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Roundabout Papers by William Makepeace Thackeray
page 4 of 372 (01%)
of Coire or Chur, in the Grisons, where lies buried that very ancient
British king, saint, and martyr, Lucius,* who founded the Church of St.
Peter, on Cornhill. Few people note the church now-a-days, and fewer
ever heard of the saint. In the cathedral at Chur, his statue appears
surrounded by other sainted persons of his family. With tight red
breeches, a Roman habit, a curly brown beard, and a neat little gilt
crown and sceptre, he stands, a very comely and cheerful image: and,
from what I may call his peculiar position with regard to Cornhill, I
beheld this figure of St. Lucius with more interest than I should have
bestowed upon personages who, hierarchically, are, I dare say, his
superiors.

* Stow quotes the inscription, still extant, from the table
fast chained in St. Peter's Church, Cornhill; and says, "he
was after some chronicle buried at London, and after some
chronicle buried at Glowcester"--but, oh! these incorrect
chroniclers! when Alban Butler, in the "Lives of the
Saints," v. xii., and Murray's "Handbook," and the Sacristan
at Chur, all say Lucius was killed there, and I saw his tomb
with my own eyes!

The pretty little city stands, so to speak, at the end of the world--of
the world of to-day, the world of rapid motion, and rushing railways,
and the commerce and intercourse of men. From the northern gate, the
iron road stretches away to Zurich, to Basle, to Paris, to home. From
the old southern barriers, before which a little river rushes, and
around which stretch the crumbling battlements of the ancient town, the
road bears the slow diligence or lagging vetturino by the shallow Rhine,
through the awful gorges of the Via Mala, and presently over the Splugen
to the shores of Como.
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