It would be pleasant to notice the records of the Tower as a palace, were they not so soon changed to those of a prison in many instances. Henry VIII. gave to all his wives receptions of great magnificence within these walls, but what followed? All was bright to Queen Anne Boleyn in 1533, but in 1536 she inhabited the same apartments, and soon was on her way to the scaffold on Tower Green! - the spot pointed out to us where many had surrendered their lives. History tells of the Tower as a prison.

During the eight centuries the walls of the Tower have frowned upon the Thames, it has not been attacked by a foreign enemy, but during the internal wars which have so often disturbed the country, it has been an object of great importance for each party to gain possession of this impregnable fortress, and therefore it has many times felt the shock of war.

The New Palace of Westminster, or, in other words, the Houses of Parliament, built in consequence of the burning of the old Houses of Parliament in 1834, lies just across the street from Westminster Abbey, extending along the banks of the Thames for nine hundred feet. A royal palace has occupied the same site since the time of Edward the Confessor, who delayed his death, it is said, as long as possible in order to dedicate his abbey. This is probably the finest Gothic structure in the world; it covers nearly eight acres and contains two miles of passages and corridors and five hundred rooms. It is surmounted by numberless towers, but the most important ones are the Victoria Tower, the largest and highest square tower in the world (it bears a flagstaff four hundred feet above the ground, which floats a royal standard twelve yards long and nine yards wide, when the sovereign is within the walls), the Clock Tower, supporting a clock with the largest dial in the world, and the Central Tower, which also has something the largest in the world, but we cannot describe it. Of the five hundred rooms we can notice but few. The House of Lords is ninety feet long, forty-five wide, and forty-five

high, and in one part of it is the throne where stands Her Majesty's state chair, approached by three steps; on one side of this stands one for the Prince of Wales, and on the other one for the late Prince Consort, each reached by two steps. The monograms in the compartments of the throne, "V. R.," "P. A," and " P. W.," show by whom the chairs were designed to be occupied ; and the various carvings of roses and fleurs de lis, lions and unicorns, shields and escutcheons, tell the history of England for the last century at least. The state chair is somewhat similar to the coronation chair at Westminster Abbey. The House of Commons, too, is no common place after all; but, interesting as it is, we must leave the New Palace of Westminster.

Then Westminster Abbey,

"Where royal heads receive the sacred gold;

It gives them crowns, and does their ashes keep;
There made like gods, like mortals there they sleep."

We look back into the ages for the history of this far-famed cathedral, and find that as early as 616 a Benedictine monastery and church were founded by Sebert, King of Essex, on a peninsula formed by the Thames and a small tributary stream, and called Thorney Island, because overgrown with reeds and thorns. It was called the West Minster in reference to its situation with regard to St. Paul's. This church was destroyed by the Danes, and Thorney Island would have passed out of history had it not been for Edward the Confessor, who laid the foundations of the future celebrated abbey in 1065, and caused it to be dedicated eight days before his death. William the Conqueror was crowned here with great pomp in 1065. Little, however, of the work of Edward the Confessor exists in the present building except the foundations, but his name has been perpetuated by one of his successors on the English throne, Henry III., who erected a chapel to his memory, and the bones of the canonized Confessor now rest by the side of Henry III. in the chapel which bears his name. The last great addition to this beautiful structure was the

chapel of Henry VII., in 1503. The two towers at the western entrance have since been added under the direction of Christopher Wren.

The general plan of the building is that of a Latin cross; length, 416 feet; breadth at the transept, 203 feet; at the nave, 102 feet; height of the west towers, 225 feet. We can hardly tell about the Choir, the Nave, the North and South Transepts, the Chapter House and Cloisters. The interior of the Abbey is grand "with all its mystical effects of light and shade, its lofty arches, its soaring roofs, its glorious windows, and its elaborate sculpture" The building is divided into two tiers of arches of unequal height; above these are pointed windows with different kinds of arches, then a gallery with carved moldings, and still above, lofty windows. Everywhere, on the floor and on the walls, are monuments to the celebrated dead whose dust reposes here. The mosaic pavements in different parts, and the stained-glass windows representing scriptural subjects, add to the beauty and interest of the whole. It is well worth the English sixpence to visit the nine chapels of different dates and listen to the accounts of their builders and occupants, only two of which chapels we will notice. First, Edward the Confessor's, previously mentioned, containing the tomb of this founder of the Abbey, and also the coronation chairs, one of which covers the famous stone of Scone on which the Scottish kings were crowned until 1297, when it was brought to England by Edward I. But grandest of all is the chapel of Henry the Seventh, in the centre of which are the recumbent effigies of Henry and his queen, with hands uplifted to heaven, and surrounded by many devices relating to the union of the red and the white roses. Here too lie Mary and Elizabeth, nearer than they came to each other in their lives, and Cromwell once had a resting-place here, but the royalists took up his body and buried it, decapitated, under Tyburn gallows. Leaving the remainder of the ninety monuments and shrines to royalty, this "acre sown with royal seed," we turn to the Poet's Corner, where, Washington