own circumstances, feelings and prospects, that they would, at best, appear like the dry, artificially preserved figure of what had once bent on me bright looks of life and love. Far rather would I retrace them as they were, in the chambers of vivid imagery, than tread again their real and visible precincts.

This feeling appears to be almost universal among mankind. Even to those who seem to gather an accession of happiness with every fleeting year-and surely they are few-the past wears many a charm of softening recollection, extorting sometimes the sigh of fond regret over what is for ever gone. Whether the consciousness of life's limited duration, indissolubly connecting with former times a certainty that such a portion of our allotted space has actually fled, never to be recalled, may not influence us more than we are aware of, when indulging such reminiscences, I cannot pretend to decide: I think that it does.

To one who has been brought out of the world, after participating largely in its spirit, and rejoicing in many things opposed to the love of God, it is sometimes wonderful to contemplate the extent to which what divines call the religious affections have been excited, long before a ray of the true light had visited their minds. Feelings even rapturously devotional may have been enkindled, and the soul, as it were, borne upwards into regions purely spiritual, while yet the heart was altogether estranged from God, and unreservedly yielded to his enemiesto the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life. I frequently recal, with no small bewilderment of mind, the emotions excited within the walls of an edifice with which many a melting recol

lection is closely interwoven. Often do I, in imagination, again pace its majestic aisles, as was my wont in childhood and in early youth, bending many an awe-struck look on the high embowered roof,' admiring on its storied windows,' the broad dark depth of purple, crimson, and all these mellow colours through which the day-beam struggled to look in upon the antique tracery of richly-carved stalls; and the massive effigies, recumbent on their sculptured tombs, where generations of living men had approached, to gaze and to wonder, and had retired to perish, making way for a succeeding race, who should in turn behold, and depart, and die, even as they. I pass on, to the singularly fine quadrangle of cloisters, girding in a burial-ground where surely every particle of dust must once have been instinct with the spirit of life, so many centuries had contributed their relics of mouldering humanity to swell its crowded hillocks. Never have I since beheld a cemetery so rich in the rank honours of long, wild grass, springing through crevices of broken gravestones-themselves scarcely less green from mossy incrustations, and meandering stains of dampwaving in the perpetual draught of air, and peering, as it seemed, through the black but beautiful arches that bounded their territory, to arrest the glance of some thoughtless passer-by, with the mute but impressive demand, "What is man?"

So vivid is the recollection of this familiar spot, that the light air now fanning me while I write, seems tainted with that peculiar savour, loaded with that indescribable chill, which no atmospheric change could overcome. The breeze of the cloisters was always stirring, always dank, and always fraught

with desolation. There was that in it which repressed the buoyancy of youthful spirits, sobering the mind into something akin with the surrounding objects. I have felt my giddy mirthfulness subside into pensive thought, as I slackened the pace frequently amounting to a run, while seeking in the cloisters that exercise which perchance a stormy day denied me elsewhere; and where a little side-door opened, giving ingress to the band of youthful choiristers, habited in their every-day surplices of dusky purple, and I marked them through the intercepting arches winding their silent way towards the great body of the church, for the performance of evening service, I have been irresistibly drawn to follow their steps; and, taking my seat in the recess of a dark but lofty side-pew, to join in the devotions that had formed no part of my plan in visiting the cloister promenade.

It was on such occasions that I have been rapt into something so nearly resembling the fervour of true piety, as to yield a clue to the otherwise inexplicable power of those delusions which blind the devotees of Rome. The impulse was certainly from without, and from around—not from within or above. Nothing can more beautifully harmonize than twilight shadows and the interior of an antique building, lofty, massive, and richly sculptured. Even the fading of those gorgeous tints upon its gothic windows, seemed to speak something of the fashion of this world passing away and when the deep slow tones of a majestic organ, touched by a master's hand, were melting as they seemed to mount, and finally lost amid the recesses of the lofty roof-when the succeeding stillness was broken by a single voice

reading, perhaps, in the lesson for the day, some exquisitely sublime passage from Isaiah-when the dark-blue lining of my cushioned and curtained recess almost assumed the semblance of a funeral canopy, and a dim, unearthly character rested on all around my feelings have so largely partaken in that character, as to impress me with the confident belief that I was holding high and full communion with HIM whom I neither loved, nor feared, nor desired to know beyond the fictitious excitement of such moments.

Under these circumstances, and beneath the closing shades of a dull October evening, I well remember the effect produced on my mind by the appointed lesson-the fifteenth chapter of the first Epistle to the Corinthians: I was very young, and had never paid attention to that magnificent portion of holy writ. It was most exquisitely read, in a deep sonorous voice, by one who, at least, felt the poetry of the composition, and as such did justice to it. Certain I am, that it brought me into a new and strange proximity to heavenly things, which remained long after the thrilling emotion of that hour had passed away. This recollection often humbles and alarms me; for now that the Lord has, in his abundant mercy drawn aside the veil under which all spiritual meanings lay hidden from my view, I cannot always realize the intensity of feeling which marked that well-remembered period. It is well for the child of God that he is cautioned by many wise counsellors against the illusiveness of momentary impulses, in their origin as likely to be earthly and material, as heavenly and spiritual. Often, when elated in what seems a highly devo

tional frame, I suddenly put to myself the searching question, 'Wherein does this differ from the enthusiasm enkindled within the walls of my own, my beautiful cathedral?'

How beautiful that cathedral was, at the time when I fondly called it my own, is matter of history now. The hand of modern innovation has so reformed its supposed defects, so industriously applied the leveling brush of the whitewasher to its diversified knots of fruit, and flower, and story, and heraldic blazonary-so cropped, and trimmed, and planed away its redundant fretwork-so shamed the old grey stones of its venerable bulk by the spruce addenda of spic-and-span masonry, that there are few pilgrimages which I would not undertake in preference to one that should lead me to the shrine of my early devotion-the beloved memento of ny joyous childhood. Whatever mania I may be subject to, the mania of reckless innovation will ever be abhorrent to my soul. I love to look upon the monuments of my country's greatness-I love to walk round about them, to mark well her bulwarks, to number her towers, and to mount guard, if so it might be given me, over every grey fragment of what the Lord so long has blessed to her safety and prosperity. My cathedral, like other British institutions, has braved, a thousand years, the battle and the breeze,' and yet it stands seemingly prepared to endure for another thousand. With my consent, the hand of the spoiler should never have touched it; and spoliation is too often the true word for what, in our day, goes by the name of renovation. Yet even where the hand of judgment has unquestionably interposed to strengthen, and that