The custom of marking the houses associated with great names is obviously a good one, and it ought to be adopted in other countries. Two buildings, one in Westminster and one in the grounds of the South Kensington Museum, bear the name of Franklin; and I also saw memorial tablets to Dryden and Burke in Gerrard Street, to Dryden in Fetter Lane, to Mrs. Siddons in Baker Street, to Sir Joshua Reynolds and to Hogarth in Leicester Square, to Garrick in the Adelphi Terrace, to Louis Napoleon, and to many other renowned individuals. The room that Sir Joshua occupied as a studio is now an auction mart. The stone stairs leading up to it are much worn, but they remain as they were when, it may be imagined, Burke, Johnson, Goldsmith, Langton, Beauclerk, and Boswell walked there, on many a festive night in the old times. It is a breezy, slate-coloured evening in July. I look from the window of a London house that fronts a spacious park. Those great elms, which in their wealth of foliage and irregular and pompous expanse of limb are finer than all other trees of their class, fill the prospect, and nod and murmur in the wind. Through a rift in their heavy-laden boughs is visible a long vista of green field, in which many children are at play. Their laughter and the rustle of leaves, with now and then the click cf a horse's hoofs upon the road near by, make up the music of this hallowed hour. The sky is a little overcast but not gloomy. As I muse upon this delicious scene the darkness slowly gathers, the stars come out, and presently the moon rises, and blanches the meadow with silver light. Such has been the English summer, with scarce a hint of either heat or storm. Illustration: "Oriel Window." CHAPTER XI WESTMINSTER ABBEY