Roubillac. The bottom of the monument is represented as throwing open its
marble doors, and a sheeted skeleton is starting forth. The shroud is
falling from its fleshless frame as he launches his dart at his victim.
She is sinking into her affrighted husband's arms, who strives, with vain
and frantic effort, to avert the blow. The whole is executed with terrible
truth and spirit; we almost fancy we hear the gibbering yell of triumph
bursting from the distended jaws of the specter. But why should we thus
seek to clothe death with unnecessary terrors, and to spread horrors round
the tombs of those we love? The grave should be surrounded by everything
that might inspire tenderness and veneration for the dead; or that might
win the living to virtue. It is the place, not of disgust and dismay, but
of sorrow and meditation.

I continued in this way to move from tomb to tomb, and from chapel to
chapel. The day was gradually wearing away; the distant tread of loiterers
about the abbey grew less and less frequent; the sweet-tongued bell was
summoning to evening prayers; and I saw at a distance the choristers, in
their white surplices, crossing the aisle and entering the choir. I stood
before the entrance to Henry the Seventh's chapel. A flight of steps lead
up to it, through a deep and gloomy but magnificent arch. Great gates of
brass, richly and delicately wrought, turn heavily upon their hinges, as
if proudly reluctant to admit the feet of common mortals into this most
gorgeous of sepulchers.

On entering, the eye is astonished by the pomp of architecture and the
elaborate beauty of sculptured detail. The very walls are wrought into
universal ornament, incrusted with tracery and scooped into niches,
crowded with statues of saints and martyrs. Stone seems, by the cunning
labor of the chisel, to have been robbed of its weight and density,
suspended aloft, as if by magic, and the fretted roof achieved with the