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In his Recollections, published three years ago, there is a final paragraph which runs as follows: "A painful interrogatory, I must confess, emerges. Has not your school held the civilized world, both old and new alike, in the hollow of their hand for two long generations past? Is it quite clear that their influence has been so much more potent than the gospel of the various churches? Circumspice.
Paul's is as its surroundings echoes and whispers, inaudible songs, invisible mosaics, wet footmarks, crossing and recrossing the floor. Si monumentum requiris, circumspice; it points us back to London. There was no hope of Helen here. Henry was unsatisfactory at first. That she had expected. He was overjoyed to see her back from Swanage, and slow to admit the growth of a new trouble.
As to the products of my labors, they are fully set forth in the catalogue; and of this adventure I can only say to the visitor to my museum in the words of the well-known inscription, 'Si monumentum requiris, Circumspice?" Such was Challoner's account of his acquisition of the specimens numbered 2, 3 and 4. It was certainly what one might have expected from his conduct.
In his dealings with the British Government, pushed as they have been some half a dozen times to the very verge of war, he has invariably come off with something for nothing. In his dealings with the Uitlanders he has bartered promises and in return circumspice! And yet in his need he calls upon them, and they come! His treatment of the Orange Free State has been exactly the same.
"Si monumentum requiris circumspice" as the Latins say; or, as Tommy would translate, "If you want to see a bit of orl-right, look at what the Navy has done to this 'ere blinking town." The Governor's palace, where is it? The bats now roost in the roofless timbers that the 12-inch shells have left.
"Underneath is laid the builder of this church and city, Christopher Wren, who lived more than ninety years, not for himself, but for the public good. Reader, if you seek his monument, look around!" The writer of this inscription, when he used the word circumspice, which we translate look around, did not intend probably to confine the reader's attention to St. Paul's.
Si monumenlum requiris circumspice. Behold Ireland at this moment, and examine every year of its history since the Union. Do the annals of any constitutional Government in the world present so portentous a monument of Parliamentary failure, so vivid an example of a moral and material ruin "paved with good intentions"? Therein lies the pathos of it.
About the quiet university town, where Queen's is Grant's monument si monumentum requiris, circumspice there lingers still the distinction of the old vice-regal days. Then came the first election for the new Assembly of the united province, perhaps the most momentous in the history of Canada. Lower Canada was vehemently opposed to the whole scheme.
If space permitted, the testimony of "Mark Twain," given in "Roughing It," might be added to the above, and the remaining missionaries may well point to the visible results of their labours, with the one word Circumspice!
Nelson's occupies the centre, and is a fine work. But what impressed me most was the tomb of Sir Christopher Wren himself; a simple tablet marks his tomb, with this inscription, which is repeated above in the nave: Subtus conditur Hujus Ecclesias et Urbis Conditor, CHRISTOPHERUS WREN; Qui vixit annos ultra nonaginta, Non sibi, sed bono publico. Lector, si monumentum requiris, Circumspice.
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