When I rose in the morning, I looked out into the park, and now for the first time, gained a clear idea of that strange scene described in Evelyn’s Memoirs, as occurring between King Charles and Mistress Nelly, while the grovelling monarch was walking with him in the Mall. The wretched woman was standing on a terrace, at the end of her garden, and looking over into the park, when the king turns from Evelyn, and going towards her, holds a conversation with her in that public place and manner. “I was heartily sorry at this scene,” says the pure-minded journalist; and indeed it forboded no little evil to both Church and nation, as well as to the miserable Prince who could thus debase his crown and character, in the face of the open day, and of a virtuous man. And now, having a whole day before me, I began by attending divine service in Westminster Abbey. Through the park and Birdcage-walk, I went leisurely to old Palace Yard, passing round the Abbey and St. Margaret’s, and so entered by Poets’ Corner. Service was going on, and of course I gave myself as much as possible to its sacred impressions, but was unable to repress some wandering thoughts, as my eyes caught the long lines and intersections of nave and aisles, or turned upwards to the clere-story, where the smoky sunlight of a London morning was lingering along the old rich tracery and fret-work, to which every cadence of the chaunt seemed to aspire, and where just so, just such sunbeams have come and gone as quietly over all the most speaking and eventful pageants of the British Empire, since William First was crowned here, in the midst of those Norman and Saxon antagonists whose blood now runs mingled in the veins of the British people. Nay, we must send back our thoughts at least so far as Edward the Confessor, who was also crowned here, and whose sepulchre is hard at hand. What thoughts of human splendor, and of human nothingness! The anthem was—_Awake up my Glory_—and as it rose and fell, and tremulously died away, distributing its effect among innumerable objects of decayed antiquity, I seemed to catch a new meaning in the strain of the psalmist. How many tongues were mute, and ingloriously slumbering around me—the tongues of poets and of princes and of priests: but the living should praise the Lord in their stead, and in this place that humbles the glory of men, it was good to sing—“Set up thyself, oh God, above the heavens, and thy glory above all the earth.” When the service was over, I preferred to leave the Abbey, with this general effect still upon me, and to take it, at some other time, in details: and so, with only a few glances at the familiar objects in Poet’s Corner, I passed thoughtfully through the choir, which is extended down the nave, and so into the south aisle, and out into the cloisters. I took passing notice of the Andre monument, and of the Thynne monument, which I recognized by their sculpture alone. I saw at