The solemnities of the Jubilee of the Venerable S. P. G., now called me back to London, and to a renewal of its social pleasures. On the morning of the 16th of June, I attended, at Westminster Abbey, with a large number of the clergy, the opening services. It was a memorable occasion; the choir of the Abbey being filled with a dense crowd of worshippers, among whom, to judge by their looks and complexions, were men “out of every nation under heaven.” The Bishop of London was the preacher, and gave us an appropriate sermon, characterized by the finish for which his performances are noted, and not deficient in feeling or fervour. It contained gratifying allusions to the American Church, one of whose prelates, Bishop Otey, was present, in the sanctuary, and assisting in the services. A large number of communicants knelt at the altar; and while several of my English friends made an effort to receive at the hands of the Bishop of Tennessee, in gratifying their feelings of Catholic intercommunion, I found an equal satisfaction in receiving the Holy Sacrament from the Archbishop of Canterbury. During the whole solemnity, which filled up several hours, my mind was powerfully impressed with the historical spirit of the place; and while I listened to the sermon, glancing occasionally upward to the vaulted roof, or allowing my eye to wander away among the columns of the nave or choir, it was impossible to divest myself of associations the most sublime, that seemed to swarm around me, like “a cloud of witnesses,” blending the interminable past with the momentary present. Here we were, in our turn, upon the stage, the great actors of past centuries lying all around us! Through yonder gate, beneath the great rose-window, pomp and procession have entered this holy place, age after age; and here, one after another, each as real in its time as that which occupies us now, have the great solemnities of the nation been celebrated. These arches and aisles looked just as they look this minute on the day when Laud ushered in King Charles to receive his crown, and when, just here, he was presented, to the Lords and Commons assisting at that pregnant moment, as their anointed Sovereign. The thought of all that has since passed on the same spot, seemed to compress into the mere drama of an hour, the mighty history of which such was the opening scene. Then the thought of the entire ignorance of futurity, by which such a pageant was made real in its time! Imagination places us back among the men of a by-gone age; but we cannot strip our individuality of its historic knowledge, and we behold their doings with the eyes of a seer. I seemed to be listening to the shout of “Long live King Charles”—and at the same moment foreseeing the scaffold at Whitehall. I seemed to wonder that others could be ignorant of what was coming: and to feel compelled to forewarn the King of the dreadful future. Just so the jubilant