n fresh from the commonplace
of every-day life rub off the rust of the world in the holy and awful
calm of these and kindred sanctuaries. How venerable would they appear
to the American, if they were not markets of gain and greed to their
clerical proprietors! The poets whose tombs are the chief attraction in
Westminster Abbey are not foreigners to the Anglo-Saxon race of the New
World. We, too, claim a property in their works. Our forefathers were
cotemporaries with Shakspeare, Spenser, and Milton, inhabited the same
land, breathed the same air, were subject to the same laws; and we speak
to-day the language of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Tennyson. We have, I
insist, a claim on the glorious memories that give renown to England;
and the avarice that bars the gates of her abbeys and cathedrals against
the poor, is a disgrace to a great nation.

There has been lately a report that St. Paul's had grown ashamed of its
greediness, and Westminster Abbey has at length really admitted the
public without demanding its sixpences--admitted, that is, to a large
portion of the building, but not to the whole. The mausoleums of the
kings are still worthy, in the opinion of the Dean and Chapter, of some
silver coins sterling. Let them remain so. We are not especially anxious
to do homage to _them_. The intellectually great of England are worthy
of much--sometimes of all reverence; her kings of very little, or of
none. But St. Paul's is closed still, notwithstanding the report of free
admission which recently agitated the public of London. Nelson's
sepulchre is worth some score of pounds sterling per annum. Dr.
Johnson's statue can be seen any day for twopence, which is tenpence
less than Madame Tassaud charges for admission to her wax effigies, and
must therefore be considered cheap.

An American is astonished at the number of beggars in every city of
England. Even the small towns and the smallest villages have them. Their
numbers in London are roundly estimated at one hundred and twenty
thousand. You meet them every where. They are, in some quarters, like
the paving-stones of the street--eternally present. There are artists in
colored chalks, who limn the heads of Christ and Napoleon on the
pavement, with the inscription: 'I am starving.' Very fairly are the
portraits executed; very decent artists they are, and they grovel by the
side of their handiwork in an attitude of broken-hearted despondency,
and pocket the pennies of the charit