arches shot up in long rows upon either side of them, straight and
slim as beautiful trees, until they curved off far up near the
clerestory and joined their sister curves to form the lightest, most
delicate tracery of stone. In front of them a great rose-window of
stained glass, splendid with rich purples and crimsons, shone through
a subdued and reverent gloom. Here and there in the aisles a few
spectators moved among the shadows, but all round along the walls two
and three deep were ranged the illustrious dead, the perishable body
within, the lasting marble without, and the more lasting name
beneath. It was very silent in the home of the great dead--only a
distant footfall or a subdued murmur here and there. Maude knelt
down and sank her face in her hands. Frank prayed also with that
prayer which is a feeling rather than an utterance.

Then they began to move round the short transept in which they found
themselves--a part of the Abbey reserved for the great statesmen.
Frank tried to quote the passage in which Macaulay talks about the
men worn out by the stress and struggle of the neighbouring
parliament-hall, and coming hither for peace and rest. Here were the
men who had been strong enough to grasp the helm, and who, sometimes
wisely, sometimes foolishly, but always honestly, had tried to keep
the old ship before the wind. Canning and Peel were there, with
Pitt, Fox, Grattan and Beaconsfield. Governments and oppositions
moulder behind the walls. Beaconsfield alone among all the statues
showed the hard-lined face of the self-made man. These others look
so plump and smooth one can hardly realise how strong they were, but
they sprang from those ruling castes to whom strength came by easy
inheritance. Frank told Maude the little which he knew of each of
them--of Grattan, the noblest Irishman of them all, of Castlereagh,
whose coffin was pursued to the gates of the Abbey by a raging mob