on
meditatively:

"After all, I don't know that it does them much harm, even if they do
grow up book-students. Such people as that, 'tis a great pleasure seeing
them so happy over work which is not much sought for. And besides, these
students are generally such pleasant people; so kind and sweet tempered;
so humble, and at the same time so anxious to teach everybody all that
they know. Really, I like those that I have met prodigiously."

This seemed to me such very queer talk that I was on the point of asking
him another question; when just as we came to the top of a rising ground,
down a long glade of the wood on my right I caught sight of a stately
building whose outline was familiar to me, and I cried out, "Westminster
Abbey!"

"Yes," said Dick, "Westminster Abbey--what there is left of it."

"Why, what have you done with it?" quoth I in terror.

"What have _we_ done with it?" said he; "nothing much, save clean it. But
you know the whole outside was spoiled centuries ago: as to the inside,
that remains in its beauty after the great clearance, which took place
over a hundred years ago, of the beastly monuments to fools and knaves,
which once blocked it up, as great-grandfather says."

We went on a little further, and I looked to the right again, and said,
in rather a doubtful tone of voice, "Why, there are the Houses of
Parliament! Do you still use them?"

He burst out laughing, and was some time before he could control himself;
then he clapped me on the back and said:

"I take you, neighbour; you may well wonder at our keeping them standing,
and I know something about that, and my old kinsman has given me books to
read about the strange game that they played there. Use them! Well,
yes, they are used for a sort of subsidiary market, and a storage place
for manure, and they are handy for that, being on the waterside. I
believe it was intended to pull them down quite at the beginning of our
days; but there was, I am told, a queer antiquarian society, which had
done some service in past times, and which straightway set up its pipe
against their destruction, as it has done with many other buildings,
which most people looked upon as worthless, and public nuisances; and it
was so energetic, and had such good reasons to give, that it generally
gained its point; and I must say that when all is said I am glad of it:
because you know at the worst these silly old buildings serve as a kind
of foil to the beautif