such mighty deeds and noble thoughts; that Monza was the glittering capital of ancient Lombardy, with its kings and queens; that the Mediterranean was the scene of crusading thousands led by knightly prowess; that Charlemagne ruled along the Rhine with such pomp of empire, enacting deeds of high emprise,—all these and other relations of places to history, enter like shadows into the temple of faith, and, like shadows, soon depart. But when it comes to England-when it comes to London, with her bridges and her Whitehalls, her palaces and her Tower, her historic incidents enter, with a stern, substantial, ringing step upon the portal, and challenge every form of doubt or overcome all incredulity. When to-day we entered the Tower, the dark and bloody history of England was turned over rapidly and tangibly by the wizard of the past, as each object aroused its familiar and undoubted chronicle.

The gateways we found crowded. Presently we purchased our tickets for the armory and jewel room. Then we were compelled to wait until the warder had collected a goodly number, when off we marched with him to inspect and wonder. These warders are numerous. They are dressed in their ancient costume-the same as that worn in the reign of Henry VII. It consists of a cap ribboned off gaudily, and a coat in the form of a blouse, gilded all over, with a crown on the breast and back boldly emblazoned. They are appointed from the army on account of their good character. The warder assigned us was a fine old Johnny Bull, who had a peculiar fondness for AmeriHe lugged me out of the crowd at every turn, to display what he considered as much our history as England's. He said that he had no doubt that some of our ancestors had walked around these places. I hoped that they had not been too familiar with some parts of the premises. It made one feel quite antique to be guided about these old palaces and prisons by so odd a looking personage as our warder. Had it not been for the aspirate and the want of it in the wrong places, I could easily have transported our cockney warder at least into the age of Harry the

cans.

Eighth, or have placed him in charge of one of the Fairy Queen's castles.

Many persons wonder why England suffers the Tower to stand. Its darkness and gloom, to say nothing of its history, are in such bold contrast with the fine structures and elevated civilization of the present day, that it seems strange that it has not suffered the fate of the Bastile. Hallam has perhaps given the best image of the Tower as well as the best reason for its preservation, when he says, 'that it seems like a captive tyrant, reserved to grace the triumph of a glorious republic, and that it should teach us (Britons) to reflect in thankfulness, how highly we have been elevated in virtue and happiness above our forefathers.' Truly there is a lesson to be learned from its old stones, its murderous blocks, its manifold modifications of force, its solitary cells, its chivalric armors, and its costly regalias-a lesson of humility and of dependency upon an arm greater than that of flesh; the lesson taught by the text cut in the prison room occupied by Sir Walter Raleigh, which I read to-day-" Be faithful unto the deth, and I wil give the a crowne of life!

The Tower dates from the Conqueror. Although some parts of it look new and lack gloom, yet there are others which have that streaked and blackened appearance which the oldest stone in northern climes always presents. We surveyed the interior; noted with interest the prison of the seven bishops, whose trial Macaulay graphically depicts, and upon whose acquittal, such a momentous change occurred in the British dynasty and constitution; looked curiously at the famous stone and mortar known as the White tower, which performed a star part in the drama of the great charter and King John, and which so many of the Plantagenets used as a palace and a prison; and more curiously still, and not without a shudder, at the Bloody Tower, which tradition and Shakspeare have rendered so horrible, as the scene of the suffocation of the young princes, nephews of the Duke of Gloster, Richard III. There is, however, considerable doubt as to the authenticity of the relation, which makes that part

of the old pile so horrible. The underground compartments we did not see. It was enough to mark the Traitor's gate, with its porteullis, ready even yet to gnash its grim teeth upon the victim as he enters from the Thames, under the stone arch, and up the fatal steps; enough, to recall the great and good who have here suffered for popular freedom and religious faith.

We passed some time in gazing at the kings and celebrated men of England,-clad in their own identical armor, and mounted upon horseback. They were tastefully arranged in what is called the Horse Gallery. The most conspicuous among them all was the gross form of that rough brute, Henry VIII, and the despicably mean-looking visage of James II. Cromwell, Villiers, Stafford, and others whose names are a part of English history, were there. Above each king was arranged in stars, the peculiar arms of the period.

We enjoyed the visit to the Regalia room, where the crown jewels and crowns are kept. They are worth the enormous sum of fifteen millions of dollars-nearly equal to Ohio's state debt! The warder well remarked, that we would, in our country, hardly keep so much wealth idle. I told him, that we would apply it, perhaps, toward paying off the national debt, especially, if it amounted to eight hundred millions.

We were shown the block upon which Lady Jane Grey, Essex, and Raleigh suffered, as well as some horrible implements of torture. The latter were marked, "captured from the Spanish." I supposed that they were perfectly at home in the Tower, if we may rely upon history. Besides, what kind of a war trophy would be one of these engines of misery? What general would wish his triumph graced by such an instrument?

The crowning interest which belongs to the Tower, is, that it has been the prison of those who dared to assert the rights of Englishmen, who stood up, in the face of arrogant kings, to proclaim that the people alone had the divine right to control their own destiny. These brave spirits never suffered the house of Tudor or of Stuart to repose for a moment upon a couch of

roses.

Such men as Peter Wentworth in Elizabeth's time, and Coke and Selden in the time of James I., were the true forerunners of the Pyms, Hampdens, and Fiennes of a later day. They verified the French couplet,

Le roi d'Angleterre

Est le roi d'Enfer.

"The King of England is the king of hell." And although the Tower with its torments awaited them, still, like their transatlantic descendants upon similar great issues, they knew, and dared to maintain their privileges against the royal prerogative.

One cannot have an adequate idea of the immensity of the brick and mortar, known as London, without going up into some lofty point, such as the cupola of St. Paul's. Under the smoky obscurity there lies far-far around as the eye can see, one continuous, compact mass of buildings, interpersed with handsome spires, and divided by the Thames-upon which is seen, darting from pier to pier, the little steamers which ply from Chelsea to Greenwich. Paris is easily bounded, Constantinople you may take in at one large view, Naples lies along the bay, and in the clear air may be comprehended at a glance; but London, and

"The villas with which London stands begirt

Like a swarth Indian, with his belt of beads,"

forms its own horizon of houses, while whole cities lie beyond. From St. Paul's, whence we viewed the city, the beautiful parks were scarcely discernible; the new houses of Parliament and Westminster arose conspicuously, and the streets about St. Paul's, sent up their incessant hum and rattle.

We have visited the Tunnel of the Thames-a bazaar under a river that is all. Indeed there are few sights worth a visit, which we have not seen. A promiscuous world is London, with its Zoological Gardens, where we saw the hippopotamus, "wallowing, unwieldy," and an orang-outang that looked more

like a human being than some negroes I wot of; with its Northumberland House, where the lion of Percy faces the form of Nelson upon his column at Trafalgar Square; with its Kew Gardens, where the tamarind-tree and the bread-plant thrive beside the broad-leaved palm and the flowering magnolia, and where every vegetable production, from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop upon the wall, grows and creeps; with its ever polite policemen, its saucy cabmen, its jostling crowds in which rudeness is taken for manliness; with its great Brewery-how can I forget that, after the difficulty we had in attaining an insight-belonging to Barclay & Perkins, generally known in America as the place of Haynau's disgrace,--but better known as the reservoir of onefourth of the ale and stout of the kingdom. We went through the establishment entire. I wondered somewhat at the wine cask of Heidelberg; but found here, one hundred and seventytwo larger beer kegs, each one of which holds not less than two thousand barrels, and the larger ones, three thousand five hundred. The other operations are on a similar extensive scale. Exeter Hall preaches temperance in vain, against such a monster. BULL must 'ave 'is hale.

ease.

The English are a credulous people. They will believe almost any thing of Americans. We took tea with a very respectable family the other day, and were amused to find how much of prejudice and misconception we could remove with They believed that we all drank gin-slings and "Tom and Jerry;" that we were every day or so regaled with lynch-law, and that "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," were very precarious franchises, especially in the west of America. red-headed doctor, who attended me a while, gave as a reason for not going to America the following, after his peculiar style: "Suppose a man's robbed, by a red-headed rascal; people mad -see my hair-get a rope-nearest tree-I swing-d'ye see?"

A

The manuscripts of Bacon, Pope, Newton and others, at the Museum, we looked at long and curiously. The original Magna Charta is preserved there. The Jerusalem Delivered of Tasso,