THE LOST CRYPT

Evening Star, Issue 19456, 14 January 1927, Page 7

THE LOST CRYPT

London’s cloak is sober grey, but magic went to the weaving of it; do but speak her prettily and she will show you the gold that runs through it and jewels a-many hidden in its folds (writes Mary Morrissey, in the London ‘Evening News’). Old timbered houses that saw Elizabeth go by, green trees her father lovod, are London’s for our pleasure, and always she gives new- treasures from her ancient hoard. Yesterday the Jacobean trinkets hidden by a Great Fire-scared goldsmith 300 years ago, the day before the very floor of a Homan lady’s house here in our city, and now the fair lost crypt of All Hal-lows-and-Our-Lady-by-the-Tower. Long, long ago, when the gardens were green along the Strand, old tales were told of how the Lion-Heart himself built a chapel where All-Hallows stands to-day, and of how the first great Edward was bidden in a vision to raise a statue of Our Lady there, for that lie should be King of England and Lord of Scotland and of Wales. Then All-Hallows rose there by the Tower, a holy church indeed, made holier yet by sorrow and by grief. They" have dug the earth away from the old crypt and given us a. new page to turn in our picture book of dreams. Here may have lain good _ Bishop Fisher and the poet Surrey in their last quiet sleep; here may have come Margaret Roper to pray for that sweet spirit Thomas More; here runs, for understanding eyes, the story of England as she wrote it on the Hill, with treachery and courage, sweet faith and bitter hate, in the old merciless days that are done.