In the good old times, before the Reform Bill was carried and the Constitution destroyed, at a period long prior to the introduction of cheap ’busses and penny steamers and the new police, stood an old church in the north of London, in which the parishioners of St. Pancras were accustomed to meet for public worship. In spite of its unadorned appearance, it was a venerable pile. According to some, it was the last church in England where the bell tolled for mass, and in which any rites of the Roman Catholic religion were celebrated. In its burying-ground twenty generations now sleep the sleep of death. Grimaldi the clown, Woollet the engraver, William Godwin, Mary Wolstonecraft, Walker, immortalized by his Pronouncing Dictionary, Woodhead, the reputed author of the ‘Whole Duty of Man,’ Jeremy Collier, the writer against stage plays and the successful combatant of Dryden, Ned Ward, author of the ‘London Spy,’ Theobald, the hero of the early editions of the ‘Dunciad’ and the editor of ‘Shakspeare,’ Boswell’s friend, the Corsican Paoli, here await the resurrection morn. What passions, what hopes, what virtue and vice, what loved and loving forms, what withered anatomies, have here been laid down! Tread gently!—every bit of dust you tread on was once a man and a brother. Tread reverently! for here human hearts bursting with agony—the mother weeping for her children, the lover for his bride—have seen the last of all they hoped for under the sun. You may hear a good sermon here from the old text: ‘Vanity of vanities,’ saith the preacher, ‘all is vanity.’ Such is the lesson we learn here—that all the shows of the world are poor and little worth—that false is ‘—the light on glory’s plume, As fading hues of even. And love, and hope, and beauty’s bloom, Are blossoms gather’d for the tomb— There’s nothing true but heaven!’