complete the royal circle. Just in front of the screen that stands at the foot of the Confessor's shrine, are the Coronation Chairs. The most battered and ancient of these is the old coronation chair of Edward I, enclosing the famous "Prophetic Stone" or "Stone of Destiny," of Scone; concerning which the Scots believed, that wherever it was carried the supreme power would go with it. Edward I. brought it from Scotland in 1297, in token of the complete subjugation of that country. Every English monarch since then has been crowned in this chair, and Queen Victoria used it at her Jubilee service. The second coronation chair, (made for Queen Mary II., wife of William III.), is only used when kings and queens are crowned together: it was used for Queen Adelaide in 1831; and lately for Queen Alexandra. Opposite the wooden staircase that descends from the Confessor's Chapel to the ambulatory below, a small doorway leads to the Islip Chapel; where on "free" days, the "Wax Effigies" may be seen. This curious and ghoul-like collection is the outcome of a custom dating from ancient times; the custom of carrying in funeral procession, first, the embalmed body open on the bier, and subsequently, the wax effigy, or portrait model, for the crowd to gaze at; the effigy to rest beside the tomb or monument. Remains of such effigies, broken, mutilated and often unrecognisable, are extant even as far back as Queen Philippa's time; these ghastly fragments are however, not on general view. Eleven wax figures still remain; dirty, but in a tolerable state of preservation; they suggest a very grimy and antiquated Chamber of Horrors. Presumably taken from life, or, in some cases, from a cast after death, they are invaluable as contemporary likenesses. Charles II., an unpleasantly yellow, ogling creature in wig and feathered hat, a ghoulish dandy with the well-known "drop" in his cheeks, confronts us at the top of a narrow wooden stair. If it be difficult to imagine his fascinations,--those of his neighbour, "La Belle Stuart," are a trifle more suggestive; yet here the lady is, surely, no longer very young; and we can hardly connect her with the figure of "Britannia" on our pence, for which it is said she consented to sit as model. Queen Anne's effigy (she died at fifty) is, possibly, flattering; or it may be a more youthful portrait. Her sad, pale face, in her gorgeous dress, suggest remembrances of her eighteen dead children, buried in the Stuart Vault of Henry VIIth's chapel, about the coffin of the Queen of Scots; "pressing in and around, with their accumulated weight, the illustrious dust below." Strange doom of the Stuart race! Were these people merely human and not royal, would not such afflictions win our sympathy? We hear of James II.'s faults--history is reticent about his eleven dead children; of "Good Queen Anne's" virtues,--hardly a word as to her maternal grief. Poor, kindly, amiable queen! as she sits