sk a
question if I desire it, and just have pointed out to me anything of
which the interest is not patent and obvious. The tombs of old knights,
the chantries of silent abbots and bishops, are all very affecting;
they stand for so much hope and love and recollection. Then sometimes
one has a glow at seeing some ancient and famous piece of history
presented to one's gaze. The figure of the grim Saxon king, with his
archaic beard and shaven upper-lip, for all the world like some
Calvinistic tradesman; or Edward the Second, with his weak, handsome
face and curly locks; or the mailed statue of Robert of Normandy, with
scarlet surcoat, starting up like a warrior suddenly aroused. Such
tombs send a strange thrill through one, a thrill of wonder and pity
and awe. What of them now? Sleepest thou, son of Atreus? Dost thou
sleep, and dream perchance of love and war, of the little life that
seemed so long, and over which the slow waves of time have flowed?
Little by little, in the holy walls, so charged with faith and
tenderness and wistful love, the pathetic vision of mortality creeps
across the mind, and one loses oneself in a dream of wonder at the
brief days so full of life, the record left for after time, and the
silence of the grave.

Then, when I have drunk my fill of sweet sights, I love to sit silent,
while the great bell hums in the roof, and gathering footsteps of young
and old patter through the echoing aisles. There is a hush of
expectation. A few quiet worshippers assemble; the western light grows
low, and lights spring to life, one after another, in the misty choir.
Then murmurs a voice, an Amen rises in full concord, and as it dies
away the slumberous thunder of a pedal note rolls on the air; the
casements whirr, the organ speaks. That fills, as it were, to the brim,
as with some sweet and fragrant potion, the cup of beauty; and the
dreaming, inquiring spirit sinks content into the flowing, the aspiring
tide, satisfied as with some heavenly answer to its sad questionings.
Then the stately pomp moves slowly to its place--so familiar, perhaps
trivial an act to those who perform it, so grave and beautiful a thing
to those who see it. The holy service proceeds with a sense of
exquisite deliberation, leading one, as by a ladder, through the
ancient ways, up to the message of to-day. Through psalm and canticle
and anthem the solemnity passes on; and perhaps some single slender
voice, some boyish treble, unconscious of