of London again comes upon us, and with
renewed force. It is just after we have heard
this that we are amiably pounced upon by the
verger sitting immediately below the dean, and
are taken into moral custody. From the
vantage ground he lands us on we are compelled
to see one half the choristers and singing men;
and to generally remark the congregation. It
is bright and sunny outside, this Saturday afternoon,
and the dreamy, drowsy character of
cathedral life comes strongly home to us in these
curved seats. The verger at the clerk's desk,
is so excessively kind and thoughtful that the
least delay in finding our places brings his eye
to bear, and I am in momentary dread that
he will leave his seat and by pointing out
the anthem again expose us to the wonder
of the congregation. He spares me, however,
and much relieved I venture to glance round.
There are not many people present. Few
of the lower stalls are occupied, and the people
kept standing approach the number of those
sitting down. The singing men when not
practising their calling are studiously abstracted
and indifferent. While the lesson is being read
they become positively gymnastic in their efforts
to seem at ease. Their writhing and undulations
are at one time eel-like in their
restlessness, while at another they resemble so
many bales of white linen, so completely have
they buried their heads in their priest-like
robes. Dean Stanley in his book on
Westminster Abbey tells us that the olden regulations
for the monks at dinner were very precise.
"No one was to sit with his hand on his chin,
or his hand over his head, or as if in pain, or
to lean on his elbows." It was impossible
to avoid the wish that the dean would
enforce some similar rule upon his lay assistants
now.

The monuments and the Abbey are agreeably
clean after St. Paul's. The fee for seeing all the
sights, and hearing an elaborate description
which lasts thirty-five minutes, is sixpence; and
the guide-book sold by the vergers for a shilling
is compact and comprehensive, telling the
stranger the principal points he wishes to know.
You may walk in the nave and visit Poets' or
Whig's corner, unelbowed by tout, or cheat,
or beggar. You may buy a book or not, as you
will; the vergers give a civil reply to your
questions if you put them; but if you choose
to stand alone, you can meditate upon the
monument of Pitt or Fox without fear of annoyance
or interruption. Above all, the statues and
monuments are taken care of. There is
none of the abject neglect which shocked us
so at St. Paul's. Before leaving the nave,
we are arrested by a memorial window,
which is sufficiently original to make one
wonder why it is here. For its choice of
subjects contrasts strongly with the figures of
the twelve apostles, the agony in the garden, the
raising of Lazarus, and the Ascension on the
other windows near; and it is not until we
read the name, Robert Stephenson, that we see
the appropriateness of railway viaducts and
bridges in stained glass. Stephenson's chief
engineering works, Bonha-bridge over the
Nile, the Britannia-bridge over the Menai
Straits, the High Level-bridge at Newcastle-upon-Tyne,
are mingled on this window with
the building of Solomon's Temple, the building
of the ark by Noah, the building of
Nineveh, and the erection of the tabernacle,
to the inevitable confusion of posterity. Nor do
the figures which accompany these illustrations
exhibit any biographical connexion with each
other. It is perhaps appropriate that the
portraits of George Stephenson, Telford, Smeaton,
Watt, Rennie, and Robert Stephenson should
be given in stained glass; but whether
William of Wykeham, Hiram of Tyre, Noah, Sir
Christopher Wren, Bezaleel, Cheops, and
Michael Angelo, whose presentments appear
in the neighbouring panes, can be strictly claimed
as even professional connexions of the great
engineer, is perhaps open to doubt.

Dean Stanley speaks of "that thin dark thread
of those who, without historical or official
claims, have crept into the Abbey, often from
the carelessness of those who had the charge
of it in former times;" and there is something
touching in the humble graves of people who have
never known ambition or tasted greatness, and
who yet have drifted somehow into the last
resting place of the powerful and mighty. Amid
the array of glorious names, each of which is
a history of achievement, we come upon
"Jane Lister, dear child, October 7, 1688,"
and read that "her brother Michael had already
died in 1676, and been buried at Helen's
Church, York." Again, a still more insignificant
life, Nicholas Bagenall, "an infant of
two months old, by his nurse unfortunately
overlaid," has his little urn; and a Mr. Thomas
Smith, "who through the spotted veil of the
small-pox, rendered a pure and unspotted soul
to God, expecting but not fearing death;" while
on another monument we read that

   With diligence and trust most exemplary
    Did William Lawrence serve a prebendary;

and after the name of John Broughton, the
prince of prize-fighters, comes a space upon
which was to have been written "Champion of
England," but the dean of the period objected,
and the blank remains. These obscure exceptions
are grotesque enough in a place where, as has been
well said, "we see how, by a gradual but certain
instinct, the main groups have formed themselves
round particular centres of death; how the kings
ranged themselves round the Confessor; how
the prince's courtiers clung to the skirts of the
kings; how out of the graves of the courtiers
were developed the graves of the heroes; how
Chatham became the centre of the statesmen,
Chaucer of the poets, Purcell of the
musicians, Casaubou of the scholars, Newton of
the men of science; how even in the
exceptional details natural affinities may be traced;
how Addison was buried apart from his tuneful
brethren, in the royal shades of Henry the
Seventh's chapel, because he clung to the vault