, forming pleasant interludes between considering the remission of sentences on popular criminals:  it would relieve the Dean and Chapter at all events from grave responsibility.  The Home Secretary would always be called the Abbot of Westminster.  How picturesque at the formation of a new Cabinet—­’Home Secretary and Abbot of Westminster, the Right Hon. Mr. So-and-So.’  The first duty of the Abbot will be to appoint a Royal Commission to consider the removal of hideous monuments which disfigure the edifice:  nothing prior to 1700 coming under its consideration.  A small tablet would recall what has been taken away.  Herbert Spencer’s claim to a statue would be duly considered, and, I hope, by a unanimous vote some of the other glaring gaps would be filled up.  If the Abbey is full of obscurities, very dim religious lights, many of the illustrious names in our literature have been omitted:  Byron, Shelley, Keats—­to mention only these.  There is no monument to Chatterton, one of the more powerful influences in the romantic movement, nor to William Blake, whose boyish inspiration was actually nourished amid that ‘Gothic supineness,’ as Mr. MacColl has finely said of him.  Of all our poets and painters Blake surely deserves a monument in the grey church which became to him what St. Mary Redcliffe was to Chatterton.  A window adapted from the book of Job (with the marvellous design of the Morning Stars) was, I am told, actually offered to, and rejected by, the late Dean.  To Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the wonderful movement of which he was the dynamic force there should also be a worthy memorial; to Water Pater, the superb aside of English prose; to Cardinal Manning, the Ecclesiastic of the nineteenth century; and Professor Huxley, that master of dialectics.

A young actor of my acquaintance, who bore the honoured name of Siddons, was invited to take part in the funeral service of the late Sir Henry Irving.  His step-father was connected by marriage with the great actress, and he was very proud of his physical resemblance to her portrait by Reynolds.  He had played with great success the part of Fortinbras in the provinces, and Mr. Alexander has assured me that he was the ideal impersonator of Rosencrantz.  It was an open secret