saw the vision of the bright child at the altar--or he lied like a
knave. Judge, as you will; but do not Doubt.

"The Abbey was fifteen years in building. The King spent upon it
one-tenth of the property of the kingdom. It was to be a marvel of
its kind. As in its origin it bore the traces of the fantastic and
childish" (I must pause, to ask you to substitute for these blameful
terms, 'fantastic and childish,' the better ones of 'imaginative and
pure') "character of the King and of the age; in its architecture
it bore the stamp of the peculiar position which Edward occupied in
English history between Saxon and Norman. By birth he was a Saxon, but
in all else he was a foreigner. Accordingly the Church at Westminster
was a wide-sweeping innovation on all that had been seen before.
'Destroying the old building,' he says in his charter, 'I have built
up a new one from the very foundation.' Its fame as a 'new style of
composition' lingered in the minds of men for generations. It was the
first cruciform church in England, from which all the rest of like
shape were copied--an expression of the increasing hold which, in the
tenth century, the idea of the Crucifixion had laid on the imagination
of Europe. The massive roof and pillars formed a contrast with the
rude wooden rafters and beams of the common Saxon churches. Its very
size--occupying, as it did, almost the whole area of the present
building--was in itself portentous. The deep foundations, of large
square blocks of grey stone, were duly laid; the east end was rounded
into an apse; a tower rose in the centre, crowned by a cupola of wood.
At the western end were erected two smaller towers, with five large
bells. The hard strong stones were richly sculptured; the windows
were filled with stained glass; the roof was covered with lead. The
cloisters, chapter-house, refectory, dormitory, the infirmary, with
its spacious chapel, if not completed by Edward, were all begun, and