common grave, but before those pyramids, or amidst those ruins, all that was connected with them is gone, and for ever-what was crowded with living men is silent and desolate the very earth seems there to have grown old, and outlived its purposes.

Burke, whose opinion of architecture is worth that of a dozen professed architect's, objects to the ground plan of our old cathedrals. But a theory is as prejudicial to truth as a definition, and the cross happened not to agree with his order of succession and uniformity; fact and feeling, however, drew from him this limitation," at least I imagine it is not so proper for the outside;" and thus qualified, every man's experience will admit its truth. The abrupt angles of the cross cut off some thing from the real dimensions and magnitude of the exterior, seen from what point it may, without any compensating advantage; but in the interior, no theory can blind us to the palpable effect: it adds to the vastness, the indistinctness, the incomprehensibility, and consequently to our astonishment; we catch glimpses of two large and proportionate divisions that possibly equal in magnitude the aisle we stand in; they are, what Burke desires in architecture, a deception that makes the building more extended than it is; a "kind of artificial infinity," in which, indeed, consists the real sublimity of a gothic cathedral.

But there are higher and more enduring speculations connected with this Abbey, than the contemplation of its glorious self. It is a dull and cold imagination indeed that needs churches, or the monitory voices of tombstones, to awaken its moral sensibility; but it is not possible to walk here, surrounded by the last memorials of so many foregone ages, without awakened and intense thought. The glare and polish of a modern tomb suits not with the sanctity and reverence of a lonely contemplation; its pomp, its gilding, its freshness, its direct appeal to us, fail of their professed object; and in the great aisle and open transept we

are

"too much i'the sun;" the world's eye is on us; but in the quiet seclusion of the chapels, we bow

down our minds and spirits, and listen with subdued and reverential passion to their noiseless admonitions. Besides, in the great aisles, and the open transept, we are reminded, not of the corruptible, but of the incorruptible. Mind knows nothing of mortality: it is ever fresh, ever enduring; Shakspeare, and Milton, and Spenser, and Newton, and Locke, and Dryden, and Pope, have a living being in our hearts. If we would read philosophy from tombstones, we shall find it where birth, or fortune, or extrinsic circumstance, have given a splendour and a glory to nothingness; where men that have played a distin guished part in life's pageant-occupied a vast portion of the thought and homage of the living worldhave sunk into the "cold oblivion" of the grave; in contemplating the monuments to the "illustrissimo, sapientissimo, et bellicacissimo;" in poring over an antiquarian record, as I have done, to learn who lay, "to dumb forgetfulness a prey," under an unfinished tomb with initial letters, and find it was a queen; these are the things that speak eloquently, and to the heart, and teach us to hope for immortality from something within ourselves; and therefore teach us well, and to some attainable good

There are many many hours of our lives, when "from the world's incumbrance we would ourselves assoil," would

Plume our feathers, and let grow our wings,
That in the various bustle of resort
Are all-to ruffled

and these chapels are the woods and silent places of the " tower'd city." But shut out from them, as we have but too long been, by the preparations. for the delayed coronation, I have grown familiar with the neglected cloisters of this venerable pile, and here too found food for highest speculation. Here, in an obscure corner, lie the mouldered ashes of the very men that, in the solemnity and pomp of the Roman church, hallowed the foundation stone of the mighty fabric that for so many centuries hath quietly entombed them; and here are their predecessors; the old even of their time-here they are, the splendour of one, the luxury of another, the austerity and severe morality of a third, equally forgotten; their very

names to be sought for in wormeaten records; their monuments defaced; the high-raised and the deepsunken effigies equally smooth and polished, by the passing feet of succeeding generations. Here lies Gervasius de Blois! a name not readily forgotten by suffering England:-a king's son, that seven hundred years gone by was endowed with form and pulsation; lived in splendour, and luxurious enjoyment-honoured, served on the knee; with a most quick and delicate sense of his high birth and fortune-here he lies despised or forgotten; and the giant stone, that was to secure an immortality to his name, nick-named in nockery. Beside him rests the mitred Laurentius! a proud man, and in life specially honoured What are his prized honours worth now? A nickname! The very ensigns of his glory and office, so entreated for, so cherished, and so linked and intertwined with human weakness as to be charactered on his grave, now serve only to give that grave a character, and the proud priest passes for the king's shepherd. And here rest in equal oblivion the honoured of other and later generations. Specially, indeed, but not so honoured! "Juxta depositæ sunt Reliquiæ," as his epitaph would have recorded, of one whose name has passed down to us in a proverb for wit and humour-a name that is yet assumed as an earnest and promise of what is brilliant -of a man of various and extensive learning, though his learning is little suspected; our familiar friend, Tom Browne, lies here without even a hic jacet! And here in equal silence and obscurity rests another, who, if his living reputation had less of the splendour and pomp of the mighty of the earth, had, in the little world that circumscribed his ambition, a more palpable and indisputable preeminence than is given even to exalted services, or greater excellence; but it is the tenure of his bond that the reputation of a "poor player" dies with him, and the world and Thomas Betterton are even. Near adjoining, with one solitary letter of her name alone distinguishable, rests Aphra Behn. How long and patiently did I measure these cloisters,

and with what a resolved spirit did I trace over its obscure and defaced characters, before I had certainty enough to say, Peace be with thee, Aphra! In the stirring bustle of living men thou art forgotten; but to the eye of contemplation, the intelligence of all ages is wanting to perfect the long stream of intellectual light that runs upwards to the first records of existence; and the world neither is, nor has been, so prodigal of genius, that it may let thee be forgotten: "we have enough to do to make up ourselves from present and passed times, and the whole stage of things scarce serveth for our instruction.”

If the publicity of the cloisters detract something from their enjoyment, how much matter does that publicity minister to our philosophy. They have nothing of the glare and rawness of a common thoroughfare; the passengers are "few and far between;" the very light comes shadowed to us through the tracery of its enclosing screen; and the dark gloom of the walls has a mellowing influence; the lawned priest, preceded by the verger and his macethe reverend age and white hairs of the old man stumbling to his few last prayers-the thoughtless indifference of manhood, that is staid by the freshturned earth, for a new habitant, and for ever, and passes on; the loitering and reluctant pacing of the boys to the adjoining college-vary, but do not change the scene; and even the noisy and tumultuous rush of these same boys, dismissed, has speculation in it:

Anon, a careless herd,
Full of the pastime, jumps along by him,
And never stays to greet him.

Here they are, full of life, of joy-ousness; gliding along without a thought of our common doom, as if their youth were an immortal dower: here they are! but how soon will they be toiling through" the perplexed paths" of the world of business-how soon here "quietly inurn'd," and how soon after forgotten, "the greater part being as though they had not been, found in the register of God, uot in the records of man."

THURMA

forthwith, as far as in you lies, by giving, in this third number, the preparatory outline which should have preceded your series of more detailed accounts. I am aware that this outline would require much weighing and considering, seemingly incompatible with the advanced stage of the month; but I believe a walk to our idle Janus's would spare your judicial powers any trouble. You know his boudoir, The Argument of his Collection, as he terms it. What think you of a description of its principal contents? He seldom sits there except of an evening, so you will be more undisturbed than at home, your readers will be amused, and Wflattered-Come! he is not very well, and will thank you for the visit.' So said my respected friend S**** as he concluded his breakfast with a pint of boiling cocoa, after smashing in the little ends of two exhausted egg-shells. His notion struck me as a lucky hit. Therefore have the kindness, reader, to find yourself (as the French advertisements have it) at our croney's bronzed knocker, at the sound of which feet shuffle over the stone hall, speedingAprir di Giano il chiuso tempio.-Tasso.

The deity of the place was in his study, lolling on a well squabbed sofa, by the side of a blazing fire; his back guarded from the draft by a large folding Indian screen, and his face from the flame by a pole do. of yellow silk and rosewood. Beside him was placed a small ridged table of French manufacture, where lay his snuff-box, and several antique cameos and intaglios, which he had just been examining with a magnifier; one, a head of Alexander on an onyx of two strata, he still retained, declaring it to be the undoubted work of I forget who. My request was immediately granted, and the servant ordered to light the fire in his master's sanctum." But sit down a minute till the place gets a little

aired; I have'nt been in it these two months-and tell me what you think of that buhl cabinet; it came from Ld.'s sale, who you know was a great connoisseur :-and here is a jewel! This is a brick from the dwelling of the Pre-adamites-from the palace of Giamschid! Istakar! Observe the severity and simple majesty of the old Persian head impressed on its surface, the stiff curls of the beard, and the peculiar bobwig style of the hair! Talking of hair how do you like my new dog?— Here, Neptune!" and forthwith, in size and colour very like a white bear, that animal lounged from his lair behind the screen, and plunged his nose into his master's lap."Show us your paw, old man! Look at the webbed toes! right Newfoundland-there's muscle!-by the bye, mentioning muscle, I've a genuine bit of Terra Cotta from the hand of M. Angelo, his clay sketch for the Aurora on the tomb of Lorenzo di Medici; of which you have the large dot print, by Madile. Duclos, 9s. 6d. That fine suit of fluted armour is new to you, I believe, Vinkbooms? It's German, of about 1507. Dr. Rusty, who is armour-mad, of fered me 4007. for it, but I would not part with it for double. It illustrates Sintram! A grand idea! — àpropos, this romantic Idyll of Fouquè,

The Siege of Ancona' here, in Ollier's Miscellany is very congenially translated by Mr. H ***, who, I understand, is about to introduce to us two more of the Baron's most interesting tales, as companions to his version of Sintram. He is the author of a very deep, thorough-going, highflying article, in the German taste, on the German drama, which, to understand, you must read with rather more attention than one does Mr. Southey's articles in the Quarterly. It is a good touch-stone for clear heads.‡ We are to have something from this gentleman in the next livraison of the Miscellany, which I ar