think over the thousand and one stories which made our childhood so happy, and stored up a world of unconscious poetry for our future years: or else it conjures up the graceful old Italian histories of moonlight festivals, when the red wine was cooled, and the lute echoed by the soft sound of falling waters. We leave the world of reality behind us for that of romance. That little fountain keeps, with its music, the entrance, as if to lull all more busy cares before we enter that quiet garden. Once entered in, how much lies around to subdue the troubled present with the mighty past! The river is below, with its banks haunted by memory.
The whole history of England—and it is a glorious one—is called up at a glance. Westminster Abbey—the altar of the warrior, and the grave of the poet—sheds its own sanctity on the atmosphere; and yet to look beneath the still shadow of those stately trees, in the spiritual presence of the departed, life is as troubled and as anxious
