A PUPIL in a quiet boarding-school in —— displayed some time since no small degree of industry in collecting autographs of distinguished persons. The late James Russell Lowell was one of the number addressed. The address to him was in substance: “I would be very much obliged for your autograph.” The response contained a lesson that many besides the ambitious pupil have not learned: “Pray do not say hereafter ‘I would be obliged.’ If you would be obliged, be obliged and be done with it. Say ‘I should be obliged,’ and oblige yours truly, JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.”—_Selected._ WESTMINSTER ABBEY. YOU see it is most beautiful to the eye, though you Pansies of the great cities may think some of your churches quite as handsome. But none of them has such a history. This church was founded—started, as some would say—more than a thousand years ago! Now where’s your pretty “meeting-house” which was built only last year? Old King Siebert, a Saxon, built Westminster Abbey, and many of the Saxons really believed that the Apostle Peter dedicated it, though Peter had died nearly one thousand years before! [Illustration: A VIEW OF WESTMINSTER ABBEY.] However, this building is not the very same that King Siebert put up. That one stood several hundred years, when Edward, “the Confessor,” as he was called, rebuilt it. Two hundred years later King Henry the Third enlarged it, making it look about as it now is. For years and years the English kings and queens have been crowned here, and buried, too, nearly all. Here the great ones of the nation are buried—Shakespeare, Milton, Ben Jonson, Wordsworth, and many more, the poets in the “Poets’ Corner.” Under the coronation (crowning) chair is the “Stone of Scone,” which some actually say is the very one Jacob laid his head upon when he dreamed! However that be, many kings have sat upon it when they were crowned. Of course you will search out the “Jerusalem Chamber” when you visit Westminster. The Presbyterian Church began in this chamber. Here, too, the Bible was revised (re-translated from the Hebrew and Greek). “Why do they call it the ‘Jerusalem Chamber’?” Probably because its windows came from that old city, and the Cedar of Lebanon forms the wainscoting. So this wonderful building has served many purposes besides that of a church. For some hundred years the House of Commons (something like our House of Representatives) made laws here, especially laws to secure the liberties of the people. So you see this building is something like Faneuil Hall of Boston and Independence Hall of Philadelphia. What a book Westminster Abbey could make if it only could write. But somehow, like Nineveh and such places, it will rise up in the Judgment; then what will it say of the people who have had to do with it? L. A NEW YEAR’S TRIP.