Spectator's Notebook
lr was cold in Westminster Hall. Cold and high and lonely and, for all the files of mourners, empty. As one stood at the top of the crypt steps it was not the catafalque and the coffin one noticed first, but the glories of the hammer-beam roof built by Richard the Second at the end of the fourteenth century. Now, lovely in soft lighting, it swept like a tent over the cavern of the great hall. And, incongruously, one began to recall all the great events that had had Westminster Hall for their setting. The coronation feasts, the great state trials of William Wallace and Thomas More, Guy Fawkes and Charles the First, the deposition of Edward the Second and the abdication of Rich- ard the Second, great meetings of the countries of the Empire and then of the Commonwealth, the lying-in-state of kings and queens and of Mr. Gladstone in 1898. Mr. Gladstone . . . and now Sir Winston Churchill. Suddenly Westminster Hall became smaller. Now there was only the splash of crimson carpet, the catafalque with the Union Jack-covered coffin resting on it, the flash of light from the insignia of the Garter, the tall candles and the cross, the oEcers like statues at each corner of the bier. As one stood beside the cata- falque before making one's way out into New Palace Yard there was nothing to do in the silence except thank God that this man had lived and was now at peace. And Westminster Hall had become small and warns and full of friendly ghost.
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