e lot on high!
Thus death, what life denied us, shall supply."

[Illustration: ROPER's HOUSE.]

Others tell that his remains were interred in the Tower,[4] and some
record that the head was sought and preserved by that same daughter
Margaret, who caused it to be buried in the family vault of the Ropers
in St. Dunstan's Church, Canterbury;[5] and they add a pretty legend how
that, when his head was upon London Bridge, Margaret would be rowed
beneath it, and, nothing horrified at the sight, say aloud, "That head
has layde many a time in my lappe; would to God, would to God, it would
fall into my lappe as I pass under now," and the head did so fall, and
she carried it in her "lappe" until she placed it in her husband's, "son
Roper's" vault, at Canterbury.

The king took possession of these fair grounds at Chelsea, and all the
chancellor's other property, namely, Dunkington, Trenkford, and Benley
Park, in Oxfordshire, allowing the widow he had made, twenty pounds per
year for her life, and indulging his petty tyranny still more, by
imprisoning Sir Thomas's daughter, Margaret, "both because she kept her
father's head for a relic, and that she meant to set her father's works
in print."

We were calling to mind more minute particulars of the charities and
good deeds of this great man, when, standing at the moment opposite a
grave where some loving hand had planted two standard rose-trees, we
suddenly heard a chant of children's voices, the infant scholars singing
their little hymn; the tune, too, was a well-known and popular melody,
and very sweet, yet sad of sound; it was just such music, as for its
simplicity, would have been welcome to the mighty dead; and, as we
entered among the little songsters, the past faded away, and we found
ourselves speculating on the hopeful present.

* * * * *

We close Mrs. Hall's pleasant sketches of Sir Thomas More and his
localities, with a brief description of a scene in his prison, which the
pencil of Mr. Herbert, of the Royal Academy, has beautifully depicted.
It must be remembered that More was a zealous Roman Catholic. He was
committed to the Tower in 1534, by the licentious Henry VIII., partly to
punish him for refusing to assist that monarch in his marriage with
Anne Boleyn, "the pretty fool," as Mrs. Hall calls her; but particularly
because he declined to acknowledge the king's ecclesiastical supremacy
as head of the Reformed Church. There he