r in the land. In these the royal babies have taken their
first airings.

The state equipages we saw another day at Buckingham Palace,--the
cream-colored horses, the carriages and harnesses all crimson and gold.
There they stand, weeks and months together, waiting for an occasion.
The effect upon a fine day, under favoring auspices,--the sun shining,
the bands playing, the crowd of gazers, the prancing horses, the gilded
chariots,--must almost equal the triumphal entry of a first class circus
into a New England town!

CHAPTER IV.

SIGHT-SEEING IN LONDON.

The Tower.--The tall Yankee of inquiring
mind.--Our guide in gorgeous array.--War
trophies.--Knights in armor.--A professional
joke.--The crown jewels.--The house where the
little princes were smothered.--The "Traitor's
Gate."--The Houses of Parliament.--What a throne
is like.--The "woolsack."--The Peeping Gallery for
ladies.--Westminster Hall and the law courts.--The
three drowsy old women.--The Great Panjandrum
himself.--Johnson and the pump.--St.
Paul's.--Wellington's funeral car.--The Whispering
Gallery.--The bell.

THE TOWER.

IT is not a tower at all, as we reckon towers, you must know, but a
walled town upon the banks of the Thames, in the very heart of London.
Hundreds of years ago, when what is now this great city was only moor
and marsh, the Romans built here--a castle, perhaps. Only a bit of
crumbling wall, of mouldering pavement, remain to tell the story. When
the Normans came in to possess the land, William the Conqueror erected
upon this spot a square fortress, with towers rising from its four
corners. Every succeeding monarch added a castle, a tower, a moat, to
strengthen its strength and extend its limits, until, in time, it
covered twelve acres of land, as it does to this day. Here the kings
and queens of England lived in comfortless state, until the time of
Queen Elizabeth, having need to be hedged about with something more than
royalty to insure safety. Times have changed; swords have been beaten
into ploughshares; and where the moat once encircled the tower wall,
flowers blossom now. The dungeons that for centuries held prisoners of
state do not confine any one to-day; and the strongholds that guarded
the person of England's sovereign keep in safety now the jewels and the
crown. There are round towers, and square