The Dean of Westminster said that he had been asked to take the chair on this interesting and suggestive occasion. They had met in that venerable and stately building to pay some tribute to the memory of one who, from the first day which he spent in this country up to the date of his death, had endeared himself to an ever-widening circle of friends, and who had for many years been the representative in the Queen’s dominions of that great Republic of the West. He would leave it to others to speak of Mr. Lowell’s great qualities, and of the position which he held as a poet, a humorist, and essayist. Mr. Lowell was worthy to be reckoned among the great writers of our tongue--Chaucer, Shakespeare, Spenser, Milton, Dryden, and those poets whom we had so lately lost. They all deeply regretted the absence of Mr. Balfour and its cause, but they gratefully recognized the service which Mr. Leslie Stephen was rendering them by his presence. There was no one to whom the task of speaking of Mr. Lowell could so wisely be entrusted. In the presence of the American Ambassador he might, perhaps, be allowed to speak of the special fitness of the place in which they were assembled--which was a part of the ancient Abbey, the very heart and centre of that Benedictine monastery, and used solely as the daily meeting-place of the monks. There was no spot in the kingdom or in the world which could compare in historic interest and significance with that in which they were met. That part of the Abbey with which so many associations had gathered, and which was now known by the name of Poets’ Corner, dated from the period of the commencement of the House of Commons, whose members in the earliest days and for three centuries of its existence were summoned within the walls of the Chapter-house. Thus the room where they were sitting was not only the meeting-place of the Benedictine monks of Westminster, but it was also for a long period the ordinary meeting-place of the Commons of England. After the dissolution of the monasteries, the Chapter-house was vested in the Crown, and was still so vested, and it was by the permission of the First Commissioner of Works that the present meeting to do honor to a great American was held. For three more centuries after the Commons had ceased to be summoned to the Chapter-house, the house was used, he would not say as a lumber-room, but as a record-room in which were stored the invaluable documents which belonged to the House of Commons and the various Government offices. One deficiency, however, long remained, which his dear and illustrious predecessor long tried to remove. The late Dean endeavored to induce successive Governments to fill the windows with stained glass, but without success. After his death, however, one of the windows was filled. No meeting could have been more representative of the whole English-speaking race than the one which was held when that window was unveiled. He could imagine that he