Now it is altogether probable, that Cowper, as he sat in one of those rooms writing at his beautiful rhymes, had not the slightest idea that he was surrounded by such a crowd of kings, queens, and other great personages, barely concealed behind a thin cloud of white-wash.
It may possibly be true, that a few beautiful, fair-haired heretics in love or religion have been stone-masoned up alive in the walls of abbeys or convents.

Sir Walter Scott leaned to that belief, and perhaps had credible history for it.

But if the trowel has slain its thousands, the whitewash swab has slain its ten thousands of innocents.

Think of the furlongs of richly-wrought tapestry, full of sacred and profane history, and the furlongs of curiously-carved panels, wainscoting, and cornice that floppy, sloppy, vandal brush of pigs' bristles and pail of diluted lime have eclipsed and obliterated for ever, and not a retributive drop of the villainous mixture has fallen into the perpetrator's eye to "make his foul intent seem horrible!" Think of Christian kings of glorious memory, even Defenders of the Faith, with their fair queens, princes of the blood, and knights, noble and brave, all, in one still St.
Bartholomew night of that soft, thin, white flood, buried from the sight of the living as completely as the Roman sentinel at his post by the red gulf-stream of Vesuvius! Still, we must not be too hard on these seemingly barbarous transactions.

"Not in anger, not in wrath," nor in foolish fancy, was that dripping brush always lifted upon these works of art.