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and chausses of mail. Next came Henry VI. with his battle-axe in hand, and his knightly cap on his head. Passing Edward IV. and Henry VII., I stood, with a strange feeling, face to face with Henry VIII. in his gilt plate armour. As he scowled down on me in his battle-array, I wanted to whisper in his ear the names of his murdered wives and disinherited daughters. I imagined the change that passed over that kingly face when he read the letter of the incomparable Ann Boleyn, written to him from this very Tower, a little before she was brought to the block. Though his heart had become harder than the mail that covered it, there were daggers in these dying words of a faithful wife that found their way to its core:

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"Let not your Grace ever imagine that your poor wife will ever be brought to acknowledge a fault, when not so much as a thought thereof ever preceded. Try me, good King, but let me have a lawfull tryall: and let not my sworn enemies sit as my accusers and judges: yea, let me receive an open tryall, for my truth shall fear no open shames. But if you have already determined of me, and that not only my death, but an infamous slander must bring you the enjoying of your desired happiness, then I desire of God that he will pardon your great sin therein, and likewise mine enemies, the instruments thereof, and that he will not call you to a strict account for your unprincely and cruel usage of me at his general Judgment Seat, where both you

and me, myself, must shortly appear, and in whose judgment, I doubt not, (whatsoever the world may think of me,) mine innocence shall be openly recorded and sufficiently cleared, &c. From my dolefull prison in the Tower, this 6 of May.

Your most loyall and ever-faithful wife,
ANNE BOLEN."

To that judgment he has gone, and the King of Kings has made inquisition for the blood of the pure and the innocent.

As I looked on this long line of kings, sitting motionless on their motionless steeds, the sinewy hand strained over the battle-axe, the identical sword they wielded centuries ago flashing on my sight, and the very spurs on their heels that were once driven into their war steeds as they thundered over the battle plain, the plumes seemed to wave before my eyes, and the shout of kings to roll through the arches. The hand grasping the reins on the horses necks seemed a live hand, and the elash of the sword, and the shield, and the battle-axe, and the mailed armour, rang in my ear. I looked again and the dream was dispelled. Motionless as the walls around them, they sat, mere effigies of the past. Yet how significant ! Each figure there was a history—and all monuments of England's glory as she was. At the farther end of the adjoining room sat a solitary “Crusader on his barbed horse, said to be 700 years old." Stern old grim figure! On the very trap

pings of thy steed, and on that thick plated mail, has flashed the sun of Palestine. Thou perchance did'st stand with that gallant host, led on by the wondrous Hermit, on the last hill-top that overlooks Jerusalem; and when the Holy City was seen lying like a beautiful vision below, glittering in the soft light of an eastern sunset, that flooded Mount Moriah, Mount Zion, and Mount Olivet, with its garden of suffering, and more than all, Mount Calvary, thy voice did go up with the mighty murmur of the bannered host, Jerusalem! Jerusalem! On that very helmet perchance has the scimetar broke; and from that mailed breast the spear of the Infidel re-bounded. Methinks I hear thy battle-shout, "to the rescue!" as thy gallant steed is borne into the thickest of the fight, where thy brave brethren are struggling for the Cross and the Sepulchre,

But Crusades and Crusaders are well-nigh forgotten. For centuries the dust of the desert has drifted over the bones of the chivalry of Europe. The Arab still spurs his steed through the forsaken streets of ancient Jerusalem, and the Muezzin's voice sings on the Sepulchre of the Saviour.

I next passed into Queen Elizabeth's Armoury, where the rusty blades and enormous shields, picked from a hundred battle-fields, were gathered. The old glaive and bill, the boar-spear, halberds and pikes, the battle-axe, the mace and the crossbow, with a thousand instruments of war and desolation were piled around the room. Here also

were all the hideous apparatus of torture, the thumb-screw, the collar of torment, the bilboa, and there the beheading-axe, which is said to have severed the neck of the beautiful Ann Boleyn.

Omitting a thousand interesting objects, the visitor at length entered the Small Arm Armoury, a magnificent room 345 feet in length, which has been well called " a wilderness of arms." Here were seen arms for over 100,000 men, all new flinted and ready for immediate use. In the Jewel Room were preserved the Crown Jewels, the Regalia, the Royal communion service, &c. The room was dark and these superb jewels were seen by lamp light. It was a blaze of diamonds-the eye was dazzled with the glittering wealth scattered around. In other apartments I was everywhere met with emblems of England's power; here she has clustered the crowns and jewels of whole races of kings.

Wearied and overpowered with the feelings such objects conspired to awaken-borne over so many battle-fields, and startled at every step by some unexpected figure rising in my face from the past, scowled down upon by kings on their war steeds, shaking their battle-axes over my head-I was glad to escape into the pure air, and take one long look up into the far spreading quiet sky.

From the Tower I ascended the Monument, which is near by, to look around upon the World of London, heaving with its excited, busy millions, like a stirred ocean. I once more looked on the

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actual and the real. The rolling of ten thousand carriages, the sound of its mighty population going up in one ceaseless, confused roar to heaven, contrasted strangely with the silence and solitude of those fearful cells and chambers. "This then," I exclaimed "is England!" In a few moments I had passed from the feudal age with its darkness and gloom, to the turbulent scene of action in our own times. England's Glory is in the past, her shame in the present, and her danger in the future. Proud of victories she has achieved, vain of her splendor, she stood fairly represented in those trophies and jewels. And yet, who, of the thousand half starved wretches that moved in such masses below me, ever think of the Tower! feudal age has gone by forever. That distant manufactory is greater than the Tower, for it is a living thing. That powerful steam ship is an object of deeper interest than the relics of a thousand victories, for it does something. Men can no longer fall back on the past for support--they must move with the onward flow of the present, or fall and be crushed by the trampling tide of the millions whom it were idle for them to dream of stopping or staying. The aristocracy of England regard the Tower as they do the halls of their ancestors; they gaze on its treasures, and hug with greater tenacity the more it is assailed, the spirit of feudal times; they feel there is something ominous to them in the activity and restlessness of the present age.

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