Westminster Abbey being just across the street, we went thither from the
hall, and sought out the cloisters, which we had not yet visited. They
are in excellent preservation,--broad walks, canopied with intermingled
arches of gray stone, on which some sort of lichen, or other growth of
ages (which seems, however, to have little or nothing vegetable in it),
has grown. The pavement is entirely made of flat tombstones, inscribed
with half-effaced names of the dead people beneath; and the wall all
round bears the marble tablets which give a fuller record of their
virtues. I think it was from a meditation in these cloisters that
Addison wrote one of his most beautiful pieces in the Spectator. It is a
pity that this old fashion of a cloistered walk is not retained in our
modern edifices; it was so excellent for shelter and for shade during a
thoughtful hour,--this sombre corridor beneath an arched stone roof, with
the central space of richest grass, on which the sun might shine or the
shower fall, while the monk or student paced through the prolonged
archway of his meditations.
As we came out from the cloisters, and walked along by the churchyard of
the Abbey, a woman came begging behind us very earnestly. "A bit of
bread," she said, "and I will give you a thousand blessings! Hunger is
hard to bear. O kind gentleman and kind lady, a penny for a bit of
bread! It is a hard thing that gentlemen and ladies should see poor
people wanting bread, and make no difference whether they are good or
bad.
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