gold.

On the same basement were to be two tombs of black touchstone supporting
the images of the king and queen, not as dead, but sleeping, "to show,"
so runs the order, "that famous princes leaving behind them great fame
do never die." On the right hand, at either corner of the tomb, was to
be an angel holding the king's arms, with a great candlestick, and
at the opposite corners two other angels hearing the queen's arms and
candlesticks. Between the two black tombs was to rise a high basement,
like a sepulchre, surmounted by a statue of the king on horseback, in
armour--both figures to be "of the whole stature of a goodly man and
a large horse." Over this statue was to be a canopy, like a triumphal
arch, of white marble, garnished with oriental stones of divers colours,
with the history of Saint John the Baptist wrought in gilt brass upon
it, with a crowning group of the Father holding the soul of the king in
his right hand and the soul of the queen in his left, and blessing them.
The height of the monument was to be twenty-eight feet.

The number of statues was to be one hundred and thirty-four, with
forty-four bas-reliefs. It would be matter of infinite regret that this
great design was never executed, if its destruction by the Parliamentary
plunderers would not in that case have been also matter of certainty.

Charles the First intended to fit up this structure as a royal
mausoleum, but was diverted from the plan by the outbreak of the civil
war. It was afterwards used as a chapel by James the Second, and mass
was publicly performed in it. The ceiling was painted by Verrio, and the
walls highly ornamented; but the decorations were greatly injured by the
fury of an anti-Catholic mob, who assailed the building, and destroyed
its windows, on the occasion of a banquet given to the Pope's nuncio by
the king.

In this state it continued till the commencement of the present century,
when the exterior was repaired by George the Third, and a vault,
seventy feet in length, twenty-eight in width, and fourteen in depth,
constructed within it, for the reception of the royal family. Catacombs,
formed of massive octangular pillars, and supporting ranges of shelves,
line the walls on either side.

At the eastern extremity there are five niches, and in the middle twelve
low tombs. A subterranean passage leads from the vault beneath the choir
of Saint George's altar to the sepulchre. Within it are deposited the
bodies of Georg