ropolis and the
Parthenon, the plains of Marathon, the Pass of Thermopylae, thrilling as
they are with heroic and patriotic emotion; not the Forum and the
Coliseum and the triumphal arches of Rome. No; the pious pilgrim from
the Far West seeks a sequestered, old-fashioned little town, in the
heart of the most delicious rural scenery that even old England can
boast; he walks up a quiet, drowsy, almost noiseless street, with quaint
old houses, half brick, half timber, hardly changed of aspect since they
looked out on the Wars of the Roses. He comes to an ancient, ivy-mantled
tower hard by a placid, silvery stream on which a swan is ever sailing;
he passes through a pleached alley under a Gothic gateway of the little
church, and bends in reverence before a solitary tomb, for in that tomb
repose the ashes of Shakespeare. [Cheers.] We claim our share in every
atom of that consecrated dust. Our forefathers, who first planted the
seeds of a noble civilization in New England and Virginia, were
contemporaries and countrymen of the Swan of Avon. So long as we all
have an undivided birthright in that sublimest of human intellects, and
can enjoy, as none others can, those unrivalled masterpieces, Americans
and Englishmen can never be quite foreigners to each other though seas
between as broad have rolled since the day when that precious dust wore
human clothing. [Cheers.]

And what is the next resting-place in our pilgrim's progress--the
pilgrim of Outre-Mer? Surely that stately and beautiful pile which we
have all seen in our dreams long before we looked upon it with the eyes
of flesh, time-honored Westminster Abbey. I can imagine no purer
intellectual pleasure for an American than when he first wanders through
those storied aisles, especially if he have the privilege which many of
our countrymen have enjoyed, of being guided there by the hand of one
whose exquisite urbanity and kindliness are fit companions to his
learning and his intellect, the successor of the ancient Abbot, the
historian of the Abbey, the present distinguished Dean of Westminster
[Dean Stanley], to whom we have listened with such pleasure to-night.
[Cheers.] And it will be in the Poets' Corner that we shall ever linger
the longest. Those statues, busts and mural inscriptions are prouder
trophies than all the banners from the most ensanguined battle-fields
that the valor of England has ever won, and with what a wealth of
intellect is that nation endowed which a