and the remote past.

We go through the iron gates that shut off the chapels from the choir,
and climb the steps out of the ambulatory, for the Confessor's Chapel is
raised several feet above the pavement of the Abbey. It lies, as I have
said, directly behind the altar, only divided from it by the splendid
screen which was erected early in the fifteenth century. This screen on
the western side has been beautified and restored, and forms the reredos
to the altar. But in the Chapel its eastern face is untouched; and, if
you have patience to trace out the quaint carvings along the top, you
will find they are a history of some of the miraculous and wonderful
events of Edward the Confessor's life; the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus;
St. John giving the ring to the Pilgrims; the quarrel between Tosti and
Harold, Earl Godwin's sons, when the king predicted the calamities they
would bring in after years upon England; and many more scenes of like
nature.

Below the screen, which is wrought with exquisite carving into niches
and canopies, stands a curious old chair. This is the Coronation Chair,
in which all English sovereigns have sat at their coronations since it
was made in Edward the First's reign. But more curious than the chair is
the rough block of stone which it incases. That block is the mysterious
stone of Fate which Edward the First captured at Scone in Scotland--the
stone on which every Scotch king had been crowned from the days of
Fergus the First--the stone on which every English king or queen has
been crowned since. And legends carry the history of that stone back
into the remotest past. They say that it was the stone pillow on which
Jacob slept at Bethel; that it was carried by the Jews into Egypt; that
the son of Cecrops, King of Athens, carried it off to Sicily or Spain;
that from Spain it was taken by Simon Brech, the son of Milo the Scot,
to Ireland, where after many marvelous adventures it was set up on the
sacred Hill of Tara as the "Lia Fail" or Stone of Destiny; and that
Fergus, the founder of the Scottish monarchy, bore it at length across
the sea to Dunstaffnage.

[Illustration: DEAN STANLEY.]

Whether we believe the whole history of the Stone of Destiny or not, the
chapel in which it stands is a wonderful place. In the centre rises the
Confessor's shrine, the remains of the mosaics with which it was
encrusted showing what its splendor must have been. The mosaic pavement
of 1260 is under our feet. Henry t