hrough the faded pomps of the past almost a thousand years.

Monuments of kings and queens, benefactors and poets, beginning with
old Edward the Confessor and coming down to the Stuarts; of Eleanor,
who sucked the poison from her husband's wounds, and Philippa, who
saved the heroes of Calais. Here Bloody Mary, Queen Elizabeth, and
Mary, Queen of Scots, sleep in peace in the same chapel; and here the
merry monarch, Charles II., lies among the kingly tombs without a slab
to mark the place.

The new Houses of Parliament which stand between the Abbey and the
Thames are the finest works of architecture that have been erected in
England for centuries. They form a parallelogram nine hundred feet
long and three hundred feet wide. The House of Lords and House of
Commons occupy the centre of the building. Between these two halls of
State rises a tower three hundred feet high. At each end of the
building are lofty towers; the Victorian Tower, three hundred
forty-six feet high, and a clock tower, in which the hours are struck
on a bell called Big Ben, which weighs nine tons.

The entrance to the Houses of Parliament is through old Westminster
Hall, ninety feet high and two hundred and ninety long, whose gothic
roof of wood is the finest specimen of its kind in English art, and is
regarded as one of the wonders of human achievement.

It was in this hall that Charles I. was tried for treason, and
condemned; and it was here, at the trial, that the words of a
mysterious lady smote Oliver Cromwell to the heart.

"The Prisoner at the bar has been brought here in the name of the
People of England," said the solicitor.

"Not half the people!" exclaimed a mysterious voice in the gallery.
"Oliver Cromwell is a _traitor_!"

The assembly shuddered.

"Fire upon her!" said an officer.

They did not fire. It was Lady Fairfax.

Westminster Bridge, one thousand one hundred and sixty feet long, is
near the clock tower, and here the Class took its best view of the
Parliament Houses.

The next day the Class visited London Tower and the relics that recall
the long list of tragedies of ambitious courts and kings.

"This," said the guide, as the Class was taken into an apartment in
the White Tower, an old prison whose walls are twelve feet thick, "is
the beheading block that was used on Tower Hill. The Earl of Essex was
beheaded on it: see the _dints_!"

An axe stood beside the block, which is kept on exhibition in one of
the rooms in wh