Page:Hopkinson Smith--In Dickens's London.djvu/190

 CHAPTER XV

CHARLES DICKENS'S GRAVE IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY

reverence altogether departed from us?

In China off goes your head if you prowl through certain graveyards; in Mecca it is certain death for an unbeliever to enter the shrine; in Stamboul you must either shed your shoes and slip your polluting toes into a purified Mohammedan flop-about, or you are whirled out as no better than a dog.

In the more so-called civilised parts of the earth in St. Mark's, in the Cathedral of Seville, under the dome of St. Peter's, and other sacred buildings enshrining the dust of the great one wanders around at will, looking over the shoulders of kneeling penitents, their breviaries in their hands, or striding across the graves of the sanctified dead, whose names and titles and often whose Coats of Arms are worn into illegibility by the tramping multitude. And it is but little better in Westminster Abbey, except at the hours of service.

As for me, I confess I could not escape a certain hesitation in approaching the holy place. Dared I ask for a permit to set up an easel before the Poet's Corner, a place 120