"Massive bar had oft rolled back the tide of war." The home of kings and of the most noted persons of the civilized world! Soil made sacred by the tread of nobility. But we were free men, unhindered observers, at liberty to examine and criticise, in unqualified republican American fashion, things once too sacred for common people to look upon. How changed! What has done this but popular education, and the growth of religious liberty,--elements underlying the Magna Charta, which has discounted royalty, and opened the great doors of civilization? Where are now the kings, the queens? Their places of habitation are our intellectual banquet-hall; their household goods form a museum of curiosities for all who are disposed to visit it. Our next visit was to Gray Friars Church, founded by James IV. in 1594, and here a strange thing met our view. The edifice is in the usual form of a Latin cross. A large door has been made in the centre of each transept, which are used as large vestibules for the two auditoriums into which the choir and nave of the edifice have been converted. The choir, which is the oldest part and of Norman architecture, is used as a chapel for the soldiers, and the nave as one of the parish churches of the city. Both are in use, and services are held in them at the same hours. The military church is under the English government, and of course the service is Episcopalian; while the other is Scotch Presbyterian. Of course the church was originally Roman Catholic, but in the old times John Knox often preached there. How little endures! One set of people exist and build and occupy. Here their saints are made, die, and are buried, and the stones become sacred to their memory. But by-and-by other people come into possession. In a day the accumulated sanctities are despoiled, and, as it were, evaporate. Nothing but the soil stands secure from mutation and danger. In a place like this we realize the force of the statement: "One generation goeth and another cometh, but the earth abideth forever."