speare.

Ah, but here is one marble countenance that I know full well, and knew
for many a year in the flesh! Is there an American who sees the bust of
Longfellow among the effigies of the great authors of England without
feeling a thrill of pleasure at recognizing the features of his native
fellow-countryman in the Valhalla of his ancestral fellow-countrymen?
There are many memorials in Poets' Corner and elsewhere in the Abbey
which could be better spared than that. Too many that were placed there
as luminaries have become conspicuous by their obscurity in the midst of
that illustrious company. On the whole, the Abbey produces a distinct
sense of being overcrowded. It appears too much like a lapidary's
store-room. Look up at the lofty roof, which we willingly pardon for
shutting out the heaven above us,--at least in an average London day;
look down at the floor and think of what precious relics it covers; but
do not look around you with the hope of getting any clear, concentrated,
satisfying effect from this great museum of gigantic funereal bricabrac.
Pardon me, shades of the mighty dead! I had something of this feeling,
but at another hour I might perhaps be overcome by emotion, and weep, as
my fellow-countryman did at the grave of the earliest of his ancestors.
I should love myself better in that aspect than I do in this coldblooded
criticism; but it suggested itself, and as no flattery can soothe, so no
censure can wound, "the dull, cold ear of death."

Of course we saw all the sights of the Abbey in a hurried way, yet with
such a guide and expositor as Archdeacon Farrar our two hours' visit was
worth a whole day with an undiscriminating verger, who recites his
lesson by rote, and takes the life out of the little mob that follows
him round by emphasizing the details of his lesson, until "Patience on a
monument" seems to the sufferer, who knows what he wants and what he
does not want, the nearest emblem of himself he can think of. Amidst all
the imposing recollections of the ancient edifice, one impressed me in
the inverse ratio of its importance. The Archdeacon pointed out the
little holes in the stones, in one place, where the boys of the choir
used to play marbles, before America was discovered, probably,--
centuries before, it may be. It is a strangely impressive glimpse
of a living past, like the _graffiti_ of Pompeii. I find it
is often the accident rather than the essential which fixes my attention
and takes