have to sit for instruction at the feet of their descendants, their descendants might learn not a little from their grandfathers.

In this land of railways could we but see the old stage coach once again, with its four or six horses that large unwieldy body, with room for six persons at least within it, and six more swung upon a kind of basket behind, as it went lumbering slowly along the road; how like the nation it seemed. Fine gaudy colours over the pannellings, with long lists of all the towns through which it would pass, painted on its sides; it was a great lumber room in itself, and it was scarcely possible to travel a hundred miles in it without meeting with almost a hundred adventures. That old rolling travelling machine has passed on its way; in this country, it is nowhere to be met with; it is succeeded by an altogether different traveller, wonderfully adapted to its day, as doubtless our fathers thought the old coach adapted to theirs. Old England has passed with the old coach, but has not Young England some great work to do for futurity, as all the varied scenes of our land start before us, magnificent or grotesque, as we walk through the mausoleum of its heroes, or the workshop of its labourers? does not the impression force itself upon us that there remains a work yet greater to be done than any which has been done? Surely all that we, as yet see, are but the tools wherewith by and by our posterity will work out as agents for God, a destiny for the world. Looking at what has

been effected in this country by the labour, ingenuity, and industry of man, we are reminded of a striking passage in one of the vivid rhapsodies of Mr. Carlyle: "Who," he asks, "shall say what work and works this England has yet to do? For what purpose this land of Britain was created, set like a jewel in the encircling blue of ocean; and this tribe of Saxons was sent travelling hitherward? No man can

:

say it was for a work, and for works, incapable of announcement in words. Thou seest them there; part of them stand done, and visible to the eye; even these thou canst not name; how much less the others still matter of prophecy only! They live and labour there, these twenty million Saxon men; they have been borne into this mystery of life out of the darkness of Past time. How changed now since the first father and mother of them set forth, quitting the tribe of Theuth, with passionate farewell, under questionable auspices; on scanty bullock-cart, if they had even bullocks and a cart, with axe and hunting-spear, to subdue a portion of our common planet! This nation now has cities and seed-fields, has spring-vans, dray-waggons, Long-acre carriages, nay, railway trains; has coined money, exchange-bills, laws, books, war-fleets, spinningjennies, warehouses, and West India Docks; see what it has built and done, what it can and will yet build and do! These umbrageous pleasure-woods, green meadows, shorn stubblefields, smooth-sweeping roads; these highdomed cities, and what they hold and bear;

this mild Good-morrow' which the stranger bids thee, equitable, nay forbearant if need were, judicially calm and law-observing towards thee a stranger,-what work has it not cost? How many brawny arms, generation after generation, sank down wearied; how many noble hearts, toiling while life lasted, and wise heads that wore themselves dim with scanning and discerning, before this waste White-cliff, Albion so called, became a British Empire !"

33

CHAPTER II.

OLD ASSOCIATIONS.

"It is not to be thought of that the flood
Of British Freedom, which to the open sea
Of the world's praise, from dark antiquity,
Hath flowed, with pomp of waters unwithstood,'
Roused though it be, full often, to a mood

Which spurns the check of salutary bands-
That this most famous stream in bogs and sands
Should perish; and to evil and to good
Be lost for ever. In our halls is hung
Armoury of the invincible knights of old:
We must be free or die, who speak the tongue
That Shakspeare spake; the faith and morals hold
Which Milton held.-In every thing we are sprung
Of earth's first blood, have titles manifold."

WORDSWORTH.

It is the association with a place that constitutes the poetry of History: the narrative seems far more impressive if we hear it or read it on the very spot where it transpired. Historical memories are the consecrating and hallowing agencies of spots otherwise desolate and drear; they repeople a place long deserted with the forms and the presences of old.Amidst scenes or upon sites where human tears have been shed, or human joys felt-where

C

wood, or the

the victim has writhed in the grasp of the oppressor, or the sword flashed over the field, we cannot be unmoved we are compelled, in some degree, to live over the past again, and, by the strange force of sympathy, to be present in the midst of transactions which happened hundreds of years since. This is the secret of many of the superstitions which have imposed upon the minds of men. Coming to the shades of the banks of the river, the spirit breathed from thence seemed to them like the fanning of the wings, or the float of the soft garments of some unseen but attendant spirit; and on the spot where the murder was committed, in the room where the blow was struck, or where the body was buried, it seemed as if the spirit lingered. Thus, indeed, every spot of earth almost is haunted ground; the visible presence is not there, but the mind makes its own regal shades. Here the monarch received or lost his crown; here the priests in their copes and stoles, with mitred bishop or crosiered abbot, chaunted their anthems; here the poor stricken heart returned to seek for peace; amidst these shades he walked, and hereabouts he is buried. Words pronounced ages since come with singular force upon us when they are uttered again where they originally came with burning vehemence or pathos from the lips.The heart demands such associations to complete its being. We love to live over the past again, and it softens the heart to do so; it places us in new relations to each other, and,