the monuments in which are the bones and light dust of the great, and rich, and beautiful." Nor were such associations lost in the wreck of the ancient society, for after Christianity had moulded the forms of things throughout the whole civilized world, there were few cities that had not in their immediate suburbs or extramural vicinity some pillar, shrine, chapel, or religious house, to which persons desirous of spiritual impressions were wont to repair. The modern civilization, so far as it affects a visible contrast with antiquity, cannot, of course, be expected to entertain such views as led to this monumental result; but yet in some favoured nations, as in our own, it is found to be incapable of not permitting, or even of not ordaining through different motives some things of a corresponding tendency, which can be made to answer the ancient and eternal purpose of training men by the right method. Thus London has not only in its neighbourhood, in every direction, fields and solemn gardens consecrated to the dead, but even at a distance within those very places to which her citizens are in the habit of resorting for innocent amusement and healthful occupation during their summer holidays, there exist, thanks to the freedom we now enjoy, and to the links which bind us to the ancient generations, spots set apart, as of old, where the religious instinct bids us find " sermons in stones," or where tombs have a certain voice which can yield very high and profitable instruction to those who can find time to listen to it.

· I propose in the following pages that we should proceed to visit one of these spots in order to profit by such vocal stones, and to catch the harmonies of the voice which may be said to issue from them; for which purpose we shall not have to strike into any solitary, tortuous, and labyrinthine path, as it were, of our own discovery, but merely to follow with the multitude one of the great frequented lines pursued by summer travellers leading to the sea, and to a town where, in point of fact, they have from time immemorial been most inclined and accustomed to congregate.

Passing down the Thames, or crossing the land in a more southerly direction, we come to that region of England—ɛis τnλovρòv πédov, as Eschylus perhaps would call it,—and which Tacitus describes as being in its climate, and even in the

manners of its inhabitants, more similar than any other of its districts to those of France. One breathes, certainly, along its white cliffs, which in the shades of evening assume a dusky hue, a more elastic air; the sky is generally clearer, and you perceive as much of that magic splendour of the sun as our northern latitudes can ever enjoy. It is not, indeed, for all the haste evinced by some to get there, that we can hope to be presented with such a spectacle as is offered by the enchanted coast of Chiaja, or by the shores of the island of Capri, or even by those of our own Devonshire; but that in reality there is no part of the British Islands where the climate so nearly resembles that of the Continent. No where is there more effulgence of that · πάντων

Αἰθὴρ κοινὸν φάος εἱλίσσων

and, as after all the deficiencies in the general scenery, there is ever before your eyes the blue sea and an unobstructed horizon, with a sky that is most frequently clear and cloudless, there is enough to refresh and satisfy those, who from time to time experience a want to soliloquize a little while gazing, as we say, on the face of nature. Besides, there are certain indentures of the coast which present the appearance of bays, that are by no means without picturesque beauty. Then you have also, intersected by long dykes and almost blending with the sands, vast marshy tracts, over which herds of cattle wander, forming a landscape full of attraction for those who have a taste for Cuyp scenery; and not less for those who in a boyish way are enamoured of the brooks and rushes and the green lowlands, and who are fond of spending hours thus with a dog or two and some choice companion amidst the calm of rural solitude, while hearing, as they saunter along, what the old poet calls

ποντίων τε κυμάτων

̓Ανήριθμον γέλασμα..

Then from plains that gently rise above these salt-marshes the amplest range of prospect may be enjoyed-low brown or purple tracts, where a winding river stagnates, are stretched out westward; beneath, right at the cliff's southern base, you have

the ocean breaking audibly, not far distant from the Goodwins, as I think they call the place,—a very dangerous flat and fatal, where the carcases of many a tall ship lie buried, as they say; and south of them, far away in pale-tinted regions, forming a long ridge, that some might take for a perishable cloud, you behold the coast of France, the cultivated fields that streak its tawny summits, its churches, and even its golden image of the Virgin shining from a dome, being all at times discernible, while the revolving lights, after sunset, cast a fitful gleam upon the dark waters from its desert capes. Again, looking northward, you have the open champaign country, which has also a certain beauty of its own, constituting what a great author distinguishes as that of "field lands," which, though capable only of an inferior and material art, and apt to lose its spirituality, present however the advantage of having sight of the whole sky, and of the continual play and change of sun and cloud, and also of greater liberty, being like the moss-lands, at least at certain seasons, the freest ground in all the world, while commanding all the horizon's space of changeful light*. On a spring morning the voice of waters must here be softened down into a vernal tone; a spirit of desire and enjoyment, with hopes and wishes from all living things, must seem to pervade the entire region. Beast and bird, the lamb, the shepherd's dog, the linnet and the lark, must appear to be all complying with their Creator's invitation to rejoice and be happy. It would be the moment, methinks, for some Autolycus to sing :

"When daffodils begin to peer—

With, hey! the laddy over the dale,—
Why then comes in the sweet o' the year;
For the red blood reigns in the winter's pale.
The white sheet bleaching on the hedge,-
With, hey! the sweet birds, O how they sing,

The lark, that tirra-lirrah chants

With, hey! with hey! the thrush and the jay—
Are summer songs for me and my mates,

While we lie tumbling in the hay."

Some, who in later months of the fine season chance to walk

* Ruskin.

alone beneath those cliffs at sunrise, or above them with this sauntering crowd, that like one family is listening to music under the rising moon, are not left without memories of affections old and true. At all hours, inland for many a mile the elm-grove murmurs with a sea-like sound, though still the habitual sight of fields with rural works is cheerful. Far towards the northwestern limits of your view, lies an ascending country, dappled over with shadows flung from many a summer cloud; those many spots lie in long streaks determined and unmoved, with steady beams of sunshine interposed, pleasant to him who on the soft cool moss extends his careless limbs.

Now is the day declining, and the faint evening breeze plays on the meadow. Why is there not a Claude here to see and paint these groves and these long undulating tracts which mount up to purple elevations, with the zig-zag road that breaks the uniformity of tone, and leads to these mills that stand like towers for a sea-mark? How would an artist have delighted in this foreground, too, of rich entangled weeds, with its goats and sheep and the rough dogs that watch them! Then, sufficient in itself to form a picture, you come ever and anon to some old broken bridge across a rivulet, seeming to be half rock, half brick, here covered with plaster, there lined with weeds and beautifully interwoven plants; beyond it are the fields, now undistinguishable, as they are fast darkening in the twilight, while the horizon is coloured with the lovely hues of sunset, diffused higher up amidst some rosy clouds, fringed with gold, thinly floating motionless in an azure so calm and profound, that you can hardly imagine its being any thing else but heaven.

So, without any thing that an untrained eye would deem in the least remarkable, our travellers find themselves, they know not how, soothed and satisfied,- -a few tufts of pine or elm, the blue or warm radiance of a lake-like bay, a meadow or a corn-field, the edge of a cliff, and the distant shores that mingle with the clouds-such is the nature that contents them.

Disdained by some, as being thronged in summer with a motley crew of Shakspeare's "Sunday citizens," though Charles Lamb does not shrink from telling us, most innocently, that he read Burns there, the whole scenery of the district recommends itself to those who hold with a great authority in matters

of art, that "all true landscape, whether simple or exalted, depends primarily for its interest on connexion with humanity, or with spiritual power *;" and that even "fragrant tissues of flowers, and golden circlets of clouds, are only fair when they meet the fondness of human thoughts, and glorify human visions of heavent."

Nor is the interest attached to historical recollections wanting to this region; for on one of these upper solitary plains the Anglo-Saxons had their place of solemn burial. Here first Cæsar saw Britain, and here Augustine landed to bring light and immortality.

But where is the voice that we have come to listen to? You must wait a moment until we describe a distinct locality. In the sequel, after pausing to take this general view of a whole neighbourhood, it will be heard.

On the last line, then, of cliffs,

"Where Ocean mid his uproar wild

Speaks safety to his island-child;"

on the grassy summit, where the chalk, emerging from the yellow clay for the last time, grows proudly ramparted, there stands a dark solemn pile, made up of church and tower, of cloistered cells, and halls that announce themselves, as in the ancient style, monastical. Here these stones become already audible, at least you must say so if you will believe Chateaubriand, who tells us that the Gothic chapel of St. Malo had a great part in his own conversion. But this echo of general truths is not all or precisely what we have come to listen to. · Pass within the portal. There is at the north entry, and at the intersection of the two sides of an arched cloister, a chapel, under the invocation of St. John, being a chantry over the bones of the dead. There is a monumental slab and solemn imagery representing some who sleep below. Of late that vault has been thrice opened, when was seen each time verified how man by living longer has often to experience that variety of what the ancients called Fortune, of which the philosopher of Flo

* Ruskin, Mod. P. 199.

† Ib.