build the new minster on the site of the little church that he had dedicated more than 400 years before in Sebert's time. Thus it was settled that the money and the king should stay in England. So the books set forth how the first minster was built by this Edward; but it was built by the people of England, for Edward would have taken the treasure that built it to Rome if he could have had his own way, and the poorest man who worked on the job did more really and truly to build Westminster than the king did, after all. It would be something of a wonder again to build a church of such splendor now in which Irishmen had no hand, and I find one at this very early day busy about the place, but he does not carry the hod. He is carried himself! Just as they were getting ready to pull down the old place, he slides within my glass and I notice his name is Michael. He was attracted to London, I presume, by the news that Edward would give his last dollar to the poor, but he had far too fine a genius for one of your common beggars. So he turns up one day on the road between the palace and the church sitting on a stool, the most deplorable cripple to look at in all London, and who should come along but poor Hugalin, the treasurer of the empty chest. How Micky would groan, you may easily imagine. He told Hugalin that he had been six times to Rome itself to persuade St. Peter to cure him, but it was all no use entirely, only the last time he was there, the saint told him to get away to London and seek out this new king, and if Edward would only carry him to the church sitting astride on his shoulders, there would be an end of all the trouble. Poor Hugalin did not like the look of things at all, but then he could not be sure the man was lying, and so he went back to the palace with the message St. Peter had sent from Rome. "By all means," the king cries, "where is the poor man to be found? "Down yonder, your Majesty," he said, "sitting on a stool." So away goes the king, while I notice the courtiers are laughing behind their hands, but he gets Micky on his neck and trots away with him to the church, takes him right up to the altar, sets him down, and there stands Michael as straight as a lance, and he hangs his stool on a nail for proof positive of his cure, just as they are hanging their crutches on nails in Ireland now, for similar proof, and I have no doubt he was well cared for the rest of his life. They were fifteen years building this church and spent on it one-tenth of the whole treasure of the kingdom. It was the grandest thing in stone England had seen since the days of the old Romans. There are some fragments of it welded into the church as it stands to-day. Fifteen years building — and when it was done, the king was drawing near his end and something like a touch of dignity begins to invest him, the dignity of death. Still he is the same old prodigal we saw fifteen years ago. A beggar comes to him one day on the usual errand, and "Where is Hugalin?" the king cries, "I want some money!" But Hugalin has seen the beggar, too, and slipped out of sight. Then Edward goes to the chest, but Hugalin has emptied that; so he draws off his ring, large, royal and beautiful, and bestows it on the beggar for the love of St. John. Then, a few nights after this, as the story goes, in the very heart of Syria, two English pilgrims who have lost their way, meet a fine old man who guides them to a tavern, gives them that selfsame ring, bids them give it to Edward with all speed and bid him get ready, for in six months he will be in Paradise, and when in wonder, they ask his name, he answers, "I am St. John." It was at Christmastide in 1065 that the new church was dedicated, and what little life was left in Edward was exhausted in the great solemnity. Death struck him on the Christmas eve, but he lived ten days and died from the feet upward. And as he lay on his death bed, his wife, the woman he had sworn to nourish and whose life he had turned into one long misery, took him into her heart again as good women always do, held the stone cold feet in her lap and tried to warm them, and then at last, the white face grew still, and the king was dead. He lies buried in the very heart of the old minster. Six times in these 820 years men have seen his dust, and once they plucked a single hair from his long white beard. They made him a saint and forgot the evil for the sake of the good there was in him, but he was not the man for that time or for any time, when you want a king of the true old type. England's need was for a grand, strong man who could stand four square to all the winds that blow and who was all there every time, who durst speak and durst not lie, a man like King Alfred and George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. He was not that man, and so when he was dead, the fight began which is going on still between the Norman and Saxon, which was to purify England as by fire and lift her also into her great place as the mother of the grandest republic the world has ever seen, a republic in which freedom is to be nourished, as we believe, through all the ages to come, and peace on earth and good will to men to be the battle cry of the new and better day. So this is the story which is blended with the building of the old minster. There was first a well, then a cluster of shanties, then a log meeting house, a garden, a bit of cleared land, and a fane. So they begin to make history very much. as we do, you see, and Westminster is very much like our own frontiers, because in these things one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day. In a time I can remember, this wonderful old place, however, had grown also to be a wonderful mean place. It was crowded with great memories and burned with the glory of the old devout days and was, as it is now, the shrine of England's greatness, the place of coronation, the most royal sepulcher, and the Valhalla of her heroes and men of genius. But this did not count for so much in those times to those who had the care of it, as the fact that it was one of the most popular shows in London, in which you paid your money and took your choice of what you wanted to see. And then they hauled you round and went through a curious sing-song about the kings, and ended up with some wax works which were a sort of side show, and then let you go home. Do you care for poetry? Here are some lines that tell the story of one who went there in those times I can so well remember. "I stood alone, a living man, Of Edward's sabled panoply, And Cressy's tented plain, And the fatal roses twined at length In great Eliza's reign, And glorious Blenheim, when at last There came a sound so new and strange |