for the valuable memorial volume, in which he has enshrined the researches which he has made into the Abbey, and the monuments of its illustrious dead. It has now reached, and deservedly so, a third edition, which contrasts favourably with its predecessors, not only by the additional information which it contains, but by the superior accuracy of its statements. Not that, even now, it is not susceptible of further revision; and that here and there more accurate statements would be desirable, but mostly in minor matters. If, in reviewing it, we do not make copious extracts, it is because many must be already familiar with the contents of it; and those who are not could not while away some summer afternoon more pleasantly than by familiarising themselves with its fascinating records of the ancestral glories of England. The illustrations interspersed give additional interest to the statements.

The volume opens with the history of the foundation of the Abbey, by Edward the Confessor, on a spot which had, at an earlier period, been a wild jungle-a "locus terribilis," a repair for the wild ox or red deer, but was then a pleasant situation among fruitful fields not far from London. The curious legends, cunningly devised to obtain exemption for the Abbey from the see of London, we commend especially to the lovers of tradition and believers in the Acta Sanctorum. They constitute, as Dean Stanley remarks, " a world of poetry ;" and we may add, of fable, in the midst of which one substantial fact remained, "The Norman Church erected by the Saxon king-the new future springing out of the dying past." In the next chapter we have an ample account of the Coronations of our English kings and queens, which, since the coronation of William the Conqueror, have been solemnised in Westminster Abbey. It is a remarkable fact, that "no other coronation rite reaches back to so early a period as that of the sovereigns of Britain ;" and that only in two other countries, in Hungary and in Russia, does "the rite of coronation still retain its primitive savour." The whole chapter abounds with interesting details. A full account in the body of the work, and in the Appendix, is given of the celebrated Stone of Scone, on which every English sovereign from Edward I. to Queen Victoria has been inaugurated. As Dean Stanley does not notice the point, it may be worth while referring to the precisely similar custom which has existed for ages in Madagascar. The Malagasys, too, have a sacred stone-a boulder of basalt rock, which is the counterpart of our coronation stone. At the fisehòana (the showing) of Rànàvalona I., in June 1829, an imposing ceremony took place, of which we have the following account :

"When the queen entered the place of assembly, she was carried towards the sacred stone; having ascended it, she stood facing the

་

east, being surrounded by five generals, each holding his hat in one hand and a drawn sword in the other, the band at the same time played the national air. The queen then demanded, Masina masina masina v'aho ?'-i.e., 'Am I consecrated, consecrated, consecrated?' The five generals replied in the affirmative, then all the crowd shouted, 'Long may you live, Queen Rànàvalona!' The queen then descending from the stone, took the idols Maryakatsiroa and Fantaka into her hands, saying to them, 'My predecessors have given you to me; I put my trust in you, therefore support me.' Delivering them into the hands of their keepers, she was then borne to a platform erected at a little distance from the stone."

We think it might furnish a curious subject of investigation for those who devote themselves to such pursuits, to follow out this identity of national usages further than seems yet to have been done.

From the coronations Dean Stanley passes on to the Royal tombs, aptly quoting Jeremy Taylor.

"Where our kings are crowned, their ancestors lie interred, and they must walk over their grandsire's head to take his crown. There is an acre sown with royal seed, the copy of the greatest change, from rich to naked, from ceiled roofs to arched coffins, from living like gods to die like men. There the warlike and the peaceful, the fortunate and the miserable, the beloved and the despised princes mingle their dust, and pay down their symbol of mortality, and tell all the world that, when we die, our ashes shall be equal to kings, and our accounts easier, and our pains for our crimes shall be less."

Very touching is the account which is furnished of the burial of Queen Elizabeth. Even those of our readers who may be familiar with the circumstances will, we feel assured, peruse it once more with pleasure.

"The grave of Mary bore witness to the change that succeeded on her death. The altars which she had re-erected, or which had survived the devastation of her brother's reign, were destroyed by her sister. The fragments of those which stood in Henry VII.'s Chapel were removed, and carried to 'where Mary was buried, perhaps toward the making of her monument with those religious stones.' It was, however, forty-five years before the memory of her unhappy reign would allow a word to indicate her sepulchre. At last the hour of reconciliation came. Queen Elizabeth, the third foundress of the institution, and who clung to it with peculiar affection, had breathed her last on the cushioned floor in Richmond Palace. The body was brought by the Thames to Westminster :

The Queen did come by water to Whitehall,

The oars at every stroke did tears let fall.

With these and other like exaggerations, which, however, indicate the excess of the national mourning, she was laid in the Abbey.

*Sibree, Madagascar and its People," pp. 365, 366.

'The city of Westminster was surcharged with multitudes of all sorts of people, in their streets, houses, windows, leads and gutters, that came to see the obsequy; and when they beheld her statue or picture lying upon the coffin, set forth in royal robes, having a crown upon the head thereof, and a ball and sceptre in either hand, there was such a general sighing, groaning, and weeping, as the like has not been seen or known in the memory of man; neither doth any history mention any people, time, or state, to make like lamentation for the death of their sovereign.' In the twelve banners which were carried before her, her descent from the House of York was carefully emblazoned, to the exclusion of the Lancastrian line. On the oaken covering of the leaden coffin was carefully engraved the double rose with the simple august initials E. R., 1603.' Dean Andrews preached the funeral sermon. Raleigh was present as captain of the guard. It was his last public act. She was carried, doubtless by her own desire, to the north aisle of Henry VII.'s Chapel, to the unmarked grave of her unfortunate predecessor. At the head of the monument raised by her successor over the narrow vault are to be read two lines full of a far deeper feeling than we should naturally have ascribed to him- Regno consortes et urná, hìc obdormimus Elizabetha et Maria sorores, in spe resurrectionis.' The long war of the English Reformation is closed in those words. In that contracted sepulchre, admitting of none other but those two, the stately coffin of Elizabeth rests on the coffin of Mary. The sisters are at one: the daughter of Catherine of Arragon and the daughter of Anne Boleyn repose in peace at last."

From the Royal Tombs the Dean passes on to a lengthened notice of the Monuments in the Abbey. We have heard of objections made to the prominence which has been given to them in a book entitled "Memorials of Westminster Abbey," but the censure is unjust and uncalled for. We heartily subscribe to the truth of the Dean's remark, that "what the Pantheon was intended to be for France-what the Valhalla is to Germany-what Santa Croce is to Italy," Westminster Abbey is to England. Many of the monuments which it contains may be, and unquestionably are, incongruous in themselves with the edifice, and, without the memories which they enshrine, would be objectionable architecturally and aesthetically, but with this conjunction they form the chief glory of the pile, majestic as it is in itself. We are conscious that we cannot charge ourselves with being insensible to the material splendour of cathedrals and abbey churches, even when most barren of memorials of the mighty dead; but it would be hard to say how much the interest is augmented when "quacunque ingredimur, in aliquam historiam vestigium ponimus." We therefore think Dean Stanley has judged wisely and well in dwelling at so much length upon these features of the Abbey, which have magnetic attraction for all, whether Englishmen or foreigners, who make their pilgrimage to this probably the

most renowned spot in Christendom. The inclination is strong within us, but we lack the space, to dwell at length upon the subsequent portion of this most delightful book, in which the Dean traces the history of the Abbey both before and since the Reformation. It has all the fascination of a romance, and yet is overflowing with information upon topics of the most deep and abiding interest:-the Jerusalem Chamber, that most quaint morsel of antiquity still abiding in our midst, which has been the scene of historical events so momentous-the Cloisters, which recall so vividly monastic life-the Chapter House, recently restored to its former splendour-the School, in which were educated that sulky boy Robert South, and the gracious lad Philip Henry, whom Busby never chastised but once, with the words, "And thou, my child!"-all alike, as they cluster around the Abbey, find their appropriate memorial in the Dean's pages. We can only afford space to close our notice with a passage from the conclusion of the volume which nobly vindicates a period of the history of our Church, which many who profess to be her ministers, unmindful of the saying about ill birds, just at present take peculiar delight in reviling:

:

Here, as often, 'other men have laboured, and we have entered into their labours.' But-comparing the Abbots with the Deans and Headmasters of Westminster, the Monks with the Prebendaries, and with the Scholars of the College-the benefits which have been conferred on the literature and the intelligence of England since the Reformation may be fairly weighed in the balance against the architectural prodigies which adorned the ages before. Whilst the dignitaries of the ancient Abbey, as we have seen, hardly leave any moral or intellectual mark on their age, there have been those in the catalogue of former Deans, Prebendaries, and Masters-not to speak of innumerable names among the scholars of Westminster-who will probably never cease to awaken a recollection as long as the British Commonwealth lasts. The English and Scottish Confessions of 1561 and 1643, the English Prayer Book of 1662, and the American Prayer Book of 1789-which derive their origin, in part at least, from our Precincts-have, whatever be their defects, a more enduring and lively existence than any result of the medieval Councils of Westminster. And if these same Precincts have been disturbed by the personal contests of Williams and Atterbury, and by the unseemly contentions of Convocation, more than an equivalent is found in the violent scenes in St. Catherine's Chapel, the intrigues attendant on the election of the Abbots, and the deplorable scandals of the Sanctuary. Abbot Feckenham believed that, so long as the fear and dread of the Christian name remained in England, the privilege of sanctuary in Westminster would remain undisturbed.' We may much more confidently say, that 'so long as the fear and dread of Christian justice and charity remain,' those unhappy privileges will never be restored, either here or anywhere else. These differences, it is true, belong to the general advance of knowledge

and power which has pervaded the whole of England since the sixteenth century. But not the less are they witnesses to the value of the Reformation-not the less a compensation for the inevitable loss of those marvellous gifts, which passed away from Europe, Catholic and Protestant alike, with the close of the Middle Ages,"

THOUGHTS AND INCIDENTS; OR, RECOLLECTIONS OF A
SHORT WALK IN LEICESTERSHIRE.

[We would wish to call especial attention to the important suggestion made by our correspondent, that at the present crisis prayer should be made to God so that in the Bennett case there may be right judgment and wisdom given to those with whom the adjudication of this question rests. The issue to the Church of England is momentous.-ED.]

FLOWERS may often be detected in a common meadow, if we look carefully and keenly at the grass. We may stoop and pluck them and when our attention is thoroughly engaged, we perceive that they are graceful, beautiful, and interesting. In like manner, in the common tract of life we may find much that at least is interesting, if we be at leisure and disposed to mark definitely the objects without, to realize distinctly the thoughts which they excite and the trains of reflection that follow, and to note carefully the more striking events as they occur. These comprise no small part of the very tissue of the web of man's ordinary history, the threads of which live certainly at the instant they are woven, and cannot but interest a mind that is alive to all that is human and in sympathy with it. I must add, however, that the variety, the comic or tragic features, the pathos, or the weight and importance of what confronts us from time to time, or of the thoughts emerging so mysteriously from the depths of the mind, are scarcely fully estimated until the experience of the day is recalled, and we calmly reflect on its diverse contents.

This is precisely what I have attempted. Last week I was called to pay a hurried visit in Leicestershire. Two days I was at a country house not far from Leicester. Of the first of these days I have recalled some of the thoughts and incidents; the result I now subjoin.

On that day my time was at my own disposal, and I was somewhat at a loss what to do. The lady of the house suggested that I should walk to Leicester. A Representative for