One of the most rational pleasures of the intellectual mind is to escape from the present to the past. The contemplation of antiquity is replete with melancholy interest. The eye wanders with delight over the crumbling ruins of ancient magnificence; the heart is touched with some sublime emotion; and we ask which is the' most praiseworthy--the superstition that raised these holy temples, or the piety (?) that suffers them to fall to decay? This corner is one of my periodical resting-places after a day's solitary ramble; for I have many such, in order to brush lip old recollections, and lay in fresh mental fuel for a winter evening's fireside.'Tis a miracle that this antique fabric should have escaped demolition. Look at St. Saviour's! * * The ancient grave-yard of St. Saviour's contains the sacred dust of Massinger. All that the Parish Register records of him is, “March 20, 1639-40, buried Philip Massinger, a Stranger.” John Fletcher, the eminent dramatic poet, who died of the Plague, August 19,1625, was buried in the church. With all due respect for Uncle Timothy's opinion, we think he is a little too hard upon the citizens, who are not the only Vandals in matters of antiquity. The mitre has done its part in the work of demolition. Who destroyed the ancient palace of the Bishops of Ely, (where “Old John of Gaunt, time-honour'd Lancaster,” breathed his last, in 1398,) with its beautiful Chapel and magnificent Gothic Hall? The site of its once pleasant garden in Holborn, from whence Richard Duke of Gloucester requested a dish of strawberries from the Bishop on the morning he sent Lord Hastings to execution, is now a rookery of mean hovels. And the Hospital of Saint Catherine, and its Collegiate Church,--where are they? Not one stone lies upon another of those unrivalled Gothic temples of piety and holiness, founded by the pious Queen Matilda. And the ancient Church of St. Bartholomew, where once reposed the ashes of Miles Coverdale, and which the Great Fire of London spared, is now razed to the ground! De Gustibusf Alderman Newman, who had scraped together out of the grocery line six hundred thousand pounds, enjoyed no greater luxury during the last three years of his life than to repair daily to the shop, and, precisely as the clock struck two (the good old-fashioned hour of city dining), eat his mutton with his successors. The late Thomas Rippon, Chief Cashier of the Bank of England, was a similar oddity. Onee only, in a service of fifty years, did he venture to ask for a fortnight's holiday. He left town, but after a three days' unhappy ramble through beautiful green fields, he grew moping and melancholy, and prematurely returned to the blissful regions of Threadneedle Street to die at his desk!