Albert Memorial

“ Mary, following Coast across the asphalt playground, wondered for the hundredth time at the weird phantasy of the too enterprising Victorian architect, who, fired by the inspiration of the Albert Memorial, had become a devotee of Gothic ornateness. ”

“ It is remarkable that with all their care for this building, the authorities should permit apple-stalls and wooden sheds to be built up against the tower.
[17] An architect, speaking of the Albert Memorial, now approaching completion, says:—'In ten years the spire and all its elaborate tracery will have become obsolete and effaced for all artistic purposes. The atmosphere of London will have performed its inevitable function. Every 'scroll work' and 'pinnacle' will be a mere clot of soot, and the bronze gilt Virtues will represent nothing but swarthy denizens of the lower regions ”

“ Give Prince Albert a Statue?—Yes, certainly, at the proper time; may it not arrive for a thousand years! But when it does arrive, up with the Statue; a Statue which shall have been merited by a highly useful life, whereof the promotion of the cosmopolitan fair in Hyde Park will have been one only among the remarkable acts. In the mean time, that the memorial may be worthy of the hero, put the money already subscribed towards it out to increase and accumulate ”

“ But a memorial, more interesting than the skull or the sandals of a departed worthy, is a faithful copy of his person and features delineated by the arts of painting or sculpture. In every age such copies, so congenial to human feelings, have been cherished by the zeal of private friendship or public esteem; the images of the Roman emperors were adored with civil and almost religious honours ”

“ Very few are to be found in Wales; an altar-tomb may be seen at Tenby, to which a brass, representing a bishop, was formerly affixed, supposed to have been the memorial of Tully, bishop of St. David's. The brasses at Swansea, representing Sir Hugh Jones, knight of the Holy Sepulchre, and at Whitchurch, representing Richard, father of the famous Sir Hugh Middleton, and governor of Denbigh castle, with his numerous family, are almost the only specimens of interest which occur in the Principality. ”

“ Sepulchral brasses afford many interesting illustrations of the form of the chalice, and of the usage of its deposit in the tomb of a priest. The effigies of priests, at North Mimms, Herts, and Wensley, Yorkshire, supply very richly decorated examples. Both of these are of the fourteenth century, and a fine specimen is given by Mr. Shaw, from the memorial of a chancellor of Noyon Cathedral, who died 1358 [31] . Many other instances may readily be enumerated; most commonly the wafer is represented, placed over the chalice, and occasionally with rays radiating from it. ”

“ It was the voice of God, who was now seated on the box of the colossal van, and lashing the fiery steeds, the van disappeared in a cloud of silvery dust, leaving Albert behind in darkness and in tears. He peered into space, but could see nothing—nothing but an endless stretch of darkness. Finally he began to move aimlessly and wandered and wandered until he reached a freshly dug grave. Leb, the grave-digger, with spade in hand, was in the grave, digging deeper and deeper and singing merrily: “Everybody is dead—everybody is dead!” ”

“ Feelin’ the admiration I did for his livin’ and lovin’ pardner, I wuz glad to see the Albert monument. It wuz evenin’ when we see it, and the garden where it stands wuz illuminated. The great elms glowed under a multitude of red lights. The music-stands glowed with stars of the same color, and the fountains riz up in great sprays of color and radiance. It wuz a beautiful seen, but none too grand for the great good man whose name the tall shaft bears. ”

“ If the spirit of Prince Albert revisits the glimpses of Rotten Row, his once favorite haunt, he must long for the day when wind and weather shall have subdued some of the obtrusive glitter of his statue. It is too bad to be seen with too little light during life, and too much after death. It is sufficiently curious, while gazing on this overpowering mass of gilded metal, to remember what his private feelings were when some snobbish officials of London City proposed to erect a monument to him twenty-three years ago. ”

“ Until then, on Albert's account, she had lived in the newer neighborhood near Saint-André Square: young men need scenes of activity and movement, and not quiet streets and reminders of death. When she saw him in a new home and realized that he was attracted to and even taken possession of by the Molay-Norrois set, who were proud of his growing fame, she returned quite naturally to the cemetery which contained her happiness and her youth. ”

“ Poor Albert was heartbroken for several years, and every Sunday we would walk over to the little graveyard in yonder hill and talk of the children as though the cemetery were a school and we had come to visit the children and bring them flowers.
“But I do not see this sad picture as I stand in the open door and look to the sunset sky. I only see the wedding party for a moment, and then Albert and the children sitting on the porch. Sometimes I talk to them while the sun is setting, and when the shadows fall, they bring back the faces of those I love. ”

“ In these sweet solitudes the morning passes quickly, and in the afternoon we go to the cemetery, which is about three miles from the town, to witness the decoration of the soldiers’ graves—for it is Memorial Day—the one day set apart in every year now and for all time for people to come to do honour to the dead who fell in the lost cause; nay, for the dead who fell on either side. Streams of people crowd the highways and byways, all flowing in one direction, and all mass together at the wide-open gates of the cemetery. ”

“ Years passed. City and cemetery were each grown vaster. It was again an afternoon when the people strolled among the graves and monuments. An old man had courteously attached himself to a group that stood around a crumbling memorial. He had reached a great age; but his figure was erect, his face animated by strong emotions, and his eyes burned beneath his brows.
"Sirs," said he, interposing in the conversation, which turned wholly on the monument, "you say nothing of him in whose honour it was erected."
"We say nothing because we know nothing." ”

“ At the cemetery the graves are almost buried beneath the offerings of yellow papers, which are blown about by the winds until they form in drifts, like the snow in the streets of the cities of the Atlantic coast. Red candles', of vegetable wax, are lighted and stuck in the ground by thousands; and a cloth being spread upon the ground at the foot of each grave by its particular visitor, the feast is arranged upon it, the cups filled with sam-shoo, tea, etc., and then the living friend, bowing with solemn politeness, invites the disembodied spirit or spirits to come and help themselves. ”

“ At the top of the hill he found his father's grave. Beside it was another mound, and at the head of this, a plain little pillar. The moon was high now and the tramp was used to seeing in the night. Word by word he could slowly read upon the marble this inscription:
“William Albert, beloved son of the late Thomas Kershaw and his wife Rachel; born in Brickville, August 2, 1862; drowned in the Allegheny River near Pittsburg, July 27, 1877, while heroically endeavouring to save the life of a child.” ”

“ They had only to go through a gate in the old ramparts and along the avenue L'Ile Verte, all covered with dead leaves, which were crushed beneath the horses' hoofs and the feet of the mourners. The moment when the coffin is lowered into the ground, is one of the most anguish-filled that a loving heart has to bear. Albert instinctively lifted his hand to his eyes. A vision interposed between himself and his sorrow—that of Elizabeth overwhelmed. Did he remember that sentence in his diary: "She does not know my mother—she will never know her. ”

“ It is generally assumed that the face of this bust was modelled from a death mask, possibly even from the cast which is now at Darmstadt; and although either the execution was originally poor or the likeness has been spoiled by restoration, the monument is, of course, of the greatest interest to all admirers of the poet, and to those who are students of his life and works. It is believed that the memorial was provided by Dr. Hall and his wife, and at all events there seems little doubt that they superintended its erection. ”

“ That which takes place today at the National Cemetery in Arlington is a symbol, a mystery and a tribute. It is an entombment only in the physical sense. It is rather the enthronement of Duty and Honor. This man who died for his country is the symbol of these qualities; a far more perfect symbol than any man could be whose name and deeds we knew. He represents more, really, than the unidentified dead, for we can not separate them spiritually from the war heroes whose names are written on their gravestones. He—this spirit whom we honor —stands for the unselfishness of all. ”

“ At times these graves are made very large, while in other cases the bodies are barely covered over. Usually some kind of a memorial is raised over the grave: frequently a long stone, but more often a topick pole or paddle, to the top of which a flag or streamer is fixed to mark the last lonely resting-place of the departed. ”

“ People infinitely prefer some huge ungainly statue or some indifferently stained glass window, any seven-days' wonder in the way of marble, granite, or glass. They would like the Cenotaph to fill St. James's Park, and fondly believe that the "Glorious Dead" would find pride and pleasure in such a monstrosity. But it seems to me that any memorial to the dead heroes falls short of its ideal which does not, at the same time, help the living in some real practical and unsectarian way. ”

“ It was the course of nature, and always we are foolish to quarrel with nature. A granite monument marks the resting place where the good old man sleeps in the cemetery at Quebec, but some memorial might well stand at Murray Bay, that those who look out upon the majestic river, the blue mountains, the smiling valley should have before them a reminder of the "friendly, honest man" who, a century and a half ago, began to win their heritage from the wilderness. ”

“ About this time, fearing that the sports arena function of the coliseum was being overemphasized, the president of the Junior Chamber of Commerce reiterated its primary purpose: “War memorials should be for the living, not for the dead alone. The living must be enabled to derive a spiritual lift from them. There must be a shrine to which one may go to commune with the missing and to pay tribute to the returned. A mere building does not serve this purpose. The true memorial building has a heart, a focal point. ”

“ It can neither feed the hungry nor clothe the naked; it can satisfy only pride and power. We next went to Albert's Hall, and saw Albert's monument. I shall long remember this beautiful work of art, the witness of a nation's love for a noble man.
In the evening I attended meeting, and listened to an interesting discourse by Elder A. L. Smith, who gave a thrilling narrative of the massacre at Haun's mill, where eighteen of our brethren were shot down in cold blood. ”

“ At the cemetery, the pick-and-spade bearers were divided into squads and companies, and under the direction of commanders, worked all day, raking off rubbish, rounding up graves, planting head-boards and otherwise bringing about order. Old men and little boys helped. Negroes faithful to the memory of dead friends and owners were there, busy as the whites in love’s labour. Several men in Federal uniform lent brotherly hands. When the sun went down the place was transformed. That first fair Memorial Day looked as though it were both Sabbath and Saints’ Day. ”

“ The taste of the British nation needs rigorous control when it seeks to pay tribute to benefactors by means of sculptured monuments. During the last forty years a vast addition has been made throughout Great Britain—with most depressing effect—to the number of sculptured memorials in the open air. The people has certainly shown far too enthusiastic and too inconsiderate a liberality in commemorating by means of sculptured monuments the virtues of Prince Albert and the noble character and career of the late Queen Victoria. ”

“ The paved way that runs on for three miles is worn and broken, the grass comes up between the blocks, the bridges are falling into disrepair, but these things are trifles in the face of the amphitheatre set among the eternal hills, the blue sky and the sunshine, these are a memorial here, a memorial that makes the work of men's hands but a small thing. ”

“ In the cemetery at Beaufort, South Carolina, all feelings of distinction are swept away, and yearly, on Memorial Day, the noble-hearted women of that town direct their steps toward the graves and place flowers upon all—those who wore the blue and those who wore the gray, alike appealing to their womanly sympathy, and sharing alike their tender care.
On October 23, 1866, a fine and spacious cemetery was dedicated at Winchester, Virginia, with most imposing ceremonies. This abode of the dead is known as the Stonewall Jackson cemetery, in honor of that brave and true-hearted soldier. ”

“ Albert trembled in every limb. He was again alone, with nothing but the open grave before him. The darkness around him seemed impenetrable. He could not see an inch away. Only strange voices of invisible men reached his ears, with the sound of autumn leaves in his ears. Then flashes of lightning came and revealed to him a line of men, in single file, coming through a gap in a ruined wall. He could not see the men’s faces but they wore little crucifixes over their breasts and swayed ornamental containers of frankincense such as he had seen in the Franciscan cloister. ”