' So on the score of national vanity I
claim space for Herbert Spencer. Very few Englishmen have exercised such
extraordinary influence on continental opinion, which Beaconsfield said
was the verdict of posterity. On the news of his death, the Italian
Chamber passed a vote of condolence with the English people. I suppose
that does not seem a great honour to Englishmen, but to me, an enemy of
United Italy, it seemed a great honour, not only to the dead but to the
English people. Can you imagine the Swiss Federal Council sending us a
vote of condolence on the death of Mr. Hall Caine or Mr. Robert Hichens?
Again, though it is ungrateful of me to mention the fact after my
experiences of October 13th, the Abbey was not built nor endowed by
people who anticipated the Anglican form of worship being celebrated
within its walls, though I admit it has been _restored_ by the adherents
of that communion. The image of Milton, to take only one instance, would
have been quite as objectionable to Henry III. or Abbot Islip as those of
Darwin or Spencer. The emoluments bequeathed by Henry VII. and others
for requiem masses are now devoted to the education of Deans' daughters
and Canons' sons. Where incensed altars used to stand, hideous monuments
of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries wound the Gothic
air with their monstrous ornaments and inapposite epitaphs. St. Paul's
may fairly be held sacred to Anglicanism, and I do not think any one
would claim sepulture within its precincts for one who was avowedly
hostile to Christian or Anglican sentiment.
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