Nasby in Exile: or, Six Months of Travel in England, Ireland, Scotland, France, Germany, Switzerland and Belgium, with many things not of travel — John Locke — John Shaqi
Nasby in Exile: or, Six Months of Travel in England, Ireland, Scotland, France, Germany, Switzerland and Belgium, with many things not of travel
John Locke · en
_Sheffield_--Manufacturing city--found some genuine American bourbon,
and went for it--It was refreshing, as a reminder at home--Don't know
about the beer--There's no place like home.
_Nottingham_--Don't know what the people do--a great many of them--Beer
bad as usual--Guinness' stout in bottles fairish--Wish--
(Another unfinished sentence, explained as before.)
And so on. I told Lemuel that it certainly would not do to send these
impressions to his father, as evidently he observed only one side of
English life; that he had taken his observations through a glass darkly,
but that I really hadn't the time to write up a set for him, especially
as I had not visited those places myself.
"But what am I to do?"
Advising him to procure a good guide-book, and remain sober for a week,
and get to work, we parted.
There are a great many Lemuels getting similar impressions of Europe--a
great many; I may say altogether too many.
[Illustration: WESTMINSTER ABBEY--INTERIOR.]
CHAPTER XIII.
WESTMINSTER ABBEY.
Sometime in the sixth century a Saxon King, named Sebert, founded an
Abbey, where Westminster now stands. It is another of the regular show
places of London, and possibly the most interesting, unless it be the
Tower. It has been rebuilt a dozen or more times, and is really the most
beautiful building in London of its class.
[Illustration: EXTERIOR OF WESTMINSTER ABBEY.]
The Abbey is three hundred and seventy-five feet in length, by two
hundred in width, and its height from the pavement to the foot of the
lantern is one hundred and forty feet. I know this, for I got it from
the guide-book.
There is nothing in England, in the way of architecture, more striking
or grand. The beautiful is not always the grand, or the grand the
beautiful. Westminster Abbey is both. The old architects might not have
been able to have built the Capitol at Washington, and they certainly
could not have built the Court House in New York, and made it cost more
than the Houses of Parliament, for they were not that kind of
architects; they mostly died poor and did not wear diamonds, but they
managed to erect a building that is worth the passage across the
Atlantic to see.
[Illustration: THE ENTRANCE TO THE ABBEY.]
[Sidenote: SEEING THE ABBEY.]