plays so sweetly over the spired tower and dusky walls of this lovely temple-- "All green and wildly fresh without, but worn and gray beneath." [Illustration: _Gray's Monument._] [Illustration: _Thomas Gray._] It would still be a lovely church, even if it were not associated with the immortal Elegy. I stood for a long time beside the tomb of the noble and tender poet and looked with deep emotion on the surrounding scene of pensive, dream-like beauty,--the great elms, so dense of foliage, so stately and graceful; the fields of deep, waving grass, golden with buttercups and white with daisies; the many unmarked mounds; the many mouldering tombstones; the rooks sailing and cawing around the tree-tops; and over all the blue sky flecked with floating fleece. Within the church nothing has been changed. The memorial window to Gray, for which contributions have been taken during several years, has not yet been placed. As I cast a farewell look at Gray's tomb, on turning to leave the churchyard, it rejoiced my heart to see that two American girls, who had then just come in, were placing fresh flowers over the poet's dust. He has been buried more than a hundred years,--but his memory is as bright and green as the ivy on the tower within whose shadow he sleeps, and as fragrant as the roses that bloom at its base. Many Americans visit Stoke-Pogis churchyard, and no visitor to the old world, who knows how to value what is best in its treasures, will omit that act of reverence. The journey is easy. A brief run by railway from Paddington takes you to Slough, which is near to Windsor, and thence it is a charming drive, or a still more charming walk, mostly through green, embowered lanes, to the "ivy-mantled tower," the "yew-trees' shade," and the simple tomb of Gray. What a gap there would be in the poetry of our language if the _Elegy in a Country Churchyard_ were absent from it! By that sublime and tender reverie upon the most important of all subjects that can engage the attention of the human mind Thomas Gray became one of the chief benefactors of his race. Those lines have been murmured by the lips of sorrowing affection beside many a shrine of buried love and hope, in many a churchyard, all round the world. The sick have remembered them with comfort. The great soldier, going into battle, has said them for his solace and cheer. The dying statesman, closing his weary eyes upon this empty world, has spoken them with his last faltering accents, and fallen asleep with their heavenly music in his heart. Well may we pause and ponder at the grave of that divine poet! Every noble mind is made nobler, every good heart is made better, for the experience of such a pilgrimage. In such places as these pride is rebuked, vanity is dispelled, and the revolt of the passionate human heart is humbled into meekness and submission. [Illustration: _All Saints' Church, Laleham._]