"For Alice and for Thomas More's remains Prepared, this tomb Johanna's form contains One, married young; with mutual ardor blest, A boy and three fair girls our joy confest. The other (no small praise) of these appear'd As fond as if by her own pangs endeared. One lived with me, one lives in such sweet strife, Slight preference could I give to either wife. Oh! had it met Heaven's sanction and decree, One hallowed bond might have united three; Yet still be ours one grave, one lot on high! Thus death, what life denied us, shall supply." [Illustration: ROPER's HOUSE.] Others tell that his remains were interred in the Tower,[4] and some record that the head was sought and preserved by that same daughter Margaret, who caused it to be buried in the family vault of the Ropers in St. Dunstan's Church, Canterbury;[5] and they add a pretty legend how that, when his head was upon London Bridge, Margaret would be rowed beneath it, and, nothing horrified at the sight, say aloud, "That head has layde many a time in my lappe; would to God, would to God, it would fall into my lappe as I pass under now," and the head did so fall, and she carried it in her "lappe" until she placed it in her husband's, "son Roper's" vault, at Canterbury. The king took possession of these fair grounds at Chelsea, and all the chancellor's other property, namely, Dunkington, Trenkford, and Benley Park, in Oxfordshire, allowing the widow he had made, twenty pounds per year for her life, and indulging his petty tyranny still more, by imprisoning Sir Thomas's daughter, Margaret, "both because she kept her father's head for a relic, and that she meant to set her father's works in print." We were calling to mind more minute particulars of the charities and good deeds of this great man, when, standing at the moment opposite a grave where some loving hand had planted two standard rose-trees, we suddenly heard a chant of children's voices, the infant scholars singing their little hymn; the tune, too, was a well-known and popular melody, and very sweet, yet sad of sound; it was just such music, as for its simplicity, would have been welcome to the mighty dead; and, as we entered among the little songsters, the past faded away, and we found ourselves speculating on the hopeful present. * * * * *