The next journey of the Club was indeed en zigzag.

“I have allowed you to visit,” said Master Lewis to the boys, “the places to which your reading has led your curiosity, most of which places I have visited before. I now wish to take you to a ruin that I have never seen, and of which you may have never heard. It is the place where, according to tradition, Christianity was first established in Great Britain; where St. Patrick is said to have preached, and where he was buried. It is the place which poetry associates with the mission and miracles of Joseph of Arimathæa; here his staff, in the shape of the white thorn, is said to blossom every Christmas.”

“Glastonbury Abbey,” said Ernest Wynn. “Of course there can be no truth in the tradition of Joseph of Arimathæa and the White Thorn?”

“The story of Joseph’s mission to England, his burial here, and his blooming staff,” said Master Lewis, “is undoubtedly a fiction, like the legend which claims that the stone in the old Scottish Coronation Chair in Westminster Abbey is the one on which Jacob rested when he saw the vision of angels. But Glastonbury Abbey was possibly the first Church in England. Here were the monuments of King Arthur, King Edmund, and King Edgar; and even old King Coel, St. David, and St. Dunstan are said to have been buried here.”

“What! the St. Dunstan that the devil tried to tempt?” asked Tommy.

“The St. Dunstan that the devil did tempt, I fear,” said Master Lewis.

“I would like to hear the story of his temptations,” said Tommy, “as we are going to Glastonbury.”

THE STORY OF ST. DUNSTAN’S TEMPTATION.

“St. Dunstan,” said Master Lewis, “was Abbot of Glastonbury Abbey, and was a very ambitious man.

“He caused a cell to be made in which he could neither stand erect nor lie down with comfort. He retired to this cell and there spent his time in working as a smith, and—so the report went—in devotion.

“Then the people said, ‘How humble and penitent Dunstan is! He has the back-ache all day, and the legs-ache all night, and he suffers all for the cause of purity and truth.’

“Then Dunstan told the people that the devil came to tempt him, which, with his aches for the good cause, made his situation very trying.

“The devil, he said, wanted him to lead a life of selfish gratification, but he would not be tempted to do a thing like that; he never thought of himself. O no, good soul, not he!

“The people said that Dunstan must have become a very holy man, or the devil would not appear to him bodily.

“The devil came to him one day, he said, as he was at work at his forge, and, putting his nose through the window of his cell, tempted him to lead a life of pleasure. He quickly drew his pincers from the fire, and seized his tormentor by the nose, which put him in such pain that he bellowed so lustily as to shake the hills.

“The boy-king Edred, who filled the throne at this time, was in poor health, and suffered from a lingering illness for years. He felt the need of the counsel of a good man, and he said to himself,—

“‘There is Dunstan, a man who has given up all selfish feelings and aspirations, a man whom even the devil cannot corrupt. I will bring him to court, and will make him my adviser.’

“Then pure-hearted Edred brought the foxy prelate to his court, and made him, of all things in the world, the royal treasurer; and he took such good care of the money entrusted to his keeping that he was speedily released from the responsibility. He seems to have been very easily tempted during his political career.”

The next day the party was borne away from shady Oxford, where one would indeed like to tarry long in the midsummer days, to the old city of Bristol, famous in the Roman conquest of Britain. In the journey the gay poppy-fields and the picturesque cottage scenes, which give a charm to the English landscape, often flitted into and out of view, reminding the boys of George Howe’s letter.

Glastonbury Abbey is indeed an interesting ruin. It stands apart from the popular lines of travel, and so it figures little in the narratives of those who make short tours abroad.

Think of the ruins of a church at least fourteen hundred years old! A church that Joseph of Arimathæa, who provided the tomb for Jesus, is reputed in the old monkish legends to have founded, and where St. Patrick and St. Augustine probably did preach, and where in the Middle Ages the remains of good King Arthur were disenterred!

Of the great church and its five chapels there yet remain parts of the broken wall, and the three large crypts where the early kings of England and founders of the English Church were buried. A little westward from the ruin stands the beautiful Chapel of St. Joseph of Arimathæa.

“I do not wonder,” said Wyllys Wynn, “that the old English people liked to believe that their church sprang from the mission of so amiable a saint as St. Joseph.”

“Christianity,” said Master Lewis, “was really first established in Great Britain in 596 by St. Augustine and forty missionaries who came with St. Augustine from Rome to preach to the Anglo-Saxons. These missionaries were kindly received by King Ethelbert, whose wife was already a Christian. It is related that one of the Saxon priests, to see if indeed his gods would be angry, went forth on horse-back, and smote the images the people had been worshipping. To the astonishment of the Saxons no judgment followed. The king was baptized, and the missionaries baptized ten thousand converts in a single day in the river Swale. The Christian religion had been preached in Britain before, but not generally accepted.”

On the south side of Glastonbury is Weary-all Hill. It owes its name to a very poetic legend. It is said that St. Joseph and his companions, all of them weary in one of their missionary journeys, here sat down to rest, and the Saint planted his staff into the earth, and left it there. From it, we are told, springs the famous Glastonbury Thorn which blossoms every Christmas, and whose miraculous flowers were adored in the Middle Ages. Such a shrub still remains which blooms in midwinter, and perpetuates the memory of the pretty superstition.

CHAPTER XII.

LONDON.

The London cabs meet the impatient stranger’s wants at once, and the boys were soon rattling in them about the city, out of the quarter of stately houses into the gay streets of trade, which seemed to them indeed like a great world’s fair.

“This is Pall Mall [Pell Mell],” said Frank to Tommy, as their cab rounded a corner.

“It seems to be all pell mell here,” said Tommy. “Had the poet been to London when he wrote,—

But this street has a more quiet look. What splendid houses!”

“Those,” said Frank, “are the houses of the famous London Clubs.”

The first visit that the boys made was to that time-honored pile of magnificence into which kings and queens for centuries have gone to be crowned and been carried to be buried,—Westminster Abbey.

The party entered at the western entrance, which commands an awesome, almost oppressive, view of the interior. In the softened light of the stained windows rose a forest of columns, rich with art and grandly gloomy with the associations of antiquity. Far, far away it stretched to the chapel of Edward the Confessor, a name that led the mind through the faded pomps of the past almost a thousand years.

Monuments of kings and queens, benefactors and poets, beginning with old Edward the Confessor and coming down to the Stuarts; of Eleanor, who sucked the poison from her husband’s wounds, and Philippa, who saved the heroes of Calais. Here Bloody Mary, Queen Elizabeth, and Mary, Queen of Scots, sleep in peace in the same chapel; and here the merry monarch, Charles II., lies among the kingly tombs without a slab to mark the place.

The new Houses of Parliament which stand between the Abbey and the Thames are the finest works of architecture that have been erected in England for centuries. They form a parallelogram nine hundred feet long and three hundred feet wide. The House of Lords and House of Commons occupy the centre of the building. Between these two halls of State rises a tower three hundred feet high. At each end of the building are lofty towers; the Victorian Tower, three hundred forty-six feet high, and a clock tower, in which the hours are struck on a bell called Big Ben, which weighs nine tons.

The entrance to the Houses of Parliament is through old Westminster Hall, ninety feet high and two hundred and ninety long, whose gothic roof of wood is the finest specimen of its kind in English art, and is regarded as one of the wonders of human achievement.

It was in this hall that Charles I. was tried for treason, and condemned; and it was here, at the trial, that the words of a mysterious lady smote Oliver Cromwell to the heart.

“The Prisoner at the bar has been brought here in the name of the People of England,” said the solicitor.

“Not half the people!” exclaimed a mysterious voice in the gallery. “Oliver Cromwell is a traitor!”

The assembly shuddered.

“Fire upon her!” said an officer.

They did not fire. It was Lady Fairfax.

Westminster Bridge, one thousand one hundred and sixty feet long, is near the clock tower, and here the Class took its best view of the Parliament Houses.

The next day the Class visited London Tower and the relics that recall the long list of tragedies of ambitious courts and kings.

“This,” said the guide, as the Class was taken into an apartment in the White Tower, an old prison whose walls are twelve feet thick, “is the beheading block that was used on Tower Hill. The Earl of Essex was beheaded on it: see the dints!”

An axe stood beside the block, which is kept on exhibition in one of the rooms in which Sir Walter Raleigh was confined.

“Where were the children of Edward murdered?” asked Frank Gray, after being shown the place of the execution of Anne Boleyn.

“In the Bloody Tower,” said the guide. “I am not hallowed to admit visitors into that.”

“We are a class in an American school. Could you not make some arrangement to admit us?” asked Wyllys.

The guide left the party a few minutes, and then returned with a bunch of keys.

He led the way to a small room in which the little sons of Edward had been lodged, to be accessible to the murderers. Here the unhappy children were smothered in bed. The room, apart from its dreadful associations, was a pleasant one looking out on the Thames.

The party was next shown the stairs at the foot of which the remains of the princes were discovered.

“I can imagine,” said Ernest Wynn, “the life of the boys in the Tower. How they went from window to window and looked out on the Thames, the sunlight, and the sky as we do now; how they saw the bright, happy faces pass, and children in the distance at play; how they watched, it may be, the lights in their dead father’s palace at night, and how they wondered why the freedom of the gay world beyond the prison was denied them. It is said that an old man who loved them used to play on some instrument in the evening under the walls of the Tower, and thus express to them his sympathy which he could not do in words.”

“The burial of Richard III., who caused the death of the royal children,” said Master Lewis, “was almost as pitiful as that of the princes themselves. After the fatal battle, his naked body was thrown upon a sorry steed and carried over the bridge to Leicester amid derision and scorn. For two hot summer days it was exposed to the jeers of the mob, and then was laid in a tomb costing £10 1s., to rest fifty years. The tomb was dashed in pieces during the Reformation, the bones thrown into the river and the stone coffin, according to tradition, used as a horse-trough.”

The collection of armor in an apartment of the Tower called the Horse Armory, a building over one hundred and fifty feet long, presented a spectacle that filled our visitors with wonder. It seemed like a sudden reproduction of the faded days of chivalry. On each side of the room was a row of knights in armor, in different attitudes, looking as though they were real knights under some spell of enchantment, waiting for the magic word to start them into life again.

“Among the stories told of the prisoners in the Tower,” said Master Lewis, “there is one that is pleasant to remember. Sir Henry Wyat was confined here in a dark low cell, where he suffered from cold and hunger. A cat came to visit him at times, and used to lie in his bosom and warm him. One day the cat caught a pigeon and brought it to him to eat. The keeper heard of pussy’s devotion to the prisoner, and treated him more kindly. When Wyat was released, he became noted for his fondness for cats.”

Leaving the Tower, the boys stopped to look at the Traitor’s Gate, which had clanged behind so many illustrious prisoners brought to the prison in the fatal barge; Cranmer, More, Anne Boleyn, bad men and good men, how it swung behind them all, and ended even hope! With sober faces the boys turned away.

The Zoölogical Gardens in Regent’s Park presented the boys, on the day after their visit to the Tower, a more cheerful scene. Who that has read of the London “Zoo” has not wished to visit it? Here specimens of the whole animal kingdom may be seen, and one wanders among the immense cages, artificial ponds, bear-pits, enclosures of tropical animals, reptile dens, feeling as free and secure as Adam appears in the picture of Naming the Creation.

Here, unlike a menagerie, the animals all have room for the comforts of existence. The rhinoceroses have a pond in which to stand in the mud, and the hippopotami may sport as in their native rivers.

The British Museum, with its Roman sculptures, Elgin marbles, and almost innumerable classic antiquities, and St. Paul’s with its fifty monuments of England’s heroes and benefactors, presented to the Class an extended view of the world’s history. Sight-seeing became almost bewildering, and when it was asked what place they next should visit, Tommy Toby replied,—

“I feel as though I had seen almost enough.”

“Let us visit Madame Tussaud’s wax works,” said Master Lewis.

“Are they like Mrs. Jarley’s ‘wax figgers?’” said Tommy; “if so I would like to go. Who was Madame Tussaud?”

“She was a little French lady who took casts of faces of great men, sometimes after their death or execution, and who died herself some twenty or more years ago, at the age of ninety years.”

The price of the exhibition was a shilling, and—

“For the Chamber of Horrors a sixpence hextra,” said the man admitting the party. Each one paid the “hextra” sixpence.

There were three hundred figures in all, supposed to be exact representations of the persons when living. In a room called the Hall of Kings were fifty figures of kings and queens, reproducing to the life these generally condemned players on the stage of English history.

A clever, winsome old man sat on one of the benches in the place, holding a programme in his hand, and now and then raising his head, as from studying the paper, to scrutinize one or another of the astonishing works of art.

Tommy sat down beside the much interested, benevolent-looking old gentleman, and said,—

“It was not George Wilkes Booth who killed President Lincoln, it was—

“Well, if this don’t cap the whole! Why, you are a ‘figger,’ too.”

And so the mild, attentive-looking old gentleman proved to be.

The Chamber of Horrors revived the feeling the visitors had felt in the Tower. It was a collection of representations of criminals. Among the relics is the blade of the guillotine used during the Reign of Terror in France, which is said to have cut off two thousand heads.

Hampton Court Palace, the gift of Cardinal Wolsey to Henry VIII., and probably the most magnificent present that a prelate ever gave a king, next received our tourists’ attention. The palace originally consisted of five courts, only a part of which now remain, but which assist the fancy in stereoscoping the old manorial splendor. Here Wolsey lived in vice-regal pomp, and had nearly one thousand persons to do his house-keeping, and noble lords, on state occasions, waited upon him upon bended knees.

The establishment at this time contained fifteen hundred rooms.

Our visitors found Hampton Court open to the public,—a place of rare freedom where people go out from London and enjoy the grounds much as though it were their own. It is in fact a grand picture gallery and a public garden.

“Charles had three beautiful children, and was fond of their company. Once, it is said, when he was with them at a window of Hampton Court Palace, a gypsy appeared before him and asked for charity. He and the children laughed at her grotesque appearance, which angered her, when she took from her basket a glass and held it up to the king. He looked into it and saw his head severed from his shoulders.

“The king gave her money.

“‘A dog shall die in this room,’ she said, ‘and then the kingdom which you will lose shall be restored to your family.’

“It was the plague time in London, so the gala days were omitted there; but the new queen had some magnificent receptions at Burleigh-on-the-hill, the residence of the king’s favorite, the Duke of Buckingham.

“There was one reception which the duke gave to the royal bride and bridegroom that was a surprise and delight. It was a banquet; the tables were sumptuous and splendid, and on one of them was a very large pie,—as large as that is supposed to be in which the four-and-twenty blackbirds of nursery-rhyme fame are said to have been concealed. The pie excited wonder, but the guests all knew that it was some

“The banquet passed gayly, and the time came to serve the wonderful pie. The crust was being removed, when instead of four-and-twenty blackbirds flying out, up popped a little man. He was a chipper little fellow, yet very polite, and was armed cap-à-pie.

“This was the first introduction of Jeffrey Hudson to the English king and queen. The pie had been purposely constructed to hold the little fellow, who, when the duchess made an incision in his castle of paste, shifted his situation until sufficient room was made for his appearance.

“The queen expressing herself greatly pleased with his person and manners, the duchess presented him to her.

“This dwarf became very famous in the court of the queen.”

The third day in London was given to the boys as their own. They were allowed by Master Lewis to go to such places as best suited their tastes. The prudent teacher had adopted this plan before, believing that the boys needed it to teach them self-reliance.

“Where will you go to-day?” asked Frank Gray of Tommy.

“Punch-and-Judy hunting,” said Tommy. “The streets of London are full of exhibitions; the queerest performances you ever saw. I have been wishing some time for a chance to see sights for myself. Will you go with me?”

“Punch-and-Judy hunting?” said Frank, contemptuously. “No; I am going to make an excursion to Cambridge.”

“Remember,” said Master Lewis, who had heard Tommy’s remark, “that London is a wilderness of streets. You must not wander far from any principal street. Never lose sight of the cabs and omnibuses.”

“I feel perfectly sure that I shall need no other help than the cabman’s in finding my way back. I have taken ten shillings in my purse in case of an emergency.”

“Keep your purse in your pocket wherever you find yourself,” said Master Lewis. “Punch-and-Judy crowds have not the credit of being the most honest people.”

Tommy found the hunting for street performances indeed alluring. Every court and alley seemed alive with the most remarkable entertainments a boy could witness.

He first met three grotesque musicians who had gathered around them an audience of admiring house-maids, dilatory market-people, and unkempt children. But the hat for contributions was passed so soon after he joined himself to the music-loving company that he at once left for another performance where the call for money might not be so pressing. A fiddler with three performing dogs, that were bedecked with hats and ruffles, quite exceeded in dramatic interest the former exhibition. But the fiddler, too, had immediate need of money, and Tommy remembered Master Lewis’s caution about the purse, and passed on to a public place that seemed quite alive with groups of people gathered around curious sights and entertainments.

The pastimes here took a scientific turn. Chief among these street showmen rose the tall head of a middle-aged gentleman—“the professor”—who administered the “galvanic grip.”

“Has fast has yer cured, gentlemen, pass right along, pass right along, and give others a chance. ’Ave you han hache or a pain? I say, ’ave you han hache or a pain? Cure ye right hup, right hup hin a minute. I’ll tell you what, it is astonishing, gentlemen, what cures science will perform.”

A man with a wonderfully bedecked performing monkey was leaving the square, and, as a sort of testimony to the attraction of his exhibition, a crowd of boys and girls were following him. Tommy wished to see a performance that had evidently excited so much interest, and he allowed himself to be borne along after the man in the juvenile tide. After passing through several streets, the performer stopped in an open court, but for some reason was ordered away. Tommy found himself left almost alone in an antique-looking place, where there were in sight neither omnibuses nor cabs.

“Which is the way to Regent Street?” asked Tommy of a sad-looking little girl.

“Dunno,” said Sad Eyes; “’ave ye got a penny?”

“What for?”

“For tellin’ ye.”

Tommy made other inquiries, but received about as definite information as at first, and each person followed the unsatisfactory answer with, “’Ave ye a penny?” as though it was worth that trifling amount to open one’s mouth.

An honest-looking house-wife, without bonnet or shawl, came marching along the street with an air of friendly interest.

“Will you direct me to a street where I can find a hack?” asked Tommy.

“A what?”

“A cab.”

“I guess yer lost, ar’n’t ye?”

“If you will be so kind as to direct me to Regent Street or Oxford Street, or Pall Mall, I will pay you.”

Tommy felt in his pocket for his purse. It was not there.

“Give me yer hand, little boy,” said the benevolent-looking dame.

The two walked on through several streets, when the woman said,—

“This street will take you to Oxford Street. ’Ave you got a penny?”

“No,” said Tommy; “I have lost it.”

“Oh, you blackguard—”

Tommy did not stop to hear any figurative language, but found his way to Oxford Street as quickly as possible, and took with him to the hotel so deep a sense of humiliation that he did not relate the misadventure and loss to his companions.

In the evening of the boys’ “own” day, George Howe and Leander Towle arrived unexpectedly at the hotel.

“We have come,” said George, “to bid you good-by.”

“Why good-by?” asked Master Lewis.

“We have been abroad a fortnight,” said George; “have seen the capitals of Scotland, England, and France; have rode through the heart of England and the most interesting part of Normandy, and, as our money is more than half gone, we must return. The steamer leaves to-morrow.”

“How much will the whole trip cost you?” asked Wyllys.

“It will cost us each $56.00 for the ocean passage both ways, and our travelling expenses and board for the two weeks have averaged to each $2.00 per day, or $28.00. The trip will cost me, well—when I have made some purchases—say $95.00, though I have not yet spent as much as this.”

“Have you obtained your return tickets?” asked Master Lewis.

“No, not yet.”

“Let me advise you not to take steerage passage in returning. The steerage will be crowded, and you will in that case find it no holiday experience. Take a second-cabin ticket for $40.00.”

“My expenses then will not greatly exceed $100.”

“Another steamer sails in a few days,” said Master Lewis; “accept my invitation to remain with us over to-morrow, and visit Windsor Castle with us. It shall add nothing to your expenses.”

The boys were delighted to accept Master Lewis’s generous proposal. It was arranged that the next morning the whole party should go to Windsor.

“Before we go to Windsor Castle,” said Frank Gray to Master Lewis, “will you not tell us something about the place?”

“Windsor Castle,” said Master Lewis, “is the finest of English palaces, and is one of the residences of the royal family. In its park, Prince Albert lies buried in the mausoleum erected by the queen. Perhaps I cannot better instruct you for the visit than by telling you the story of

PRINCE ALBERT AND HIS QUEEN.

“For seventeen years Queen Victoria has mourned for one of the best husbands and one of the wisest advisers that ever a female sovereign had.

“The marriage of Victoria and Albert was a love-match; not a very common thing in unions of princes and princesses. They were first cousins, Albert’s father and Victoria’s mother having been brother and sister, the children of the Duke of Coburg; but, when they became engaged, their situations were very different. Victoria was the young queen of one of the mightiest and proudest empires on earth; Albert was only the younger son of a poor and petty German prince, ‘across whose dominion one might walk in half a day.’

“But their relationship and the plans of their family served to bring them together at a very early age, and they were very young when their union was first thought of. Old King Leopold of Belgium was the uncle of both of them; and it was he who first conceived the idea of their marriage. But not a word was said to either of them about it until an affection had grown up between them, and it was time for the young queen to choose a partner for her heart and throne.