250 WESTMINSTER ABBET. 



of Truth, has gone down in its socket, their names facie away from our 

 sight, and sink forever in the sea of oblivion. 



A mysterious building is that Abbey, that Palace of Death! 



"A temple, shadowy with remembrances 

 Of the majestic past ! 



Around it, the affections of a nation cluster, for even in England, good 

 and great men are only discovered to be such, only begin to be beloved 

 #and revered, when their spirits are beyond praise or censure, and their 

 bodies mingled with their kindred dust. 



We enter its portals with bowed heads, and, with noiseless footstep^ 

 thread our way among the tombs of those, who, "being dead, yet speak." 

 Our eyes are cast upon the ground, and, in the tesselated pavement, are 

 the rude marks of the chisel, exhibiting to our eyes characters that will 

 soon need the kind offices of an Old Mortality, to rescue their subjects 

 from oblivion. We direct our attention about us, down the long aisles, 

 •which stretch away from us on every side ; and, in the array of sta- 

 tues, pillars and monuments, vainly endeavor to fix our gaze upon any 

 single object. With reverence and awe. we lift our eyes to the fretted 

 ceiling, where the delicate pillars shoot up with graceful curves in 

 pointed arches. The folds of massy drapery and gorgeous banners 

 cover the walls. The large arched windows admit through their stained 

 glasses, the "dim religious light" of evening, which steals along the cor- 

 ridors, "in a path of dreamy lustre," softening the bold projections, and 

 melting away into the gloom of the recesses beyond. We gaze upon 

 all — below us, around us, above us — then with hearts too full for utter- 

 ance, sink at the base of a monument; and, with head reclined upon 

 the marble, muse upon the Past, the Present and the Future, here so 

 vividly brought before our minds. 



Before us pass, in ghostly array, the grim, gaunt forms of mail-clad 

 warriors, time-honored sages and ladies fair, who thronged the courts of 

 Sebert and liis successors, and whose ashes now rest with his, under 

 the monument of his zeal and attachment for his holy religion. All 

 traces of the Present vanish from our sight ; and we are amongst an- 

 other race of beings. The iron-shod heel rings upon the stone pave- 

 ment, the raised visor reveals tlie stern unyielding fiont that quails not, 

 when dangers, in demon shapes, threaten to overwhelm — the gauntleted 

 hand rests upon the hilt of the broad falchion, ready at the moment to 

 unsheathe, either in the cause of honor, to protect injured innocence 

 and oppressed virtue, or cleave to the shoulders the haughty Saracen, 

 whose blood-red flag waves from the battlements of Salem's sacred 

 walls. The Lion Heart is there, rushing on with the maddened fury of 



