WESTMINSTER ABBEY.
179first Report of the Royal Commission which was ppointed in the spring to inquire into the want of space in Westminster Abbey for further interments and monuments, is exhaustive so far as regards evidence. The Dean has given the history of past burials, the Clerk of the Works has stated what ground remains for future 'burials. The Archbishop of Canterbury has defined the 'general conditions to which any annex to the Abbey should conform, and several architects have presented plans and suggestions for the erection of such an annex. It is no business of ours to pronounce an opinion upon these last. To do so would be to anticipate the final Report of the Royal Commission. It will be enough if we inquire whether any need has been shown for the erection of an additional building, and by what general considerations those who build it should be governed. As regards the need, it has to do with the monuments rather than with the actual interments. Mr. 'Wright's evidence seems to show that, at the present rate, we might go on burying for another century without com- pletely exhausting the remaining available space. Had the present practice of limiting the right of interment to eminent persons been adopted even no further back than 1800, this period might have been nearly doubled. It is hard to explain the reckless waste of space which went on side by side with a growing tendency to 'regard the Abbey as the appropriate resting-place of illustrious Englishmen. In one and the same year, for example, the burials in the Abbey included Pitt and Fox, a Prebendary, and the infant son of the Chapter Clerk. In the cloisters, which but for this would have supplied a valuable addition to the space in the Abbey itself, things were still worse. In the first twenty years of the present century, there were a hundred and seven persons buried there, and of these not more than half-a-dozen were so much as connected with the capitular body. The result of this indiscriminate burial is, that the cloisters are full. The one green space surrounded by the cloisters, which Mr. Knowles has suggested as available for future burials, has not been used for that purpose for six hundred years. But at that date it seems to have been full of bodies, and any excavation disturbs the bones that still remain. This, to our minds, disposes of Mr. Knowles's proposal. It is a fatal objection to a place of burial that every foot • of the ground has already been used for the same pur- pose. Whatever title the remains of the dead have to • reverent treatment, is not invalidated by mere lapse
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of time. Still, there is no need to take thought for the twenty-first century, and if we can bury the great - dead in the Abbey for a hundred years more, we may be content.
At least, we might be content if burial were all that we had to think of. But as a public honour, Westminster Abbey means more than burial. It means a monument, and for monuments, the Dean of Westminster tells us, 4.• there is almost no space." The Abbey is already full of them, greatly, in many cases, to its disfigurement. There - are two ways, indeed, in which this objection might be got over. The worst of the existing monuments might be re- moved, and the space they occupy filled with something better, or future monuments might be limited to a single kind—in itself one of the most beautiful—memorial brasses. But the first of these plans is open to objections proper to itself, as well as to one which is common to the two. We agree with Mr. Somers Clarke, that the fact that a monu- ment is there is a sufficient reason for not disturbing it. Be it bad or good, it has a historical value. It speaks from the time when it was put up, and little as we may scare for full-bottomed wigs or feeble classicalities in stone, they represent the taste, and consequently in part the history, of a period. England would not be what she is if the eighteenth century, or the first twenty years of the nine- teenth, were wiped out of recollection, and to remove the monuments of those twenty years is so far to wipe them out of recollection. Further, we cannot restore the Abbey to the .state it was in when these monuments were put up. The walls, alike of nave, choir, and transepts, had originally very beautiful arcading, which has been barbarously cut away to make room for monuments. Remove the monuments, . and there will be either a scar or a piece of imitation :sculpture. Either way, the historical character of the building is injured. Instead of representing the taste of successive generations, it would represent the taste of a single generation, and that a generation which differs from all the rest in not knowing its own mind, or being certain what it likes. The suggestion of memorial brasses is free from these drawbacks, but it shares to the full another. A monument to a person buried in a church ought to be close to the place of burial. It would be eminently unsatisfactory to the visitor who comes to see the tomb of a, great man, to be told that the man himself lies in quite another part of the church ; whereas the monument he is looking at covers the dust of quite a different person. To make monuments really valuable, they must do what they profess to do,—keep alive the memory of those who are buried underneath them.
Except, therefore, in those rare cases in which the honour of burial in Westminster Abbey is enough without any record of the fact in the immediate neighbourhood, some kind of additional building is really needed. And here the evidence of the Archbishop of Canterbury is ex- ceedingly valuable. He begins with the very true observa- tion that we should first understand clearly what it is we want. Is the new Westminster Abbey to be a civil or an ecclesiastical building,—a church or a pantheon ? If the former, it cannot be too closely united with the existing building ; if the latter, it ought to be distinctly separate from it. Though the two buildings would have a common use, they would express quite different ideas. In France or Italy, it might be a question which of these two ideas should be chosen. But in England it is not so. Those who wish to lie in Westminster Abbey, wish it in part because it is a church. They would not be equally anxious to be buried in Westminster Hall. What is wanted, therefore, is a building which shall be as much a. church as the Abbey, and yet be something neither distinct from nor inferior to the Abbey. Consequently, the addition must be part of the same consecrated building. The new chapel should not be simply a receptacle for monuments for which there is no room in the Abbey, but a genuine extension of the Abbey, partaking of the same sacred character, and available from time to time for the same sacred purpose. In fact, it should stand in the same relation to the Abbey as that in which Henry VII.'s Chapel stands. The Archbishop then criticises from this point of view two of the suggested sites for the new building. The " wreath of chapels" round the Chapter-House he rejects on the ground that the Chapter-House is the civil or secular part of the Abbey, and that to make chapels open into a place of business would be to sacrifice the idea of a church. The Refectory, which lies to the south of the cloisters, he thinks a bad site for the same reason. The idea of a church, indeed, is not sacrificed, as in the former case, but the identity of the church is. The cloisters would be interposed between the Abbey and the new chapel; and, unless the character of the cloisters were altered, any two buildings so placed would be distinct and separate from one another. This argument, if it is accepted as con- clusive, leaves two sites between which the choice would lie,—the north side of the Nave, and the cast side of the Chapter-House. To the former, the Arch- bishop objects, we think with justice, that it would block out the one clear view of the Abbey that can be obtained from the street. The latter might be utilised in more ways than one ; but into this question we shall not enter.
One wish, however, we may be permitted to express. It is that the Commission or Committee, or whatever the authority may be which has charge of the matter, shall content themselves with choosing the site and the archi- tect, and not attempt to choose the design. If they pick out the man who, from his previous work and present reputation, they think best qualified to build a worthy addition to the great Abbey, they will have done the utmost that a committee of amateurs can hope to accom- plish. If they essay anything more, one of two results will almost certainly follow. Either the design will be modified to meet this and that criticism, so that in the end all its distinctive character will be lost, or the choice will have to be postponed, as the decoration of St. Paul's has been postponed, to a future which seems never to come any nearer. If the architect is left unfettered, we shall at least get the best he can give us, and if he is chosen wisely, that means the best that lies within our reach.
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