The interior of the abbey is rather dark and sombre. Its windows are of stained glass, most of which is modern. The columns and arches, the groined ceiling, and all the interior finish is of a dark gray limestone, of dirty soapstone color. The moulding is very rich. On the whole it has a narrow look, is very high in effect in the nave, and has elaborate altar and screen work. There are no pews, of course, but enough flagbottom chairs to cover the floor of the nave. From morning to night visitors are in this venerable place,--hundreds in a day, coming from all parts of the civilized world. This is true of St. Paul's, and of every cathedral. The task would be endless to describe the monuments. The abbey floor is made of monumental slabs, and on many of them are the stories of mortals whose dust is beneath. On columns and walls are mural tablets and monumental marbles. Benedict Arnold, true to English interests, but untrue to American; and John Wesley, faithful to the interests of humanity and God, but uncompromising towards formality, oppression, and sin,--have commemorative tablets, almost near enough to touch each other. It pleased us Americans to see Arnold's near the floor and Wesley's on the wall,--higher, as his spirit always was, and probably now is. Here is the Poet's Corner, where repose not only tablet and stone, but the precious dust itself of Samuel Johnson, David Garrick, Dr. Barrow, and other notables; and now a bust of our own Longfellow. How subdued the voice and tread of visitor and verger! What propriety every moment and everywhere! The threshold crossed, the hurrying world is left behind. The hum of industry, the subdued noise of carriages and commercial life steal in, but the sound, like the listeners, is toned into accord with the place. The dead control the living. The influence of the venerable pile is potent. That "all who live must die, passing through nature to eternity," is here fully apparent. Dean Stanley and Canon Farrar are not more eloquent than Isaac Barrow. Samuel Johnson, with his ponderous procession of words, and Dickens, his very opposite, though dead, yet speak. Milton, through his elevated bust,--though a paraded advertisement of the egotist who "caused it to be erected here,"--looks down upon a semi-barbaric effigy five hundred years old. Handel, too, is there. They all, a glorious company,--in life divided, but in death associated,--make the place hallowed. How well, while thus in meditative mood, is one able to realize, and as he nowhere else can, that "in the midst of life we are in death." The impression thus made can never be effaced, for, with the faithful exactness of a photographic process, it is indelibly stamped on the spirit itself.