Where Barry's palace now stands, stood, from Anglo Saxon days till Henry VIIIth's time, the ancient palace of the English Kings; and here, in their very palace, grew the germ of those Houses of Parliament that gradually came to occupy the entire area. The Star Chamber, the Painted Chamber, St. Stephen's Chapel, were parts of the old building made familiar to us by association and by history. The ancient palace was safe under the shadow of its abbey and sanctuary, till Henry VIII., who defied both abbey and sanctuary, actuated by Naboth-like desire of possession, moved his residence to Whitehall. The Whitehall palace is gone as if it had never been; but that of Westminster has risen again from its ashes. This sacred spot was the place of our national liberties; here arose the "Mother of Parliaments."
Not long ago, I was standing on Westminster Bridge in the gathering twilight; the misty glory of a fine winter's day. The river edges were sprinkled with a thin crust of silvery frost, the dulled red sun was going down in splendour behind a galaxy of pink and golden clouds. Insensibly, as the light faded, and the mist rose, I seemed to lose the forms of the modern buildings, and to see, as though in a vision, the "Thorney Isle" of the dim past. The huge "New Palace of Westminster," with its towers, was for a moment blotted out.... There, in the dreamy haze of sunset, I saw
--"the Minster's outlined mass Rise dim from the morass."
--That, surely, was no longer the Terrace of the House of Commons, but a marshy bed of osiers and rushes! The dark shadow yonder, across the broad river, was it any more the grimy, disused Lambeth landing-stage, or had it changed to the rude primitive boats of the Saxon fisher-folk, "moored among the bulrush stems"? The clamour yonder,--was it the shouting of drunken bargees, or merely the voices of simple peasants, busy with their nets, singing the evening hymn?... And was that a barge being towed up stream, or was it not, rather, a boat crossing to the nearer shore, with its unknown, saintly passenger? Then, suddenly, a blaze of light irradiating the gloom--is it the miraculous glow from the consecrated Minster, or....
I start, for some one touches me gently on the shoulder. I turn round, half expecting to see a Saxon hind in leather jerkin and thonged sandals.... But a modern lamplighter with tall pole pushes past me, and----