or's studio and of
the sculptor himself when he is modelling a large figure or group in the
clay. He might be a bricklayer or a road-sweeper if you judge by his
appearance. This is the tomb I was telling you about."

We halted before the plain coffer of stone, weathered and wasted by age,
but yet kept in decent repair by some pious hands, and read the
inscription, setting forth with modest pride, that here reposed Anna,
sixth daughter of Richard Cromwell, "The Protector." It was a simple
monument and commonplace enough, with the crude severity of the ascetic
age to which it belonged. But still, it carried the mind back to those
stirring times when the leafy shades of Gray's Inn Lane must have
resounded with the clank of weapons and the tramp of armed men; when
this bald recreation-ground was a rustic churchyard, standing amidst
green fields and hedgerows, and countrymen leading their pack-horses
into London through the Lane would stop to look in over the wooden gate.

Miss Bellingham looked at me critically as I stood thus reflecting, and
presently remarked, "I think you and I have a good many mental habits in
common."

I looked up inquiringly, and she continued: "I notice that an old
tombstone seems to set you meditating. So it does me. When I look at an
ancient monument, and especially an old headstone, I find myself almost
unconsciously retracing the years to the date that is written on the
stone. Why do you think that is? Why should a monument be so stimulating
to the imagination? And why should a common headstone be more so than
any other?"

"I suppose it is," I answered reflectively, "that a churchyard monument
is a peculiarly personal thing and appertains in a peculiar way to a
particular time. And the circumstance that it has stood untouched by the
passing years while everything around has changed, helps the imagination
to span the interval. And the common headstone, the memorial of some
dead and gone farmer or labourer who lived and died in the village hard
by, is still more intimate and suggestive. The rustic, childish
sculpture of the village mason and the artless doggerel of the village
schoolmaster, bring back the time and place and the conditions of life
much more vividly than the more scholarly inscriptions and the more
artistic enrichments of monuments of greater pretensions. But where are
your own family tombstones?"

"They are over in that farther corner. There is an intelligent, but
inopportune,