RESTORATION OF THE ABBEY. 
241 
cost of nearly .£1,000 by Messrs. Hill. It was the first 
cathedral organ in England to be divided into two parts 
and played in the middle of the screen gallery. Mr. Hill 
very well recollects Buckland asking how a thirty-two feet 
pipe could lie across the aisle, which was only thirty feet 
wide—a pertinent question, which Mr. Hill’s father answered 
by explaining that the modern sharp pitch is really a note 
higher than that in vogue a hundred years ago, and reduced 
the length of the pipe, so that it would just go into the 
available space. It was in connection with this restoration 
of the organ that Frank Buckland performed an experi¬ 
ment of fishing in Westminster Abbey. One of the great 
open diapason pipes (wood) had become the coffin of a 
deceased cat, for which the future Inspector of Fisheries set 
to angle, through the top of the pipe, with a salmon hook. 
In a short time he was successful and brought up “ Master 
Cat” in triumph. 
Miss C. Fox, in her journal, speaks in the following 
words of a visit to the Abbey :— 
“ Then to the Dean of Westminster (Dr. Buckland) in his 
solemn habitation : he took us through the old Abbey, so 
full of death and of life. There was solemn music going 
on, in keeping with the serious Gothic architecture and the 
quiet memory of the great dead. The Dean was full of 
anecdote—historical, architectural, artistic, and scientific. 
We got a far grander and truer notion of Westminster, 
both inside and out, than we ever had before.” 
On Easter Day, April 23rd, 1848, the Abbey was re¬ 
opened, after complete restoration of the choir, the congre¬ 
gation sitting for the first time in the transepts. On the 
Continent it was a year of revolutions, and the discontent 
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