Keats, Lamb and Walton and Hood, Marlowe and Herrick and Landor derive no laurels from (perhaps I should say confer no laurels on) the Abbey, for one seeks their names here in vain. But happily fame does not withhold her meed, even to receive the tardy imprimatur of the custodians of the Abbey, which is now indeed full to congestion; and Stratford and Saint Albans, Stoke Pogis and Dryburgh are richer and more hallowed for a disposal that leaves the Abbey's treasures still supreme.

Two excursions we made from London: the first into Surrey outside the old established Dorking coach "Perseverance," which leaves Northumberland Avenue at eleven, and reaches the White Horse Inn at Dorking for dinner at two; returning by the same route and in the same time after an hour's delay, a distance of thirty miles in each direction. There are a dozen more such regular routes in summer out of London to interesting points in every direction, the longer of which require a day each way for their accomplishment. Survivals of the old mail-coaches of the days of Tony Weller, the public spirit and sporting interest of the moneyed class still keeps them up, with

VOL. II. -4

every attraction which private enterprise can add to a public conveyance. These tally-ho coaches and their accoutrements are beautifully kept, and their four-horse relays are the perfection of equine form and spirit. The time and stoppages are scheduled as with railway trains, and are even more accurately kept. Each coach has its equipment of coachman, assistant, and guard, in drab livery, brass buttons, and high hat. The coachmen alternate their daily trips, and are often not professional whips, but amateur (though not less skilful) drivers from among the aristocracy, and even the nobility, who seek healthful and inspiring diversion in this manner. One of the latter handled the reins, and tooled us down that breezy day, our little party of three being almost the only passengers. Outside seats are provided for eleven beside the officials; but daily trips are made each way, rain or shine, during the season, and with or without passengers, as may be. At the end of September the entire stud of splendid horses, which must be very large on any of the lines, is sold at auction. Four relays covered our course, each double pair impatiently champing the

bit as they awaited the arrival of their smoking comrades, who were rapidly unhitched and led away by grinning stable-boys, and replaced by the fresh quartet for the next rapid pull. Except these stops, a steady trot was maintained for the entire distance, and vehicles drew aside and gave us the right of way as if our chariot had been a locomotive. Only once a heavy road machine blocked the way for not over a minute, much to our coachman's annoyance.

Our route out of the city was by Pall Mall, St. James's Street, Piccadilly, and Knightsbridge, skirting Hyde Park to Kensington and Hammersmith Bridge. Our seats were at the rear, by the side of the guard; and he speedily awoke Fontarabian echoes through the crowded streets of the West End on his delightful horn, which became in his hands a magic bugle. We soon left the charmed quarter of Belgravia at our left, and the world-noted horse-market Tattersall's, and Brompton Oratory with its beautiful statue of Cardinal Newman before it. And then came that wonderful series of great buildings, with their marvellous and indescribable contents, the South Kensington Museum,

wherein one would have thought that all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them had been contained, even before the still greater and kindred Imperial Institute was founded beside it in 1887, as the national memorial of Her Majesty's Jubilee. Royal Albert Hall, too, and the Albert Memorial face each other by the side of Kensington Gardens close by, and close to the site of Gore House, once occupied by Wilberforce, and again by Lady Blessington; the former a huge and ugly, almost shapeless Renaissance amphitheatre in brick and terra cotta, as tasteless as an inverted caldron kettle, which it somewhat resembles. It is a wonderful place for great and popular assemblies in music, science, and art; and Sir George Grove has organized there a great musical conservatory.

As for the Albert Memorial, which stands where the Crystal Palace of the first World's Fair was reared, it is magnificent, but it is not- apropos. Prince Albert was an accomplished and kindly gentleman, the friend of America during our Civil War, a sagacious adviser to royalty, and an affectionate husband and father. But after the utmost allowance is made for wifely devotion, and

the highest appreciation rendered to all his virtues, what are the really lofty services and the intrinsic superiority of the prince consort, that to him should be reared this, the superbest purely personal memorial that the civilized world has to show? Poets, musicians, painters, architects, sculptors; agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and engineering; Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, all these, symbolized by a very wilderness of marble, granite, bronze, and mosaic, cluster about the gilded figure of the sitting prince, canopied by a three-staged Gothic spire surmounting a classic basement! "Queen Victoria and her people" placed it there; and it cost the English nation the pretty penny of six hundred thousand dollars, and serves no purpose whatever but that of art-education to the masses. Invidious comment is not pleasant nor always edifying, but one hates to have his sense of proportion so severely tried as it is here. Two great houses remain for notice as we speed along behind our steady team; and the first is old Kensington Palace, within sight to the north, built by William III. He died there, and so did Queen Mary his wife, and Queen