Page:Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (Pennell, 1885).djvu/224

208 identical with Godwin's. This invitation gave rise to another short correspondence, unfortunate at such a time. Mr. Tuthil considered it inconsistent with his principles, if not immoral, to take part in any religious ceremonies; and Godwin, while he respected his scruples, disapproved of his coldness, which made such a decision possible. But he was the only one who refused to show this mark of respect to Mary's memory. Godwin himself was too exhausted mentally and physically to appear at the funeral. When Friday morning came he shut himself up in Marshal's rooms and unburdened his heavy heart by writing to Mr. Carlisle. At the same hour Mary was buried at old Saint Pancras, the church where but a few short months before she had been married. A monument was afterwards erected over her willow-shadowed grave. It bore this inscription:—

Many years later, when Godwin's body lay by her side, the quiet old churchyard was ruined by the building of the Metropolitan and Midland Railways. But there were those living who loved their memory too dearly to allow their graves to be so ruthlessly disturbed. The remains of both were removed by Sir Percy Shelley to Bournemouth, where his mother, Mary Godwin Shelley, was already laid. "There," Mr. Kegan Paul writes, "on a sunny bank sloping to the west, among the rose-wreathed crosses of many who