red in lofty
contemplation of nationality, but a feeling of fondness creeps over the
traveler or reader when he bows at the grave of buried genius, while tears
of remembrance even wash away the sensuous Bacchanalian escapades of
impulsive, poetic revelers.

The author, touched by the insanity of genius, must ever live in the mind
of the reader, and while posterity shall forget even warriors, kings and
queens, it never fails to preserve in marble, granite, bronze and song the
name and fame of great poets.

David, Solomon, Job, Homer, Horace, Ovid, Angelo, Dante and Plutarch are
deeply imbedded in the memory of mankind, and although great kingdoms,
empires and dynasties, have passed away to the rubbish heap of oblivion,
the poet, musician, painter, and sculptor still remain to thrill and
beautify life, and teach hope of immortality beyond the grave.

After gazing on the statues of abbots, Knights Templar, Knights of the
Bath, bishops, statesmen, kings and queens, many mutilated by time and
profane hands, William stood by the coffin of Edward the Confessor and
mournfully soliloquized:

_Westminster! lofty heir of Pagan Temple;
Imperial in stone; a thousand years
Crowns the record of thy inheritance,
Gilding the glory of thy ancient fame,
With imperishable deeds--
Liberty of thought and action, shall
Forever cluster about thy classic form;
While new men with new creeds, and reason,
Shall overturn the religions of to-day,
As thou hast invaded and destroyed
The Pagan, Roman rules of antiquity.
These marble hands and faces appealing
For remembrance, to animated dust
Appeal in vain, for we, whose footfalls
Only sound in marble ears, cold and listless,
Shall ourselves follow where they led, dying
Not knowing the mysterious secrets of the grave.
Here the victor and vanquished, side by side,
Sleep in dreamless rest, Kings and Queens in life,
Battling for power, all conquered by tyrant Death,
Whose universal edict, irrevocable,
Levels Prince and Peasant, in impalpable dust.
Crowns to-day, coffins to-morrow, with monuments
Mossed over, letter-cracked, undecipherable
As the mummied remains of Egyptian Kings.
Vain, vain, are all the monuments of man,
The greatest only live a little span;
We strut and shine our passing day, and then--
Depart from all the haunts of living men,
With only Hope to light us o