the Presbytery) between the great reredos and the Ladye Chapel; here, in a very curious wooden loft, still remaining on the north side, formerly was a priest, watching night and day the shrine, glorious with gold and jewels. Matthew Paris thus describes St. Alban's shrine: : "In form it resembled an altar- tomb, having a lofty canopy over it, supported by pillars; these were of plate gold, shaped like towers, and having apertures to represent windows; the under part of the canopy was inlaid with crystals. Within the tomb was a coffin, containing the relics of St. Alban, inclosed in another case, the sides of which were embossed with gold and silver figures in high relief, exhibiting the principal events of the martyr's history. At the head of the shrine, which was towards the east, was a representation of the Crucifixion, having the figures of St. Mary and St. John at the sides, and ornamented with a row of very brilliant jewels; at the foot of the shrine was an image of the Virgin, seated on a throne, with the infant Saviour in her arms; the work of cast gold, highly embossed with precious stones." The On this very spot it is believed that St. Alban was martyred. At present this place is used for visitations and vestries; and on the day when we visited the abbey," the parishioners in vestry assembled, some with their hats on "Protestant dissenters," we suppose— were squabbling about the beadle's coat, or some such thing. bell was ringing for this vestry as we entered the abbey. Upon inquiring at what hour the daily service was said, our answer was,"Daily service! this is a parish church;" against which unexceptionable argument we had nothing to urge. Whether it be right or wrong to burn tapers day and night before the relics of God's chosen martyrs and saints-whether it be right to enshrine them in Mosaic of precious stones, and golden tabernacle-work, we will not here inquire; if this were Romish superstition, we are not called upon to defend it: but, of the two, it is infinitely better than the disgusting irreverence of the Protestantism of 1843, of which we, to our grief, were witnesses. In this same "Presbytery," in a vault, discovered some years back, are the remains of the good Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, a great benefactor to this abbey, the friend and patron of noble John Wheathamsted; they were " lovely in their lives, and in death they were not divided." John Wheathamsted sleeps in peace in the "sure and certain hope:" but descend to duke Humphrey's solemn vault; it is a beautiful one. On the wall is painted the image of our dear Lord's Passion; from His sacred side the blood is depicted flowing into a chalice, which a kneeling priest reverently receives; and in a corner of this vault, lies, at this moment, an open coffin, the lid wrenched off, the lead irreverently torn and bent back; and there, open to all men, rattled about and handled by the sexton, held up to be stared at and joked upon, are the brown skull and bones-the actual bones of duke Humphrey. Now, we say nothing that this same duke Humphrey was of England's blood-royal; nothing that he was of our greatest bard; nothing that he was one of the most important characters in English history; nothing that he was a good, a pious, and a great man; nothing that he chose this very place for his sepulchre; but, in the name of our common Christianity-in the name even of humanity, are the bones of those who sleep in Jesus, and which one day will rush together at that dread trumpet's sound, to be treated like the bones of an ass, with coarse irreverence and ribald jest? Are they to be made a show of, and the sight of them to be paid for with shillings? Is it to be endured, that they are to be kicked about like counters and this in a church a thousand years old? There is a bishop of the diocese; there is an archdeacon, who delivered his charge the other day three yards from this very spot; there is, at least, one clergyman, who has some authority in St. Alban's Abbey; there are, we presume, churchwardens-one and all, can they be ignorant of this disgraceful and scandalous profanation, and heathenish indecency?* Attached to the abbey church was, of course, the monastery, and its spacious buildings, refectory, library, cells, cloister, bakehouses, &c.— all, all are swept away. The cloisters are destroyed, and the site turned into a banker's kitchen garden; it is not even reserved for the church: the remains of the holy men who were buried there, go to feed his cauliflowers and celery. What of the fair clustered shafts attached to the nave remain are excellent supports for this gentleman's pears and plums; his gardeners manure and delve where the stately Benedictines walked and mused; the incense of the one is followed by the tobacco of the other; and the only matins and vespers with which St. Alban's Abbey is vocal now, is the ribald song of the street, whistled by these same pruners and planters. Stay, we had forgotten! one relic of better days remains, the gate-house of the monastery, and an ancient tenement attached to the south wall of the nave, and part of the monastic buildings; but the gate-house is now a prison, and the dwelling is the gaoler's. A significant change! for when, by the suppression of the great religious houses, the well-spring of English charity was cut off-the poor man must either rob or starve; so that, now, when we have ceased to feed Christ's poor, we must perforce cage them; and the prisons, and the union workhouse, and the compulsory poor-law, stand cursed and cursing, where once the daily dole was distributed by the charitable monks, who since they had freely received, freely gave. Oh, bitter change! We have spoken of the daily services of this noble abbey. Once, every aisle was vocal with sacred song; oh could we but recal the days, when the solemn Gregorian chant swelled from the full-toned choir, while rank after rank paced along the stalls and misereres down to St. Cuthbert's shrine,† and down those noble steps, and down that lofty nave, and through the long vistas of aisles, along the spacious *On the dissolution of Sheen, the body of James of Scotland, the defeated hero of Flodden, was exhumed, and the workmen defiled the body, and hewed the head off; and our own times equal the profanity of our fathers. In 1825, when St. Catharine's Church was destroyed for the new docks, the tomb of John Duke of Exeter, uncle to Henry V., was violated, and the hero's scull appropriated by the surveyor; and the bones of King Alfred were disinterred at Winchester some years ago, when a prison was erected on the site of the abbey walls. In France the royal vaults of the English kings at Fontevrault have been frightfully desecrated, and the remains of Coeur-de-Lion stolen. + The choir at St. Alban's extends partly down the nave, as at Westminster, and is terminated by a beautiful screen, two or three piers' breadth westward of the transepts. church, 600 feet long; and the symbol of redemption was raised triumphantly, and still the psalms of heaven swept sweetly on, now plaintive, now jubilant, and lingered about the shafted recesses of the triforium, and repeated from the cloisters "And still the choir of echoes answers so" and the angel corbels seemed to join in the general harmony, and upward to that azure roof,* the emblem of heaven itself, alive and vocal with the sacred name, and thence rose up like incense with the prayers of the saints, not unacceptable to Him who sitteth on the throne! Such was St. Alban's psalmody--such were the precentor and his choir. Now, in every shop-window of the town, you may see (at least, we saw) a programme of "a concert, to be given in the town-hall, under distinguished patronage," by "Mr. parish clerk of the Abbey Church, and Music Master. Tickets to be had at the Library, and the Peahen, price 3s. each." Such was the way in which our fathers "praised God in psalms;" such is the fashion in which we sanctify our gifts and talents to His service. And speaking of affiches, these posting-bills are no bad index of the religious change which the last three hundred years has wrought in the face of the country. Once, any unusual religious celebration might be traced by a long line of pilgrims, horse and man in peaceful array, with sumpter-mules, threading along those beautiful roads, say the Pilgrim's roads, which still exist in the beechen woods of Kent, to St. Thomas of Canterbury; or through the ancient Watling-street to St. Alban's shrine; or to distant Sempringham, or to Battel, or along the silver Thames to Reading. We know not, (for how can we judge?) of the earnestness which accompanied, or which instigated these pilgrimages: we are not poetical enough to deny that, perhaps, they might be misused; but being ourselves, at least once, pilgrims to this very St. Alban's Abbey; knowing that to men pent in populous cities, green trees and blue skies are healthful alike to body and soul; knowing that we ourselves, personally at least, can draw spiritual good from visiting God's ancient houses, where His presence and His angels have, beyond recorded time, dwelt, and His saints yet sleep; knowing that, to kneel where God has been long and piously honoured, subdues pride, softens sinful hearts, elevates devotion, kindles coldness, and animates us into imitation of the departed, and of Him whose grace made them what they were; knowing that old churches and cathedrals are an image of heaven, and their service a foretaste of its blessedness, an emblem of heaven both in their stately splendour and in their unearthliness, and in their changelessness, and in the beautiful thoughts which they inspire, we can, without violent effort, believe that pilgrimages might be a religious exercise; might teach that heaven was our proper home; might, even in their toils and dangers, image forth the great christian truth, that through much tribulation, through toil and trouble, heat and cold, hunger and watching, the Kingdom was to be attained. And if pilgrimages and processions The panels of the abbey roof are painted blue, with the sacred monogram, IHC. were the mark which religion then impressed upon society, we scarcely yet are reconciled to pica and posting-bills, which have usurped their place. What though the devotion were, as of course we must admit, questionable, which prompted men and women to brave weary days and rough roads, for the privilege of kneeling at Becket's shrine, of course now we are not allowed to hesitate as to the religious nature of "the Annual Meeting of the Protestant Association in the Town-hall, Hertford, the Most Noble the Marquis of Salisbury in the chair;" bills of which, a yard long, met us on every wall in the county, on "our summer-day's pilgrimage." How much we have gained by the change, which is palpable enough, judicent peritiores. We have thus feebly and inadequately contrasted, in some particulars, the St. Alban's "tower and town" of three centuries back with its present miserable estate, and before we sum up, after the good old fashion of sermons, with a practical application of our notes, we will point out one or two other painful things about the present church which are sad evidences of the great decay of church feeling in those, few and impoverished though they be, who have any authority over this glorious Abbey. And we may as well here declare, that every circumstance connected with our pilgrimage is a plain unvarnished fact: we have used no colouring: truth is often stranger and stronger than fiction. On entering the choir we were much pleased with a large board attached to the altar-rails desiring strangers not to enter within the sacred enclosure. "Well, this is quite right," we exclaimed to one of our companions; "this shows a proper and decent reverence for the chancel; it is very sad and humiliating that such a notice should be required; but anything is better than to permit careless, thoughtless people to go up to the altar and perhaps sit down upon it to get a better view of the church: very thoughtful and proper, indeed." "Don't be too sure of the motive," said one of our party, a cautious and caustic observer. "Pray, sexton, what does that board mean?" "Why, sir, you see that these steps," pointing to the raised floor of the chancel, "were worn out; we have not money enough to put down stone steps, so we got these; very neat, an't they? but they are only deal sanded over to look like stone, and if the visitors were to walk up and down they would be scratched to pieces presently; so we put up the board to keep the new steps from being worn out." Never was a pretty theory so remorselessly shattered. And so it has come to this; that a church which took eight hundred years to build up to its present, though impaired, magnificence, is too poor to procure three stone steps for its altar, which a five-pound note would buy; the nobles who are revelling on the broad lands of which their fathers have robbed God are too poor; the town of St. Alban's is too poor; the mayor and corporation are too poor; the archdeacon is too poor; nay, the banker who grows his cabbages on the consecrated ground is too poor; Protestant England is too poor;-to buy three stone steps; so St. Alban's Abbey must be content with "sanded deal." On the south side of the choir is the splendid shrine and tomb of Abbat John Wheathamsted, which has been retouched; it is in beauti-. NO. XXXII.-N. S. GG ful preservation; and can always be identified by his badge, the ears of wheat; but as though to confuse all history, the screenwork has been glazed, and the magnificent and perhaps unequalled brass of a previous abbat, John de la Mare, in full robes, 9 feet 3 inches long by 4 feet 4 inches, has been laid down in it. On the north side of the choir is a similar though inferior shrine of Abbat Ramryge, which, to the consternation of all antiquaries, actually bears the date of 1678; nor was our perplexity decreased by observing certain strange frescoes in the interior, which by no means correspond with the date of the tomb; the fact is, that in the year 1678, by the collusion of the then rector, this chapel was actually stolen by one Anthony Farringdon, Esq., who coolly appropriated the abbot's grave, tomb and shrine for a burial place for his own family--and his own memorial is painted on it; so that De la Mare's brass lies on Wheathamsted's tomb, and Farringdon's epitaph is fastened to the door of Ramryge's shrine! This fashion of stealing grave-stones seems to be popular among the St. Alban's people: one of them has appropriated the black massive marble slab of an altar, perhaps the high altar, which is still marked with the five crosses, commemorating the Sacred Wounds; and numerous stones of which the brasses are stolen are inscribed with epitaphs to divers grocers and publicans of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. About the floor may be seen coped and plain tombs, inscribed with various crosses, which have only been preserved because they save money in buying paving stones. Among the memorial inscriptions, the following, though late, is simple— "Pray for Mawde Harryes which lieth in this grave Desire God hartelie her sowle for to save On whose sowle Almightie God have m'cye. Anno Domini millesimo ccccc tricesimo septimo" — though, from the mixture of English and Latin, it would find small favour in Mr. Paget's eyes. And if our readers caunot, with this pilgrimage to the Abbey alone, loiter through a summer's day, they may view St. Michael's Church, which contains, as Rickman has noticed, some undoubted Saxon remains, as well as Lord Bacon's tomb; or the remains of Sopwell Nunnery, a mile south of the town, a large Benedictine house; or they may do as we did-breakfast at North Mimms, and walk afterwards through a pretty park and grounds to South Mimms, where there is a beautiful decorated church, in very good preservation and religiously kept; there is a good brass in it of a priest with the host and chalice, surrounded by apostles in tabernacle work; of which no notice occurs in Clutterbuck's county history, though all the insignificant tombs are chronicled. In conclusion, may we say something 1. of the monastic life in general; and 2. of the sacrilege involved in the suppression of the religious houses at the Reformation? Upon either subject the appearance of Mr. Neale's useful and graceful little volume, "Ayton Priory," has anticipated, and even compelled us to omit much that we had to remark. We prefer, therefore, in the present case, rather to draw |