the widow, the orphan, the invalid, and realize from experience, that"Seldom can the heart be lonely, If it finds a lonelier still, Self-forgetting, seeking only Emptier cups to fill."

WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

Westminster Abbey was erected as the convent church or "Minster " of a famous monastery dedicated to the Apostle Peter, called "West " because west from London, which city, at that time, extended no farther in that direction than Ludgate Hill. The ground on which the Abbey stands was formerly an island called the Isle of Thorns, and described as a "terrible place," taking its name from a thorny jungle which covered it.

Edward the Confessor, who came to the throne in 1042, was the first Anglo-Saxon king of England after the Danes. During the Danish dominion he had been exposed to great trials and reduced to dire extremities. In one of these he vowed to his patron, Saint Peter, that if he were aided and brought out of his troubles, he would visit the holy tomb at Rome with suitable offerings. He was delivered and was elected King of England on the death of Hardicanute. Mindful of his vow, he at once prepared to accomplish it. A pilgrimage in those days was no light matter, and the state of England was SO troubled that it was represented to King Edward that he could not make so long a journey without danger to the realm. Application was made to Pope Benedict ÎX., who relieved the king from the performance of his vow on condition that he would found a Benedictine monastery in honor of St. Peter, and keep it under royal protection. The condition was accepted, and the Abbey of the West came into being.

The selection of its site was due

to the discovery of two fine springs of water on Thorny Isle. Those springs have flowed for over eight hundred years and they still exist, one in the Dean's Yard, and the other in St. Margaret's Churchyard. They were called by Dean Stanley "the vivifying center of the great establishment which has grown up around them."

In the 13th century, Henry III. pulled down partly the old church, adding to it the chapel which bears the name of Edward the Confessor, to which he caused the remains of the saintly Edward to be translated, with a pomp equaled only by that which accompanied the translation of Becket's remains at Canterbury, where fifty years before the king in his boyhood had been present.

Standing on the grave of Edward the Confessor in the old church, amid all the strangeness and bewilderment of the new country which he had come to rule, William the Conqueror was crowned King of England, and it is said his iron nerves were shaken when in contrast with the solemnity of the occasion he heard without the tumult and discord between his Nor

man horsemen who held guard and the rebellious Saxons who pressed forward for admittance. All the coronations of English sovereigns since that trying day have taken place at the same shrine. The first seven of the Norman kings are not buried here, and, so far as is recorded, took but little interest in the Abbey.

It remained for Henry III. to restore Westminster as a royal sarcophagus, and the beautiful chapel which bears his name was intended as a burial-place for himself and his descendants.

His Norman ancestors had made light of the Saxon blood in their veins, by virtue of which alone they ruled; but Henry prided himself on

his descent from Alfred and the good Queen Maud, rather than from Rollo of Normandy, or Geoffrey of Anjou. He was so fond of the Abbey and its sacred contents that he determined to take up his residence as near as possible to the Confessor's tomb; and the Palace of Westminster, on the site of the present Houses of Parliament, was for the first time regularly inhabited. Here he lived and died, and here his queen, Eleanor, gave birth to her warlike son Edward

How great a prize would be a "Macaulay's History of Henry's long and prosperous reign! His aim was to be a worthy successor to the Confessor; to retain and transmit to posterity his pomp as well as his virtues. He was buried on the north side of the Confessor's shrine, and, according to his wish, a long line of his descendants have found their final resting-place near him. Into this chapel were brought with St. Edward the remains of his queen, Editha. They were deposited beneath his shrine. Near by was laid Queen Maud, wife of Henry I., whose piety sounds marvelous to even the most conscientious devotee of the present day. It is said, "that every day during Lent she would walk from her palace to the Abbey barefoot and wearing a garment of hair. She would wash and kiss the feet of

the poorest people and give them alms."

Here, too, is laid Edward I., the Longshanks of history, and his beloved wife Eleanora. Edward II. was buried at Gloucester Cathedral, which was near that Berkeley Castle, where he met his miserable death. Here is the tomb of King Edward III. and Queen Philippa. His son, the Black Prince, was buried at Canterbury, but the next in succession, Richard II., was brought to the Con

fessor's chapel for interment after his murder by Henry IV. Fifteen years did King Henry wear his bloodstained crown, which, with great pomp and ceremony, was assumed in the Abbey. At last, worn and weary, broken in health and spirit, and doubtless shadowed by the relentless presence of remorse and regret, he desired greatly to go on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Gathering his little remaining strength, he came to the Confessor's tomb to pay his devotions. Kneeling, doubtless, within a step of the vault of his murdered victim, the poor king had need of repentance and absolution. While in the chapel he was seized with a chill, and was borne by his attendants to a room called the Jerusalem chamber, which was a part of the Abbot's house, and was also connected with the Abbey. Shakspeare gives us the touching story of his death. King Henry asks:

"Doth any name particular belong unto the lodging where I first did swoon? Warwick. Tis called Jerusalem, my

noble lord.

But, bear me to that chamber, there I'll lie;

In that Jerusalem shall Harry die."

What wonder that the dying king should give further charge to be buried at Canterbury? Not here, not beside the wronged Richard, but alone, and in peace- -if peace there was for him at Canterbury. Thus it happened that the name of King Henry IV. is not found in St. Edward's Chapel.

The tomb of Henry V., his warlike son, however, stands at the head of the steps leading into the chapel. Henry VIII. is the only one of the

house of Tudor not buried here. The point of interest in the Abbey, architecturally, is the grand chapel of Henry VII., which is like a miniature cathedral itself, or rather like the choir of a cathedral, occupying the place given to the Lady Chapel at the extreme eastern end. A flight of stone steps leads up to immense gates of brass, in which are curiously wrought the portcullis and the crown, the rose and the thistle, and other devices to which the House of Tudor was entitled, and which appear at King's College, Cambridge, and all other places patronized by Henry VIII. There is a central and two side aisles. At the head of the former, where the high altar once stood, Edward VI., who died in his sixteenth year, was buried. A Communion-table now marks the spot. It bears the following inscription_in Latin, so characteristic of the late Dean that its translation is worth repeating: "In place of the ancient altar, destroyed in the civil wars, to the honor of God, and in pious memory of Edward VI., who is buried beneath, this holy table, in a gentler age, was placed by Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D. D., Dean of Westminister. 1870."

In the centre of the south transept, the Poet's Corner, is an inscription upon a stone slab in the floor, over which there is a constant tread of feet. It reads, "Charles Dickens, born February 7, 1812; died June 9, 1870." Thirteen years have passed since the graver's tool made the simple record, but fresh flowers are still placed there.

The origin of the peculiar glory of this part of the Abbey is derived from a single tomb, that of the Father of English Poetry, Geoffrey Chau

cer.

He had been given some appointment connected with the Abbey by his patron, Richard II., and the

lease of a house in a small garden, where now stands the chapel of Henry VII., was also granted to him. In that house he died in the year 1400, and probably owed his burial in the Abbey to its close proximity. It was not till many years afterward, when his fame was still fresh, that the present monument was erected to his memory. What more suggestive and appropriate than that Spenser should be the next to find a place by his side? It was a precedent that a simple poet should lie among kings and nobles which was taken advantage of in the great poetic revival that was one of the characteristics of the Elizabethan age.-Domestic Monthly.

[For Manford's Magazine.]
SACRED PLACES.

REV. FIDELIA W. GILLETTE.

I have not given the hours to Biblicial study especially-either the hours of morning or of the afternoon, and yet, all day my heart has lingered over those beautiful words portraying the consciousness of Moses as to the presence of the Lord, and the beautiful gleam of the burning bush; and I have said to myself that there

could be no human soul to which these words would not bring a lesson of comfort and of help. What infinite meaning there is in the sentences of this word picture! What loveliness that was the beautiful memories of which the years bear on for us, as the winds carry the fragrance of the pansy pansy and the mignon-beds over which they pass, to farthest distances, until they touch with their floating incense the cloud-crowned mountaintops and the far cities of the plains.

No life can be so poor, no life can be so sinful that these words do not picture to it some precious scene of the past, when-even pursued most closely by poverty's haggard face and bony hands when creeping,

snake-like, or with brazen boldness, through haunts of sin, and staining the heart and the hand with the scarlet of crime, there was not behind it -perhaps in the far away mornings or evenings, perhaps just a few steps in the backward distance-some little bush of beauty, its uplifting branches and its delicate green leaves all aflame with a sacred glory; the light has played about it, and a-through it, it may be for many months, perchance for many years, but it is not consumed, it is kindled to immortal flame. There the angel of the Lord spake so plainly as to be distinctly heard and fully remembered. There God's omnipotent and smiling heart looks out upon us in the faces of beauty that have since borne in the few or the many changes, the lineaments that never age, the precious grace that can never depart. It is the bush of flame, lighting with its beautiful halo every onward step to the grave.

The burning bush, or the holy ground-it is the holy of holies in the life lighted with the soft radiance that never consumes the beauty about it, neither does it faced away in enshrouding darkness.

Sacred places! Holy ground! We indeed go back to them with reverent tread, in the hush of silence that no rude word shall ever break. We remove, as it were, our shoes from off our feet; and we allow no alien heart to enter, for the place upon which we stand is sacred as the altar of sacrifice.

Childhood's innocence, infantile joys, woman's tenderness, manhood's strength, the wisdom of the ages, the poet's conception, filling out his immortal rhythm, the artist's power, the statesman's lore, literature's prose of richness, love's witching song and alluring face, hope, success, dreams of a life divine-something of these

It

linger in, or lie about these sacred places of human endearment. matters but little what or where be the place or spot; there the bush of flame has been lighted; there its golden gleaming yet shines; every grain of dust over which its glory falls is holy. It may be an artist's studio in some far-distant city, a library of scholastic gleanings, a mountain-height, or a winding valley, a forest shaded spring, or a logcabin in the wilderness surrounded by our country's flag of beauty and power. It may be a little grave in some lonely cemetery--at, Greenwood, or at Elmwood, or at Mt. Auburn, a marble shrine, or a towering monument a flower-crowned mound in a prairie, or a hill-side grave-yard. But it is ours. We never forget it. No unholy feet must profane it. No impure thought shall sully it. Angels protect it. It has become to us a part of Godeternal as is he, Himself. It is haps the one only spot on earth where we have drawn so near the Father as to become conscious of his presence, and to understand his voice of helpfulness unto us, and possibly in the light of its radiance we shall find our way onward and upward until we are permitted to tarry with Him.

SELF-CULTURE

per

AND SELFISH

CULTURE.

REV. BROOKE HERFORD.

Let me not be supposed for a moment to disparage thoughtful, earnest self-culture. It is one of the best elements of life. Upon men especially, it even needs urging. I do not think the women of America to-day stand in special need of having it pressed upon them. Of course there are plenty of individual women who do, but the general "set" of woman's life, in this country, at present, is unmistakably in the direction of selfculture. That a great deal of this

culture, in colleges and literary societies and private reading is superficial and slipshod, is true. There is too much studying of times and things at a distance, and too little of times and things near at hand; too much abstract speculation about how things came to be, and too little studying of how they are, of the concrete facts of pebble and plant and man that are here and now. Still, that is no reason for disparaging the culture of to-day. It is inevitable it should be straggling and pretentious in its earlier stages. All that will correct itself.

It

But while the women of this country are as a class turning their minds earnestly to self-culture, the same. cannot be said of the men at least certainly it cannot in these Western cities. It makes me rather sad to see the generation of average young men who are growing up to be, a quarter of a century hence, the American nation-to see the rarity of any attempt to carry on their education after they leave school, the absence of any taste for reading, the gradual growth of an incapacity for reading anything but the newspaper. makes me sad, as I think how they are losing so much of the wonder and glory of life and of the world they are living in; sadder still as I look forward to their later years, and think of them prospering, perhaps able to retire from business, and yet having nothing to retire to, nothing to interest themselves in. I wish I could persuade every young man I know to take up some study, and to earnestly pursue that by the steady reading of one hour each day. After all, it is this free time that is the making of real life! Even the greatest men of literature and science have become so not by being put to these things for their business, but by growing into them in their free time. They

and some

have been laboring men, thing more; or clerks, and something more; like old John Nowell, one of our Lancashire botanists, with whom I had many a ramble over our hills and moors twenty years ago, who, having from eight years old to work twelve or fourteen hours a day at a factory, began the love of botany, which ended in giving him a European name, by noting the wayside plants as he went to and from his work; or like Dr. Schlieman, who at twenty-one had only got so far as to be a clerk in a store in Hamburg on $160 a year, but even then in his little garret was studying the languages, which gradually led him to the Greek, and plodding on in the unnoticed beginnings of that way which has now become so famous. Yes; it is in that "something more " that lie the possibilities of happy and ever enlarg ing culture, and all the finer destinies of life.

But where shall we draw the line that is to distinguish between selfculture and selfish-culture? Not in the quantity of it, but in the quality and spirit of it. I would say: distrust all culture which you feel making you disinclined for active, helpful duty, or tending to isolate you from your fellow-creatures in fastidious seclusion. I am persuaded that Christ's spirit of brotherhood, loving fellowship with our kind—not with some little coterie of sympathizing minds, but precisely with the common world-this, which Christ's life so beautifully exemplifies, is the spirit which most of all lies at the heart of true, wholesome living, and helps to keep all parts of life, including this-culture-in healthy propor

tions.

Not our literary clubs, and our circles of kindred students-these are only extensions of self, as it were; a bright, sociable home, where the