After The Ceremony There Were A Crowd Of Visitors At The Dean's, And
I Met Many Old Acquaintances, And Made Many New Ones, Among Whom
Were Lady Chantrey, A Nice Person.
After the crowd cleared off, we
sat down to a long table at lunch, always an important meal here,
and afterward the Dean took me on his arm and showed me everything
within the Abbey precincts.
He took us first to the Percy Chapel to
see the vault of the Percys. . . . From thence the Dean took us to
the Jerusalem chamber where Henry IV died, then all over the
Westminster school. We first went to the hall where the young men
were eating their dinner. . . . We then went to the school-room,
where every inch of the wall and benches is covered with names, some
of them most illustrious, as Dryden's. There were two bunches of
rods, which the Dean assured me were not mere symbols of power, but
were daily used, as, indeed, the broken twigs scattered upon the
floor plainly showed. Our ferules are thought rather barbarous, but
a gentle touch from a slender twig not at all so. These young men
looked to me as old as our collegians. We then went to their study-
rooms, play-rooms, and sleeping-rooms. The whole forty sleep in one
long and well-ventilated room, the walls of which were also covered
with names. At the foot of each bed was a large chest covered with
leather, as mouldering and time-worn as the Abbey itself.
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