"His first American ancestor," says Ticonderoga. It is the tomb of Col. Roger Colonel Chester, "emigrated from Hert- Townshend, killed by a cannon-ball while fordshire as a husbandman in 1635." reconnoitring the French lines on July With singular felicity Dean Stanley 25, 1759. He was only twenty-eight, and chose from Mr. Peabody's own diary a is represented on the bas-relief surroundsentence to carve upon his tomb. It is, ed by his officers as he lay in the agonies "I have prayed my Heavenly Father day of death. Americans will look with interby day that I might be enabled before I est on the fine figures of the two red died to show my gratitude for the bless- Indians who support the sarcophagus. ings which He has bestowed upon me by These are the only Indians represented in doing some great good to my fellow-men." the abbey, although there are tomahawks Sentences like these have something and Indian ornaments on the tomb of more than a biographic interest. They are as morally instructive as those carved for the benefit of citizens on the Athenian Hermai. They are scarcely to be found on any tombs before the late dean's time, and they form a brilliant contrast to the dull, vain, and exuberant verbosity which makes so many of the epitaphs absolutely unreadable.

Wolfe.

Of the War of Independence there are but three memorials, all full of pathos.

In the north cloister in a nameless grave lies Gen. Sir John Burgoyne, who died on Aug. 4, 1793, at the age of seventy, sixteen years after he had surrendered and resigned his sword to General Gates at Saratoga in 1777. It is strange that there should be no monument, not even an inscription, to mark the spot where lie the remains of a man whose defeat sent such a thrill through the heart of England and America as has never been equalled in modern times.

Now cross with me to the fourth pillar on the south side, and you will see on the wall above you a cenotaph of pathetic in terest. It is the only one raised by one of the United States of America, and it was placed here in honor of an English officer. It is the memorial erected by an Passing by for one moment the tomb of order of the Great and General Court André, to which we shall return, notice of the Province of Massachusetts Bay," on the wall of the choir, south aisle, the Feb. 1. 1759, "To Lord Viscount Howe, little, unpretending tablet to William Brigadier-General of his Majesty's forces in North America, who was slain July 6, 1758, on the march of Ticonderoga, in the thirty-fourth year of his age; in testimony of the sense they had of his services and military virtues, and of the affection their officers and soldiers bore to his command." The figure which mourns over the hero's trophies and armorial bearings represents the genius of Massachusetts Bay. The sum voted by the province for the monument was £250. Howe was the idol of his soldiers, in all of whose hardships he shared. Among other anecdotes of him we are told that he cut his hair short like his men. He is buried at Albany, and many years after his interment, when his coffin was opened-alas! there are few of the great dead whose remains have escaped this desecration-it was found that after death his locks had grown to beautiful luxuriance.

Wragg. He was a lawyer of South Carolina, who, when the American colonies revolted from Great Britain, "inflexibly maintained his loyalty to the person and government of his sovereign," and was therefore compelled to leave his distressed family and ample fortune, and to fly from the States in the very year of Burgoyne's surrender. His ship was lost on the coast of Holland. The bas-relief represents the shipwreck in which he perished, and the escape of his son, who, with the faithful aid of a black slave, clung to a floating package, and was cast alive upon the shore.

The most interesting memorial of the war is undoubtedly the famous tomb of Maj. John André. The circumstances which brought about the death of that brave, bright, and unfortunate young officer are narrated with such ample detail in all American histories, and the whole Advance to the third pillar beyond this, story of the treason of Benedict Arnold and on the wall you will again see a and the arrest of André is so familiar tomb which bears the ill-fated name of that I need not dwell upon them. His one

desire was that he should not be regarded him intelligence upon ground not within as a spy, and that he should be shot as a the posts of either army." "Against my soldier, not hung as a felon. But stipulation," he said, " my intention, and Provost-Marshal Cunningham had hung without my knowledge, I was conducted Capt. Nathan Hale, and hence André within one of your posts." "Surely," he pleaded in vain in his letter to Washington said to Major Tallmadge, "you do not that he had agreed to meet "a person" consider Hale's case and mine alike." (Arnold or his agent) "who was to give "Yes," replied the American major," pre

cisely similar, and similar will be your not with Washington at all, but with fate." How much he won the sympathy General Greene, whom Washington deand affection of his captors by his frank- puted to act in his behalf. We can only ness and courage; how Washington suppose that the designer, Adam, and the thought him "more unfortunate than sculptor, Van Geldert, were either imperguilty," and with his own hands closed fectly acquainted with the real facts, or the shutters of his room from which the have allowed themselves the poetic license gibbet at Tappan was visible; how until of their art. the last fatal moment he was kept in merciful ignorance that he was not to die a soldier's death; how bravely he met his miserable fate; how he was buried under the gallows, and a peach-tree planted on the spot; how, forty years later, at the request of the Duke of York, his remains were disinterred and sent to England; how it was found that the peach-tree had twined its roots among his hair; how the funeral service was read over his remains on Nov. 28, 1821, in the abbey, by Dean Ireland, and this monument erected to his memory by George III.-are facts known to all. The Americans have treated his memory with generosity. They wept at his death; they sent home his remains with every circumstance of honor. Mr. Cyrus Field has erected a handsome monument which will mark for future generations the historic spot where he was executed.

On the top of the sarcophagus sits Britannia, mourning, beside her lion. The bas-relief represents Washington in his tent, surrounded by his officers, one of whom sits on the ground weeping. An officer bearing a letter in his hand is approaching with a flag of truce. On the right is the fine figure of André, with a platoon of soldiers drawn up in front of him under their officer. At one side is the tree which formed his gibbet.

The heads of Washington and André have several times been knocked off and carried away by nefarious relic-seekers. It is hard to conceive the feelings which could permit such a vulgar mixture of sacrilege and theft. It has been sometimes supposed that this was done in old days by mischievous Westminster boys, with no loftier object than to find something conveniently round with which to play hockey in the cloisters. Charles Lamb, writing to Southey, said that "perhaps it was the mischief of some school-boy fired with some raw notions of transatlantic freedom. The mischief was done about the time that you were a scholar there. Do you know anything about the unfortunate relic?" The passage was a mere jest, but Southey so much disliked any allusion to the " Pantisocracy" dreams of his earlier days that he remained seriously offended with Lamb for years. I do not believe myself that Westminster boys could ever have been such Philistines as to deface the beautiful works of art which are consecrated by the memories of the dead. The beauty and historic interest of the heads must have tempted the senseless and unscrupulous greed of mere relic-mongers.

Over André's tomb, fastened to the wall, is a wreath of autumn leaves brought by Dean Stanley from Tappan, and by him placed here. He also hung on the monument a little silver medal commemorative of André's fate, which was given him by Mr. Field; but that was stolen.

It is usually said that the letter in the hand of the officer is meant to be the letter which André wrote to Washington entreating that he might not die a felon's Leaving the tomb of the ill-fated officer, death. The touching original-which has our American friend must not omit to nobeen paraphrased in verse by N. P. Willis tice on the same wall, a little farther on, -is at Charlottesville, Virginia. No flag a modest tablet to an American citizen, of truce, however, could have been needed Col. J. L. Chester, who, with rare mu for the conveyance of this letter, which nificence and rare devotion of labor, has André simply sent from the cottage in edited in a handsome volume The Mar which he was a prisoner. The flag of truce riage, Baptismal, and Burial Register was only used by General Robertson, whom of the Abbey. The work could only have Sir Henry Clinton sent with two others been accomplished by an archæologist to lay before Washington the proofs fired with intense devotion to his art. In of Andre's innocence. The interview was this work, which cost him years of effort,

and hundreds of pounds of expense, which good with whose genealogies he had long
he could never hope to see repaid, Colonel been occupied. Happily, there is no re-
Chester has stored a mass of the most cu- ward which he would have valued more
rious and unattainable information. The highly.
only way in which the dean and chapter A little farther on, also on the wall of
could recognize the great and unselfish the south choir aisle, is the exquisite
services of an American to their cathedral cenotaph erected by the tolerant catho-
was by giving his memorial tablet a place licity of Dean Stanley in honor of John
among those of so many of the great and and Charles Wesley. I need hardly tell

an American that both of them belong, across the Atlantic. It is that of Barton by the evangelistic labor of their lives, to America as well as to England. It is true that they went there young and untried, and that neither the work of Charles at Frederica nor of John at Savannah was marked by the wisdom and meekness of their later lives. Still, it counts for something in the history of America that the founders of the greatest religious movement of the last century preached also in the New World, and that Whitefield, who succeeded John at Savannah, made many voyages to Georgia, and now lies in his peaceful grave at Newburyport.

Booth, the actor, who died in 1733. His passion for acting was first stimulated by the applause which he won at the annual play of Terence, performed by the Westminster boys. He was at Westminster under the plagosus Orbilius of the school, the celebrated Dr. Busby, and he escaped to Ireland to go on the stage. Among his lineal descendants are Mr. Edwin Booth, distinguished like his ancestor for his Shakespearian representations, and Wilkes Booth, the assassin of Lincoln in Ford's Theatre, Washington, on Good Friday, 1865. How many destinies, how many generations, were influenced by the applause given to a dashing Westminster boy about the year 1695!

A few steps farther will take you into the south transept, and there, in Poets' Corner, among the many busts, tombs, While we are in Poets' Corner we may and statues of great authors, there are as well save time by stepping into the some in which Americans may claim an ancient chapter- house, in which were immediate interest. Dickens and Thack- held not only the capitular meetings of eray, whose memorials are not far from the abbot and monks, but also, for three the statue of Addison, were known to centuries, the sessions of the English Parthousands in the United States by their readings and lectures. The bust of Coleridge who has hitherto been uncom memorated in the abbey, and for some memorial of whose greatness Queen Emma of Hawaii asked in vain when she visited Westminster-is the work of an American artist and the gift of an American citizen; and the American poet and minister, Mr. J. R. Lowell, pronounced the oration when the bust was unveiled. Here, too, is the statue of Campbell, who found the subject of one of his longest poems

"On Susquehanna's side, fair Wyoming," and immortalized-though with many errors the historic massacre. The white bust of Longfellow belongs to America alone. He did not attain-he would have been the last to claim for himself the highest rank in the band of poets. He placed himself, and rightly, below grand old masters, the bards sublime

"Whose distant footsteps echo
Down the corridors of time,"

the

but no poet has ever been more universally beloved for his lyric sweetness and his white purity of soul.

Between the monuments of Philips and Drayton there is one which will have a melancholy interest for the visitor from

liament. The stained-glass windows, originally designed by the "picturesque sensibility" of Dean Stanley, now form his worthy memorial. The first of the series was bequeathed by the dean himself; the second was given by Queen Victoria; the next is a token of the love and honor felt for him by his American friends. It is commemorative of events in the fourteenth century. The upper circle is occupied by Chaucer; the royal personages are Edward III., Queen Philippa, the Black Prince, and Richard II.; the scenes represented are, the abbot and monks in their chapter-house, the House of Commons with their speaker, the Black Prince carried into Parliament, and Richard II. meeting Wat Tyler. The Rev. Dr. Phillips Brooks, one of Dean Stanley's dearest friends, was invited by the Prince of Wales to be present as a representative of America at a meeting of the executive committee to carry out the Stanley memorial.

Coming back into the abbey from the chapter-house, give a glance at the long series of statesmen so many of whom were intimately concerned with the fortunes of America. There are Palmerston, who sent the troops to Canada after the Slidell and Mason affair; and Disraeli; and Canning, who used the proud sen