it. It does not brood over the city, as those two others
over their subject towns. Michel Angelo's forehead repeats itself in the
dome of St. Peter's. Sir Christopher had doubtless a less ample frontal
development; indeed, the towers he added to Westminster Abbey would
almost lead us to doubt if he had not a vacancy somewhere in his brain.
But the dome of the London "State-House" is very graceful,--so light
that it looks as if Its lineage had been crossed by a spire. Wait until
we have gilded the dome of our Boston St. Paul's before drawing any
comparisons.

We have seen the outside of London. What do we care for the Crescent,
and the Horseguards, and Nelson's Monument, and the statue of Achilles,
and the new Houses of Parliament? The Abbey, the Tower, the Bridge,
Temple Bar, the Monument, St. Paul's: these make up the great features
of the London we dream about. Let us go into the Abbey for a few
moments. The "dim religious light" is pretty good, after all. We can
read every letter on that mural tablet to the memory of "the most
illustrious and most benevolent John Paul Howard, Earl of Stafford,"
"a Lover of his Country, A _Relation to Relations_" (what a eulogy and
satire in that expression!) and in many ways virtuous and honorable, as
"The Countess Dowager, in Testimony of her great Affection and Respect
to her Lord's Memory," has commemorated on his monument. We can see all
the folds of the Duchess of Suffolk's dress, and the meshes of the net
that confines her hair, as she lies in marble effigy on her sculptured
sarcophagus. It looks old to our eyes,--for she was the mother of Lady
Jane Grey, and died three hundred years ago,--but see those two little
stone heads lying on their stone pillow, just beyond the marble Duchess.
They are children of Edward III.,--the Black Prince's baby-brothers.
They died five hundred years ago,--but what are centuries in Westminster
Abbey? Under this pillared canopy, her head raised on two stone
cushions, her fair, still features bordered with the spreading cap
we know so well in her portraits, lies Mary of Scotland. These fresh
monuments, protected from the wear of the elements, seem to make twenty
generations our contemporaries. Look at this husband warding off the
dart which the grim, draped skeleton is aiming at the breast of his
fainting wife. Most famous, perhaps, of all the statues in the Abbey is
this of Joseph Gascoigne Nightingale and his Lady, by Roubilliac. You
need not cro