Sketches of Foreign Travel, No. 2 [pp. 177-181]

SKETCHES OF FOREIGN TRAVEL.
ing room, every bit of candle, every single fire, and all the meals,
figure under separate heads, and the end of every week brings up a
bill as long and as painful as the moral law. Long as it is. it has
yet an incisive appendix. The chambermaid has to be defrayed, a
douceutr goes to the waiter, the cook confidently expects a bonus, and
Boots affectionately desires to be "remembered."
My first aimi, of course, is the epidemic one of all travelers-" to
do" London. After that, I propose, if possible, to get beneath the
surface of thiings, and see something of the social, and other less
obvious, features of this great country.
In assuming to delineate London, even superficially, one is met on
the very threshold by two difficulties, which are almost incurable.
One is to elect where to begin; the other is to give anything like a
tolerable picture of what challenges the eye. In writing, then, I call
(only promise to accord you the most salient points ill whatever
occurs to me as most likely to enlist the curiosity of your readers.
WESTMINSTER ABBEY.-The spot in London which, far above all
others, attracted miy attention, was Westminster Abbey, f)r it is
the repository of things in which Americans hold, with the English,
a wide community of interest. This immense Gothic pile is said to
have been founded by a Saxon king, named Sebert, in the seventh
century, but being destroyed by the Danes, was rebuilt by Edgar,
in 758, and greatly enlarged by Edward the Confessor in 1245. The
nave and eastern part were erected by Edward the First, and the
western towers were completed by Sir Christopher Wren. The
most important addition made to it was the chapel of Henry the
Seventh. It is out of strict keeping with the general design of the
building, but is certainly an exquisite piece of architecture. We
enter the church through a small doorway, scarce six feet high, and
are ushered at once, without any preliminary, into the
Poets' Coroner.-I remained there for several hours, deciphering
inscriptions, inspecting monuments, and endeavoring to obtain a full
and realizing sense of the great presences in which I stood. In a
place like that one may surely be permitted to feel within himself
some faint stirring of the HIeroic and the Reverential, and even
avow as much, without exposing himself to a suspicion of affectation.
There, in common dust and silence, sleeps the greater part of Eiigland's learned, and wise, and heroic, and eloquent dead, crowned with
speaking statues and monuments, and all the tender memorials of a
nation's love and gratitude.
There is "rare Ben Jonson," lookingi down on us, shaggy and
grim, in his marble effigy; there Samuel Butler, the author of Hiudibras, with his handsome upper lip curlinlg with sarcastic humrnor;
there Edmund Spenser, of the Fairie Queen; there John Milton,
with his white brow and his sightless orbs, and his long hair drifting ambro-ially over his shoulders; there Thomas Gray, immortal
in his Elegy; there John Dryden, handsome, grave, and self-poised;
there Thomlas Campbell, smiling pleasantly at us over his Byronic
collar; there Johaston, the greatest moralist, Slheridan, the greatest
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