of his own loved Montague; how Ussher lay
besides his earliest instructor Sir James
Fullerton, and Garrick beside his friend Johnson,
and Spelman opposite his revered Camden, and
South close to his master Busby, and
Stephenson to his fellow-craftsman Telford, and
Grattan to his hero Fox, and Macaulay
beneath the statue of his favourite Addison."

Our personal popularity increases the longer
we remain in the cathedral. The men
employed by my friend have told other men of
his hospitality and its needs; and from the
nave to the pay-place near Poets' Corner our
progress is one long ovation. When we have
passed through the gate, we form a party of
twenty-two, and are promptly shown round.
"Saturday, gentlemen"—in a polite and private
whisper this, as if an unusually rare vintage
were being proffered—"Saturday is our busiest
afternoon, because the people come from seeing
the Houses of Parliament. No, sir, they never
give us much trouble. Just walk through and
see what I'm going to show you now, and ask
a question or two, perhaps, but very rarely
misconduct themselves. Three or four times
a-day, sir, sometimes, and occasionally oftener;
not very often—no—but sometimes, though.
Yes, we each go round; but, as you'll doubtless
be aware, sir, this depends a great deal on
the public themselves. Yes." The verger's
politeness to us, it is due to him to say, is only
slightly in advance of his politeness to every one
else. Two women with babies pester him like
human gad-flies with foolish questions. They ask
whether the statue to Lady Walpole—one of the
most beautiful in the Abbey—is the Queen, and
have "Wife of a great English minister" blandly
given in reply. A couple of Germans, Badeker
in hand, go with us from chapel to chapel,
vainly trying to fit in the spoken and written
descriptions with each other. Young and old
people from the country, and working men and
women, make up the rest of the party; and we
are conveyed through the sights in the conventional
way. There is, of course, the usual sing-song
monotony in our guide's description; but
it is not unintelligent, and he is ready to
supplement it whenever asked. Banners dropping
to pieces from age; helmets, breast-plates, and
other warlike mementos in marble; old effigies
of long-forgotten originals; the carvings,
ornaments, and mouldings of centuries ago;
memories which Addison mused over and Macaulay
has celebrated, were all got through in thirty-five
minutes. One of our companions asked
another for the wax figures, and was told that
they were not shown now; another commented
on Henry the Seventh's Chapel as "funny;"
while the cradle-tomb of an infant prince with a
marble child asleep inside it brought the women-folk
fairly to bay. We were glad not to be
shown the wax figures. Tom Brown, whose
humour was certainly not fastidious, gives a
picture of them in his quaint "Walk through
London and Westminster" which shows that,
even in his day, the show was irreverent.
Writing in 1708, he says: "And so we went
to see the ruins of majesty in the waxen
figures placed there by authority. As soon as
we had ascended half a score stone steps, in a
dirty cobweb hole, and in old worm-eaten
presses, whose doors flew open at our approach,
here stood Edward the Third, as they told us,
which was a broken piece of waxwork, a
battered head, and a straw-stuff'd body, not one
quarter covered with rags; his beautiful queen
stood by, not better in repair; and so to the
number of half a score kings and queens, not
near so good figures as the King of the Beggars
makes, and all the begging crew would be
ashamed of their company. Their rear was
brought up with good Queen Bess, with the
remnants of an old dirty ruff, and nothing else
to cover her." Although eleven figures are said
to be still in a tolerable state of preservation,
the dean and chapter are wise in not competing
with Baker-street; and though the blocks
of effigies described by Stow also exist, it
requires a keen antiquarian appetite to care for
them. Charles the Second formerly stood over
his grave, with General Monk (both in wax)
near him. Mr. Ned Ward, in The London
Spy, remarks of the former, with comically
sweeping praise, that, "So much as he (the
king) excelled his predecessors in mercy,
wisdom, and liberality, so does his effigies exceed
the rest in loveliness, proportion, and magnificence;"
while General Monk's figure was
famous because its cap was used to collect
subscriptions for the showmen. Goldsmith's Citizen
of the World asks, "What might this cap
have cost originally?" and his guide answers,
"That, sir? I don't know; but this cap is
all the wages I have for my trouble." Both
cap and custom are abolished, and no one
was asked to add to the fixed fee of sixpence
we paid on starting; but the popularity of
the wax figures as a show and the keenness
after tips displayed by the Abbey showmen of
comparatively recent times are both shown in
an anecdote told by Dean Stanley. After
Nelson's public funeral, the car on which his coffin
had been carried to St. Paul's was deposited
there, just as the Duke of Wellington's is now,
and became an object of such curiosity that the
sightseers deserted Westminster, and all flocked
to St. Paul's. This was a serious injury to the
officials of the Abbey. Accordingly a waxwork
figure of the hero was set up, said to have been
taken from a smaller figure for which he had
sat, and dressed in the clothes which he had
actually worn. The result was successful, and
crowds flocked once more to Westminster
Abbey. It was the minor canons and lay vicars
whose "too scanty incomes were eked out by
fees, and who, in consequence, enlarged their
salaries by adding as much attraction as they
could by new waxwork figures, when the
custom of making them for the funerals ceased.
One of these is the effigy of Lord Chatham,
erected in 1779, when the fee for showing
them was, in consideration of the interest
attaching to the great statesman, raised from
threepence (it was originally a penny) to