Another object of interest is the tomb of Admiral Penn, the father of the founder of Pennsylvania, which is in the pavement of the south aisle, with this inscription:-" Here lieth the body of Sir William Penn, who departed this life the 16th of September, 1674. Dum clavum teneam." On a pillar near, hang two or three decayed banners, a black cuirass and helmet, gauntlets and sword, with his escutcheon and motto. Not being aware that Admiral Penn lay buried here, I cannot describe the singular feeling which the sight of these remnants of aristocratic pageantry, suspended above the tomb of the father of the great quaker of Pennsylvania, gave me; suspended too in one of the proudest temples of that proud national church, the downfal of which this very man predicted on his death-bed:-"Son William, if you and your friends continue faithful to that which has been made known to you, you will make an end of priests and priestcraft to the end of the world.”

In the south transept stand conspicuously the tomb and effigies of William Canynge. These are striking objects in connexion with the history of Chatterton. Here you behold the very forms which, from the early dawn of his life, filled the mind of the poet-child with the deepest sense of admiration. It was here, before these recumbent figures, that he used to be found sitting in profound thought; and when the reading of the wealth, the princely merchant state, and the munificent deeds of William Canynge, had arrayed the inanimate stone with the hucs of long-past life and the halo of solemn and beautiful deeds—the raising of this fair church the most beautiful of all,—then was it these which became the germ of the great Rowley fable; Canynge, the ancient and magnificent, now the merchant and now the shaven priest and dean, arose once more at the touch of the inspired boy, and played his part, not as a citizen of Bristol, but as a citizen of the world. These effigies are singular in themselves. First, you have William Canynge and Joan his wife, lying on an altar-tomb, in full proportion, under a canopy handsomely carved in freestone; then, not far off, you have Canynge again carved in alabaster, lying along in his priest's robes as dean of Westbury, with hands lifted up as in devotion, and a large book under his head. It is rare, and almost unique,

to have two monuments of the same person side by side, and that in two different characters, yet still little would these have attracted notice over a thousand other goodly tombs in our churches, had they not chanced to attract the attention of this little charity-boy, the descendant of the sextons of the church.

Last, but far most striking of all the haunts of Chatterton, is that muniment room over the north porch. When you ascend the dark and winding stair, and enter this dim and stony hexagon apartment, and see still standing on its floor the seven very chests of the Rowley story, old and mouldering, their lids, some of them circular as if hewn out of solid trees, broken off, and all dirty and worm-eaten, the reality of the strange facts connected with them comes thrillingly upon you. You seem then and there only first and fully to feel how actual and how sad is the story of Thomas Chatterton: that here, indeed, began his wondrous scheme of fame; hence it spread and stood forth as a brilliant mystery for a moment; hence the proud boy gloried in its sudden blaze, as in that of a recognizing glory from heaven; and then how

GRAY, AT STOKE-POGIS.

THE life of Thomas Gray, the author of the Elegy in a Country Churchyard, was passed in London, in Cambridge, and at StokePogis, in Buckinghamshire, except what he spent in travelling, which was considerable. Gray was born in Cornhill, November 26, 1716. His parents were reputable citizens of London, his grandfather was a considerable merchant, but his father, Mr. Philip Gray, Mallet says, though he also followed business, was of an indolent and reserved temper; and therefore rather diminished than increased his paternal fortune. He had many children, of whom Thomas was the fifth; all except him died in their infancy. The business of Gray's father was, like that of Milton's, a money-scrivener. But, unlike Milton's father, Philip Gray was, according to Mallet, not only reserved and indolent, but of a morose, unsocial, and obstinate temper. His indolence led him to neglect the business of his profession; his obstinacy, to build a country house at Wanstead, without acquainting his wife or son of the design, to which he knew they would be very averse, till it was executed. This turned out a loss of two thousand pounds to the family; and the character of the father, which is supposed to have been stamped by bodily ailments, was the occasion of Gray, though an only child, being left with a very narrow patrimony. His mother, to provide for her family, entered into business independent of her husband, with her sister, Miss Antrobus. The two ladies kept a kind of India warehouse in Cornhill. As clever ladies in business generally do, they succeeded so well, that, on Mr.

Gray's death, which happened about the time of the young poet's return from his first trip to the continent, they retired, and went to join housekeeping with their third sister, Mrs. Rogers, the widow of a gentleman of that name, who had formerly been in the law, and had retired to Burnham in Buckinghamshire, where we find Gray, on one occasion, describing, in a letter to Walpole, the uncle and the place thus. "The description of a road that your coachwheels have so often honoured, it is needless to give to you; suffice it that I arrived safe at my uncle's, who is a great hunter in imagination. His dogs take up every chair in the house, so I am forced to stand up at this present writing; and though the gout forbids him galloping after them in the field, yet he continues still to regale his ears and nose with their comfortable noise and stink. He holds me mighty cheap, I perceive, for walking when I should ride, and reading when I should hunt. My comfort amid all this is, that I have at the distance of half a mile, through a green lane, a forest-the vulgar call it a common-all my own, at least as good as so, for I spy no human thing in it but myself. It is a little chaos of mountains and precipices; mountains, it is true, that do not ascend much above the clouds, nor are the declivities quite so amazing as Dover cliff; but just such hills as people who love their necks as well as I do, may venture to climb, and crags that give the eye as much pleasure as if they were more dangerous. Both vale and hill are covered with most venerable beeches, and other very reverend vegetables, that like most other ancient people, are always dreaming out their old

stories to the winds:

And as they bow, their hoary tops relate,

In murmuring sounds, the dark decrees of Fate;
While visions, as poetic eyes avow,

Cling to each leaf and swarm on every bough.'

At the foot of one of these squats me I, il penseroso, and there grow to the trunk for a whole morning. The timorous hare and sportive squirrel gambol around me like Adam in Paradise, before he had Eve; but I think he did not use to read Virgil, as I commonly do there. In this situation I often converse with my Horace, aloud too, that is, talk to you, but I do not

remember that I ever heard you answer me. I beg pardon for taking all the conversation to myself, but it is entirely your own fault. We have old Mr. Southern at a gentleman's house a little way off, who often comes to see us. He is now seventyseven years old, and has almost wholly lost his memory; but is as agreeable as an old man can be, at least I persuade myself so when I look at him, and think of Isabella and Oronoko."

By this agreeable extract, however, we have outstepped the progress of Gray's life. He was educated at Eton, under the care of Mr. Antrobus, his mother's brother, then assistant to Dr. George, and when he left school, in 1734, entered a pensioner at Peterhouse in Cambridge. It was intended that he should follow the profession of the law, for which his uncle's practice and connexions seemed to open a brilliant way. He therefore lived on at college so long as his attendance on the lectures was required, but took no degree. His uncle's death put an end to his prospects of that kind, and he abandoned the idea of the legal profession. When he had been at Cambridge about five years, he agreed to make a tour on the continent with Horace Walpole; and they proceeded together through France to Italy, where they quarrelled and parted, taking different ways. On his return he again went to Cambridge, took the degree of Bachelor of Civil Law, and continued there, without liking the place or its inhabitants, as we are informed by both Johnson and Mallet, or professing to like them. His pleasure lay in wading through huge libraries, out of which, on a vast number of subjects, he extracted a vast amount of information. Such were Gray's assiduous study and research, that the following character of him by a cotemporary, the Rev. Mr. Temple, rector of St. Gluvias, in Cornwall, written a few months after his death, can scarcely be termed overdrawn. "Perhaps he was the most learned man in Europe. He was equally acquainted with the elegant and profound parts of science, and that not superficially but thoroughly. He knew every branch of history, both natural and civil; had read all the original histories of England, France and Italy; and was a great antiquarian. Criticism, metaphysics, morals, politics, made a principal part of his plan of study. Voyages and travels of all sorts were his