young men contented to stand through the whole of a long service, and to listen, with no sign of weariness, to a sermon which perhaps occupies an hour in the delivery.

Here the Puritan divines thundered against the errors of Rome; here the Roman preachers anathematized the apostasies of Luther. These walls have heard the voice of Cranmer as he preached before the boy-king on whom he rested the hopes of the Reformation; and the voice of Freckenham, as he preached before Philip of Spain and Mary Tudor. They have heard South shooting the envenomed arrows of his wit against the Independents, and Baxter pleading the cause of toleration.

They have heard Bishop Bonner chanting the mass in his miter, and Stephen Marshall preaching at the funeral of Pym. Here Roman bishop and Protestant dean, who cursed each other when living, lie side by side in death; and Queen Elizabeth, who burned Papists, and Queen Mary, who burned Protestants, share one quiet grave, as they once bore the same uneasy crown.

In walking through the abbey, to learn its general aspect, you will be struck by the bewildering multiplicity of tombs. There is not a Valhalla in the world in which repose so many of the great and good. It is this which has made the deepest impression on multitudes of visitors.

There, over the western door, with his arm outstretched, and his haughty head thrown back, as though, in loud and sonorous utterance, he were still pouring forth to the Parliament of England the language of indomitable courage and inflexible resolve, stands William Pitt. History is recording

his words of eloquence. Anarchy sits, like a chained giant, at his feet.

And within a few yards of this fine monument is the no less interesting memorial of Charles James Fox-of Fox, who opposed Pitt's public funeral; of Fox, whom he once charged with using the language of a man "mad with desperation and disappointment.”

There are the monuments to great statesmen, to the naval commanders, to former deans of Westminster, and to the great Indian heroes. It is singular how exceedingly bad many of the epitaphs are, and how, as we approach the eighteenth century, they grow more and more verbose and futile in exact proportion as the sentiments expressed by the statuary grow more and more irreligious and fantastic.

Yet we should always bear in mind, that even the worst monument in the abbey has its historical significance. Its allegories, its ugliness, its obtrusiveness, are like tide-marks which indicate the height or the depth to which the taste of the age had risen or sunk.

How deep, for instance, is the significance of the fact, that, as age after age advances, the tombs seem to grow more and more worldly, less and less religious! They seem more and more to thrust on our minds the pomposities of life, and less and less the awful stillness and humiliation of death. tombs of the Plantagenet kings and crusaders represent them lying in death, with the hands clasped in prayer across the breast. But, as time advances, the effigies gradually rise to their knees, then to

The

their feet. Then they deal in stately or impassioned gesticulation, like Pitt and Chatham. At last, they seem to have lost the last touch of awful reverence, and like Wilberforce, with a broad smile upon their lips, they loll in marble upon their easy-chairs!

Apart from the monuments, there are, in the nave, several graves and cenotaphs of deep interest. By the west door, is the modest marble slab which records how Jeremiah Horrox, though he died as a humble curate at the age of twenty-two, was the first to rectify Kepler's theory of the motion of the moon, and to show that it might be represented as "an elliptic orbit with a variable eccentricity, and an oscillatory motion on the line of the apsides." He was also the first to observe a transit of Venus, which he succeeded in doing on December 4, 1639, between two of the three religious services for which he was on that day responsible.

There is, close by, the bust of Zachary Macaulay, the father of Lord Macaulay, and the great opponent of the slave-trade. The inscription-written by Sir James Stephen-is well worth reading for the beauty and eloquence of the language. There is the grave of John Hunter, the great anatomist. Close by this is the simple rectangular slab under which Ben Jonson was buried upright, having asked Charles I. for eighteen square inches of ground in Westminster Abbey. On this stone was carved the quaint and striking epitaph, "O rare Ben Jonson," which, only the accidental expression of a passer-by, was afterwards copied upon his bust in Poets' Corner."

66

Spell and pronounce: — eccentricity, enshrines,

multiplicity, minor, futile, memorials, choir, indomitable, obtrusiveness, Valhalla, apsides, transept, oscillatory, inevitable, miter, and rectangular.

Synonyms. - awe- reverence; dread; veneration. advise-counsel; admonish; inform; apprise; acquaint; make known; exhort. magnificence-grandeur; splendor; greatness; pomp; majesty of observe - notice; remark; perceive; attend. aspectappearance; view; look; prospect.

appearance.

WESTMINSTER ABBEY-Continued.

Near the center of the nave, a slab records that the grave beneath was the resting-place, for some months, of George Peabody; and on this slab are carved the words of his early prayer, that, if God prospered him, He would enable him to render some memorial service to his fellow-men.

A little farther on, is the grave of Livingstone, which records the last pathetic words found in his diary: "All I can add in my loneliness, is, May Heaven's rich blessing come down on every one, American, English, or Turk, who will help to heal this open sore of the world,-the slave-trade."

There are, however, two monuments to which I must lead you before I conclude. One is the monument to Sir Isaac Newton, close beside whose grave were laid the mortal remains of Charles Darwin. The tomb of Newton is well worth your

notice, from its intrinsic beauty, as well as from the fact that it is placed above the last restingplace of one of the greatest of Englishmen.

The monument is by Rysbraeck. Over it is a celestial globe, on which is marked the course of the comet of 1680. Leaning on this, is the figure of Astronomy, who has closed her book as though, for the time, her labors were over.

The very ingenious bas-relief below expresses in allegory the various spheres of Newton's labors. At the right, three lovely little genii are minting money, to indicate Newton's services to the currency; near them, a boy looking through a prism symbolizes the discoveries of Newton respecting the laws of light; a fifth-who (like other geniuses) has, at present, unhappily lost his head-is weighing the sun on a steelyard against Mercury, Mars, Venus, the Earth, Jupiter, and Saturn, which very strikingly shadows forth the discovery of the laws of gravitation; at the extreme left, two other genii reverently tend an aloe, the emblem of immortal fame. Over the bas-relief, reclines the fine statue of the great discoverer, whose elbow leans on four volumes of Divinity, Optics, and Astronomy and Mathematics.

There is one more monument in the nave, at which Americans will look with special interest. It is the tomb of the gallant and ill-fated Andre. Every American knows how he was arrested in disguise within the American lines, in 1780, and, for a moment, lost his presence of mind, and neglected to produce the safe-conduct of the traitor, Benedict Arnold. He was sentenced to be hung as a spy; and, in spite of the deep sympathy which his fate excited, even among the Americans, Wash