151 The Rev. E. H. Pearce [May 14, 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 



Friday, Mav 14, 1915. 



Edward Pollock, 'Esq., F.R.C.S., Vice-President, 

 ill the Chair. 



The Ptev. E. H. Pearce, M.A., Canon and Treasurer of Westminster 



The Archives of Westminster Abbey. 



AViiEN the body of the late Lord Kelvin was laid to rest, by a 

 right which there was none to dispute, in the Abbey church of 

 Westminster, it was placed by the same kind of right close to the 

 grave of Sir Isaac Newton. In the same corner there are the graves 

 or the memorials of Darwin and Herschel, of Joule, and Gabriel 

 Stokes, and John Couch Adams, to be joined shortly by memorials 

 of Sir Joseph Hooker and of another Joseph who died Lord Lister. 

 It was not likely that Kelvin would long lack some monument more 

 impressive than the slab which covers his remains ; and it was 

 appropriate that the representatives of engineering science on both 

 sides of the Atlantic should undertake the task of providing it. 

 The walls of the Abbey are full to repletion, and to the destruction 

 of some precious features. The floor-space, as the centuries that 

 followed nearest upon the Reforn-iation were apt to forget, is reserved 

 for the purposes of worship. But the windows of the Nave offer to 

 those who would honour the great dead a means of fulfilling their 

 desire and of adorning the church at the same time. Kelvin, then, 

 has his memorial in stained glass, and the window is one of a series 

 projected by Dean Armitage Ptobinson and loyally accepted by his 

 successor — a series in which there are placed side by side a King of 

 England who contributed to the majesty of the building, and the 

 Abbot through whom he worked. The King in Kelvin's window is 

 Harry of Monmouth ; but it is the Abbot who concerns us now ; 

 for in such a scheme the ecclesiastics are more difficult to justify 

 than the monarchs, not because of unworthiness, but because hitherto 

 there has been but little effort to appraise their worth ; and in this 

 case the Abbot is William de Colchester. He flits craftily across the 

 scene in the Tragedy of King Richard II., in company with a Bishop 

 of Carlisle whom we shall meet again. When Bolingbroke announces 



