the passionate and devoted love that is in my heart? Well, better that it should there waste itself away in unbroken slumber, than waken into the bitter and burning life which is its inevitable heritage. I do not forget your lessons. What has love been to our gentle Ethel? But, how I have wandered from my subject! At all events the external world is bright enough; and why should we gaze on the dark and troubled depths of that which is within?
The spectacle was magnificent—worthy of the history that I recalled. As I looked round the noble old abbey—the most glorious tomb in which ever were enshrined the honours of the past—I marvelled at the indifference with which the ordinary hours of life treat all that makes its greatness and its poetry. I could not believe that I had never had the resolution to see our most beautiful and most national building before.
It was a strange inconsistency, but never till then had I been so much struck with the worthless and frivolous life of society. Never till then did I feel the deep and
