itself, but you
look across from it at the hideous and dirty wharves of Southwark. Nothing
is more charming than a fine water street; and this water street might be
very fine were it not marred by the projection of a huge railway shed. The
new Courts of Law, a magnificent, tho it is said inconvenient, pile,
instead of being placed on the Embankment or in some large open space, are
choked up and lost in rookeries. London, we must repeat, has had no edile.
Perhaps the finest view is that from a steamboat on the river, embracing
the Houses of Parliament, Somerset House, and the Temple, with St. Paul's
rising above the whole.

WESTMINSTER ABBEY [Footnote: From "The Sketch Book." Published by G.P.
Putnam's Sons.]

BY WASHINGTON IRVING

On one of those sober and rather melancholy days in the latter part of
Autumn, when the shadows of morning and evening almost mingle together and
throw a gloom over the decline of the year, I passed several hours in
rambling about Westminster Abbey. I spent some time in Poet's Corner,
which occupies an end of one of the transepts or cross aisles of the
abbey. The monuments are generally simple; for the lives of literary men
afford no striking themes for the sculptor. Shakespeare and Addison have
statues erected to their memories; but the greater part have busts,
medallions, and sometimes mere inscriptions. Notwithstanding the
simplicity of these memorials, I have always observed that the visitors to
the abbey remained longest about them. A kinder and fonder feeling takes
the place of that cold curiosity or vague admiration with which they gaze
on the splendid monuments of the great and heroic. They linger about these
as about the tombs of friends and companions; for indeed there is
something of companionship between the author and the reader. Other men
are known to posterity only through the medium of history, which is
continually growing faint and obscure; but the intercourse between the
author and his fellow men is ever new, active and immediate.

From Poet's Corner I continued my stroll toward that part of the abbey
which contains the sepulchers of the kings. I wandered among what once
were chapels, but which are now occupied by the tombs and monuments of the
great. At every turn I met with some illustrious name; or the cognizance
of some powerful house renowned in history. As the eye darts into these
dusky chambers of death, it catches glimpses of quaint effigies; some
kneeling i