The Abbey-church was dedicated to St. Peter, who, according to the mediæval tradition, appeared to a fisherman on the opposite bank of the Thames, and requested him to ferry him over to Thorney Island, where, with his own hands, he performed the ceremony of consecration. An atmosphere of legend and romance surrounds the earlier history of Westminster Abbey, and continues even as late as the days of Edward the Confessor. It is related in old chronicles that that monarch, having omitted to make a pilgrimage to Rome, which he had promised on condition that he should be restored to his throne, from which the Danes had expelled him, was enjoined by the Pope, as the necessary price of absolution, that he should expend the funds set apart for his journey on the foundation or repair of some religious house dedicated to St. Peter. The particular house was not indicated; but, just at that time, a monk of Westminster, named Wulsine, dreamed that the Apostle appeared to him, and bade him acquaint the King that he should restore the church on Thorney Island. "There is," he is reported to have said, "a place of mine in the west part of London, which I chose, and love, and which I formerly consecrated with my own hands, honoured with my presence, and made illustrious by my miracles. The name of the place is Thorney; which, having, for the sins of the people, been given to the power of the barbarians, from rich has become poor, from stately low, and from honourable is made despicable. This let the King, by my command, restore and amply endow: it shall be no less than the house of God and the gates of Heaven." This, according to the old belief, was the way in which the later Abbey arose. At any rate, Edward rebuilt the monastery and church on a larger and more sumptuous scale; and, from that time forth, Westminster Abbey became the grandest, and on the whole the most august, building in London. It was then, likewise, that the edifice first took a distinct and historical place in the annals of the English people. Until then, it is difficult to trace its history, which, indeed, is little more than a series of ecclesiastical myths. From the days of Edward the Confessor, the story of the Abbey is clear in every respect; but, in such an edifice, history itself assumes a romantic, almost a marvellous, colour. We are in the presence of eight centuries of the national life; for, although no portion of Edward the Confessor's work remains at the present day, the Abbey is so associated with the saintly monarch that it is impossible to detach his memory from the structure begun by Henry III., continued by Edward II., Edward III., and Richard II., and from time to time enlarged by later sovereigns. The building we now behold is the legacy of successive ages, which have left upon the stone itself the imprint of their thoughts, their aspirations, their struggles, and their hopes. In passing from chapel to chapel, from cloister to cloister, from aisle