1888.] The Very Bev. G. G. Bradley on Westminster Abbey. 217 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 



Friday, February 24, 1888. 



Edwaed Woods, Esq. M. Inst. C,E. Vice-President, in the Chair. 



The Very Rev. G. Granville Bradley, D.D. 

 Dean of Westminster. 



Westminster Abbey. 



The lecturer, who spoke merely from a few notes, began by dwell- 

 ing almost in despair on the extraordinary range and multifarious 

 aspects of his subject. He gave a sketch of three or four lines of 

 thought to which he or others speaking on such a subject might 

 have confined themselves. He might have found a rich field of 

 interest in tracing the history of the mere fabric, from the day when 

 the Norman builders of Edward the Confessor reared the structure 

 which covered nearly or quite the same ground as that on which its 

 more stately successor stands to-day. He might, avoiding technical 

 and architectural details, have described the work of Henry III., and 

 its slow and gradual completion, till ^t last, after five centuries of 

 active work and of long pauses, its western towers stood up new and 

 glistening in Hogarth's picture of St. James's Park now on view. 

 Or he, or one more competent, might have called their attention to 

 the Abbey as a museum of priceless value, from the merely artistic 

 side of its contents, including as they do a continuous series of 

 English and foreign sculpture from the thirteenth century down to 

 yesterday. Or, again, he might have tried to put before them some- 

 thing of the inner life and outward history of the great Benedictine 

 monastery of which this historic church formed but a part. How 

 few of the thousands of visitors to the Abbey thought of the genera- 

 tions of monks who for 500 years paced those cloisters, slept in that 

 dormitory, and sang and knelt in that choir, whose abbots were the 

 treasurers, or counsellors, or secretaries, or ambassadors, or gaolers 

 of kings, whose domains and manors comprised Hyde Park and 

 St. James's, much or all of Kensington Gardens, and such districts as 

 Chelsea, Paddington, Belgravia, and Covent Garden. Or, fourthly, 

 he might have put before them, by the aid of photography, illustra- 

 tions of the tombs, and spoken of the historic memories which they 

 awake, alike in themselves and in their often touching juxtaposition. 



But he would turn from these and other inviting vistas of thought, 

 and content himself with putting before them a few hints as to the 

 various influences whose combined action had given the Abbey such 

 a hold on the affections of all who speak our language, and which 



Vol. XII. (No. 82.) q 



