red years ago. Yet although the
material fabric of this ancient foundation can no longer receive her
sons within her bosom, her spirit is perhaps more alive than it has
ever been since her altars were demolished and the images of her saints
torn from their high places. No longer do the smoke of innumerable
candles and the fumes of incense blacken and obscure her arches, but
the spiritual breath of supplication and of thanksgiving still as of
yore ascends to heaven from this ancient church, consecrated by the
prayers of so many {9} past generations. The old order has changed,
and a Protestant form of worship has long taken the place of the florid
mass; what further changes the future has in store no man can prophesy.
But at present churchmen of all shades of religious feeling may worship
in this church with no extreme ritual to disturb their minds, and at
the same time with none of that irreverent and jarring carelessness in
the ordering of the services which vexed the souls of many in the days
long ago, before any of the present generation were born. On one
festival in the year, the Translation of St. Edward the Confessor, the
13th of October, Roman Catholics return in ever-increasing numbers to
the West Minster, which was once their own, and pilgrims may be seen
kneeling round the shrine, offering their devotions to the saint. On
this historic day the Abbey clergy, mindful also of the founder's
memory, keep his feast at their own service in the choir, by a sermon
preached in his honour, Protestants and Catholics thus uniting in a
common homage to the memory of the sainted English king.

There are several points of view whence the group of buildings formed
by the Abbey, St. Margaret's Church, Westminster Hall, and the Houses
of Parliament, can be seen above the {10} roofs of the houses, or
without any intervening obstruction. The foreigner who arrives at
Charing Cross first sees Westminster from the railway bridge, and gets
another and a nearer aspect as he reaches the bottom of Whitehall. Now
that passenger-steamers ply once again upon the river, many persons are
familiar with the unrivalled water approach, but no longer does the
wayfarer coming from the south or east hire a boat from the Lambeth
side, and thus follow the traditional route taken by St. Peter, when he
came to consecrate the original church on Thorneye. Although the Roman
road, which led from north to south of England, and crossed the river
here,