return of members to represent it in Parliament. Here, then, were the tag-rag and bob-tail of this ancient and radical borough wont to disport themselves in fighting, roaring, drinking, and swearing, during the fourteen days saturnalia of each contested election. But these scenes are no more; the Reform bill, by dividing the constituencies and the erection of district polling-booths, has destroyed the glorious anarchy, the rude liberty of the Westminster canaille; and we may look with equal success for the May-pole in the Strand or the Standard on Cornhill, as for an election-mob, such as in the days of Fox, Burdett, Hobhouse, Maxwell, or Sheridan, crowded the front of St. Paul's, Covent Garden. But if the history of the hustings of Covent Garden would be the history of political party for the last hundred years, not less would the history of the hotels and coffeehouses, which occupy two sides of the quadrangle, comprise the anecdotal annals of the last century, and the earlier portion of the present. The early companions of George IV. here revelled; and a host of buried talent, senatorial, literary, forensic, and dramatic, has the 'venue' of its brightest witticisms and most brilliant sallies laid in the hotels of the Garden'-in the Bedford, the Russell, the Piazza, Offley's, Mother Butler's, and the rest.

"All around the subject of our article has experienced its full share of change. There is a painting by Hogarth, from which an etching has been published, representing Covent Garden in 1745. There stands the predecessor of the present church, alike in every respect (except the illuminated clock in the pediment); but here the resemblance ceases. The area now occupied by the handsome market, with its granite columns, plate-glass windows, covered arcades and conservatories, is in Hogarth's picture an uneven space divided by posts and chains, with a pump in its centre. Here and there a market-woman, with looped-up petticoats and exposed neck, presides over heaps of vegetables scattered on the ground, while among mounds of turnips, carrots, and cabbages, strut several formal figures in the uncouth head-dresses, pinched stomachers, and stiff diamondquilted skirts of a century ago, accompanied by puppy-dogs, and beaux as precise and quaint in attire as themselves. But to return. The design both of church and piazza of the present building is said to have been borrowed from a place built by Cosmo de Medicis at Leghorn. The bold projecting cornice outside, and the eight Corinthian columns of the altar-piece within, have found many admirers among the cognoscenti. In conclusion, we must add, that the inimitable author of Hudibras is also buried here, and no less a humorist than Dr. Walcot, the well-known 'Peter Pindar:' their monuments ought to be preserved."

CHAPTER XIV.

WESTMINSTER ABBEY AND THE PARKS.

HAT a crowd of solemn associations gather around the mind of the intellectual visitor on first entering these ancient walls! the very silence which reigns around the vast edifice is startling, and the sound of a falling footstep seems to awaken a thousand sleeping echoes that were mute and voiceless as the surrounding tombs. We feel that we are in the presence of the mighty dead; and, as we gaze around, the deeds which throw a grandeur and a gloom over the pages of English history pass in vivid succession before

the

eye of the mind. The very pavement seems strewn with the ruins of crowns, sceptres, helmets, and swords, mitres and croziers, bent, crushed, dented, and broken; while, amid the dim gold and the rusted steel, the green laurels of the poet alone remain unchanged. What moving scenes have broken the lengthened shadows which those highpiled pillars throw over aisle and choir! the christenings, coronations, marriages, and funerals of departed monarchs, who have returned to the dust from whence they came. Light and darkness, summer and winter, have brightened and deepened thousands of times over the shadowy crypts in which their ashes repose-every thing grand and imposing is swept away excepting the mighty monuments, which scarcely seem the work of human hands; they rise like images of eternity, ever bending and keeping watch above their silent graves.

Here, in the Pix-office, we are surrounded by Saxon architecture. How massive, plain, solid, and majestic, is this portion of the vene

rable pile! As it stands now, so it stood before the shores of England were startled by the sound of Norman trumpets-a monument worthy of the descendant of Alfred the Great! The beautiful Mosaic pavement that lies before the altar in the choir, was brought from Rome by the good old Abbot Ware, about the close of the reign of the third Henry-a king to whose liberality we are indebted for a great portion of the erection of the Abbey: for the completion of the whole was the work of many eventful years; and before its towers rose, as they do now, pointing to the sky, many a crowned head sunk in succession into the dark quietude of the tomb. Suns rose and set, and the mighty work grew up; and amid the trump and thunder of a thousand battles, it has stood unshaken: it is too strong for the

destroying hand of man; and Time, as if in reverence, has trod lightly as he stepped over it.

Amid such an assemblage of architectural grandeur as the Abbey presents, the mind is filled with a rich confusion of imagery, as if incapable of grappling with the whole. It seems like the sunlight

that flames in through the deep-dyed windows; we stand amid a dazzle of blaze and brightness that appears to have neither begin

ning nor end; here flashing like gold, there stealing into the dim purple twilight, and gilding as it passes a shrine or a stony shroud; then settling down amid the vaulted shadows of the tombs, or just lighting faintly in its passage the uplifted hands of the recumbent image, that have been clasped for centuries in the attitude of silent prayer. We know not whether to start from the shrine of Edward the Confessor, or the coronation-chair, to count our footsteps through the long chapters of history; for the forms of the actors themselves come crowding around us; gazing upon the one, then seating themselves in the other-a rapid succession of phantoms, each dazzling the eye for a moment by its splendour, then sinking down again into the cold stony image that is doomed to hold its hands in the mute, meek penance of unceasing prayer, as it has done through the grey old years of departed centuries. How beautiful is the figure which graces the tomb of Queen Eleanor! Gaze on the calm loveliness of that matchless countenance, and you will fancy that a sweet sleep has stolen over it-that it has but laid down to rest awhile, and while dreaming, its beauty burst forth and dispelled every shade of sorrow, as if Time himself had kept watch over it, and sheltered it from dust and ruin with his wings, and guarded it with his scythe, allowing no mortal finger to touch the hallowed shrine over which he has long kept jealous watch. Death seems never to have entered that cold grey marble palace of beauty. Here lie the remains of Richard II. and his Queen; and while we gaze upon his monument, and recal his "sad, eventful history," we think of the undying poetry in which Shakspeare has enshrined him, and feel as if we could sit for hours upon the pavement and tell “sad stories about the death of kings." Bolingbroke ought to have been buried by his side; and for the sake of Shakspeare there would be no feeling outraged, nor no disrespect shewn to the dead, if his remains were exhumed and placed side by side of the monarch he dethroned. How rich and magnificent is Henry the Fifth's monument, every way worthy of the hero of Agincourt! Strange that even amid the solemnity of death, the eye of an Englishman kindles while he recals the splendid achievements of this brave king, that neither the horrors of war, nor the blood shed at that victorious banquet, throw a sickening sensation over the heart while we gaze upon the tomb of the conqueror. The far past seems to deaden these sympathies; and we look upon the actors as we do upon the words on a time-worn monument, which tell how those who sleep below once lived and were famous in their day, that they died, and were buried: and we read and pass on with a feeling of pride, respect, or sorrow; and the next moment finds us gazing with similar thoughts and sympathies upon

the grave of another. Above hangs the helmet which the warrior king wore in battle, shewing by the deep dents which are imprinted upon it, that it was borne into the very thickest of the strife, and had its share of blows dealt heavily, when men lived but to conquer or to die."

66

There is a strange want of harmony between the ancient and modern monuments. Our ancestors understood the "keeping" of their subjects within the pale of style, beauty, and order better than we do or have done. They made their ornaments and furniture to correspond with the venerable and costly edifice which their taste and piety had reared; and in the fulfilment of their solemn ceremonies, allowed no meddling undertaker to disfigure the hallowed mansion with his grave mockery. A glance at the tombs of our old kings is the proof -they have become a portion of Westminster Abbey, while the additions made during the last two centuries are, with a few exceptions, sadly misplaced. We look around, and feel as if, while in the midst of some impressive ceremony, a group of strange maskers had suddenly broken in, snapped the train of our thoughts, and by their antics diverted both mind and eye from the imposing subjects with which they were before so earnestly engrossed. Statues or monuments, that would look well in open squares or spacious halls, startle us by their very nakedness, when they step out between the shadowy and solemn crypts, where death itself is roofed over and vaulted in at the foot of the mighty mound whose very majesty is overwhelming. It is as if the eye, while contemplating the grandeur of Parnassus, was disturbed by the white butterflies that are ever crossing each other at its base. Mere inscriptions on some Gothic tablet

would be better than these abortions: a list of names would not offend, like many of these pale, inexpressive countenances, that "fright” the aisle “from its propriety” in marble. The name alone in such a place would strike the right chord, while the . . . . but we are standing amongst the mighty dead.

The beautiful screen erected by Blore is a splendid exception to the mass of modern innovations. Turn to the monument of Sir Francis Vere, in the eastern aisle of the transept, and there you see what true genius can produce.

We will now glance at the Poets' Corner, a spot haunted by sad and sweet associations. Here stands the massy and solemn-looking tomb of Chaucer, that "morning star" of poetry which first dawned through the long night of Egyptian darkness. He, the earliest child of English song, was the first bard interred within this great national mausoleum; and it now appears that the monument was erected soon after his death: there is an antique look about it which would