and regret you have mistakenly been led into paying much greater attentions to my daughter than I was previously aware of. To prevent then any thing like disappointment, I think it but fair and just to inform you that we have very different views for her; and I cannot but hint it may be as well for an acquaintance to cease which I trust has not gone far enough to produce disagreeable results to any party."

Allan Fairfax was certainly very much astonished. The change in Mrs. Graham's whole demeanour was so marked and painful, so sudden, to him so unaccountable, that for an instant his thoughts became confused by the hasty effort of the mind to run over every circumstance in the past for the purpose of finding some solution to the enigma. It was necessary, however, to answer, and he replied with a degree of causticity which he would have avoided if he had had more time for reflection. "It is strange, my dear madam, that after having reached five-and-twenty, I should find any thing to surprise a reasonable man in life. Nevertheless, your words, your changed manner, your whole demeanour, does so much surprise me that I must inquire if Miss Graham has in any way complained, or ever thought, that I have paid her attentions disagreeable to her?"

Mrs. Graham would not tell a direct lie in answer to a straightforward question, and she herself was not quite so calm as she might have been, so that she answered, "No, sir, she has not; but I have eyes and ears, and others have the same, and I really do not see what should surprise any young gentleman in your peculiar position that the mother of a young lady, heiress to a large fortune, should object to attentions which can result in no good, and even prohibit intercourse which may produce evil."

"It would not, madam," replied Fairfax, "if it had not been preceded by direct encouragement. We should not feel the absence of light if we had always dwelt in night. But I now begin to gain a little insight into the matter from an expression, perhaps inadvertently, used. My peculiar position' has, I suppose, been explained to you rather lately, whether by an idiot who has most likely perverted the tale in telling, or not, you best know; but allow me to say, that my position, whatever it may be, was fully known to Mr. Graham, and before I say any thing further on the principal point in question, I shall wait till he is well enough, as I trust he soon will be, to express his opinions."

"His opinions are, I beg to say, the same as my own," answered Mrs. Graham, with a very angry brow; " but this is all trifling. Lady Adeliza will be flattered by the appellation of idiot; and you may depend upon it Mr. Graham will never feel disposed to oppose my views regarding my own daughter. In the meantime, as you force me to speak plainly, Mr. Fairfax, I must decline the honour of your visits altogether. I trust you may find a wealthy wife elsewhere. It must not be here."

The sting of the last words was felt to the marrow. To be thoughteven to be called a fortune-hunter-was more than he could bear; and feeling that if he replied at all, his words would be intemperate, he made Mrs. Graham a cold and formal bow, and hurried into the passage, at the door of which the chaise was standing in waiting for himself and Captain Hales. The latter kept him for two or three minutes after he had entered the vehicle, but then jumped in; and with a sad glance towards the halfclosed windows of Mr. Graham's room, Allan Fairfax was borne away from that house never to set foot in it again while it remained in possession of the same family.

END OF PART I.

ON THE OPENING THE PORTS OF ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL AND WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

BY JOHN HAMILTON, ESQ.

-The long-drawn aisle and fretted vault !-GRAY's Elegy.

Help us to save free conscience from the paw

Of hireling wolves, whose gospel is their maw.

MILTON'S Sonnet to the Lord General Cromwell.

The rest was magnanimity to remit,

If some convenient ransom were proposed.-Samson Agonistes.

A GOODLY day indeed was the last 9th day of November—the day that not only gave a year's nobility to the lucky alderman of London that drew the great prize in the lottery of city honours (and on this occasion it fell to Carroll's fortunate office), but that spoke "doom" to those Wombwell and Richardson practices of taking door-money for admission to a show, which have for so dismal a period degraded the portals of St. Paul's Cathedral and Westminster Abbey. A tradesman and his wife presented themselves at the gate of the former church, expecting-good, easy, and reasonable creatures-that by payment of twopence each they should be able to pass an agreeable and placid hour in wandering about the cathedral's interior, and seeing its monuments, and feeling its gloomy yet soothing tranquillity. To stand immediately under the lofty dome, in all its dim religious light," and immediately over the vault where repose the dear remains of Nelson and Collingwood, renders twopence insignificant even in the eyes of a small civic tradesman; but then the money must pass from the visitor to the showman at once-without a word, as a recognised price,- "but as a thing of custom." There must be no sign of haggling on the one side, or of extra extortion on the other. There must not be the shadow of "how much?" darkening the silent negotiation, but the air of free admission must pervade the brief money transaction. On this blessed 9th of November, however, our gentle visitors were fated to lose the hour's still and sensible gratification of seeing St. Paul's church, to enjoy, however, the wholesome pleasure of having on that day and through that temporary disappointment struck a mortal blow at the cathedral money-taker, from which (if all good and true conspirators follow up the justifiable assassination to a Brutus climax) the poor gowned receiver of ill-gotten coppers shall never recover, but shall at the base of one of the noble statuas, stretch himself along "no worthier than the dust!" (which he has been in the habit of collecting). The visitors were prepared with a meek, uncomplaining, expected fourpenny fee to the janitor; no murmur, no half-vented oathlet at a verger, no smothered blessing-in italics—of the dean and chapter, but the hush-money was held out with a perfect quiet, as though it was indeed hushed by the breathing silence of the cathedral itself! The fee is rejected, placidly but firmly, with the cool explanation to the astonished tradesman that "the admission on this day is sixpence each."

"Sixpence each! why, I never paid more than twopence before, out of service time."

"Very likely," rejoined the door-keeper, calmly, "but this is Lord Mayor's day-this is the 9th of November!"

"Well," exclaimed our visitor, "what has that to do with the interior of St. Paul's Cathedral? The Lord Mayor does not pass through the body of the church, I suppose ?"

The door was not relaxed at its reluctant yawn from an opening, but seemed closing its lips, and the implacable keeper continued

"Why, no, not exactly; but he goes round by Paul's-chain, and you will have the opportunity of seeing the show."

In vain the tradesman and his wife assured the sixpenny extortioner that they only sought to visit the interior of the church, and to see the monuments; the man's mind was full of aggravated money, and his imagination so interwove the statues of Dr. Johnson and Howard with the men in armour; the painted dome with the gilded state carriage; the pealing organ with the hired brazen band; the awful silence within the cathedral, with the vulgar civic yelling without; that he could not divest his mind of the idea that he was trebbling the attractions of his own show by the gilt, riotous, roistering return of Carroll's procession from Blackfriars Bridge to Gog Hall. Two real men in polished brass and steel were surely superior to a lexicographer in complete stone, and a Howard in cold, immoveable marble! Then for a hero! In a verger's eye, one live lord mayor in a heavy, solid gold carriage, with a drawn real sword up against a moving plate-glass window, must be indisputably of a more vivid interest than an invisible Nelson or a buried Collingwood. "People," as this plain-thinking doorkeeper had argued with himself and his fellows, in the early morning, "pay to see sights! Well, they cannot see, for any money when they have paid, the two dead admirals, and they can always come for twopence to watch the stones that cover them, and look curiously and earnestly at what is not to be beheld. But here they can see a breathing, bowing, blessed Lord Mayor of London in all his gold, with all his servants walking through the actual mud in positive silk stockings, and count the horse guards, and behold real men in actual And is an extra fourpence a-head to be thought of, in a free country? and in a temple, too, where it is a sacred custom, thoroughly known, and stretching back beyond the memory of man, to take small door-money for great, high, holy Dean and Canon purposes? People pay," says the gowned financier, "to go to profane theatres and gaudy profligate gardens, and pay chirrupingly, and they grudge and grumble to dole out a trifle in the way (it may be said) of alms, at the entrance of one of the most solemn, and beautiful, and religion-inspiring edifices in the world! I blush for my own kind when I think for a moment how cheerfully money can be lavished upon loose exhibitions and disgraceful amusements, whilst twopence at a church-door-at the door of a church nobly and profusely furnished with monuments—is paid with sullen discontent or with irreverent reproaches."

armour.

The Verger and his fellows had thus indulged their matin thoughts, if they had not thought in the precise words here set down for them. Men can think money, when they can think little or nothing else.

The occurrence to which I have referred is of so recent a date, that it is almost needless to say that the tradesman and wife having in vain pro

tested, remonstrated, threatened,-could not bring down the price of middle aisles, tombs, naves, and pillars; the gaoler of the tombs stuck to his sixpence. It was useless for the visitor to observe to the tester-man, that the new show would not pass by the porticoes of the old one, for two or three hours; it would pass, and for sixpence all in due time could be seen. So the door was closed; the money-taker became as invisible as Nelson himself; and the rejected visitor retired, sorely irritated, down the steps into the untaxed street. After a hasty dinner and much angry meditation he indited that useful, plain, valuable letter to the Times (with his name and address, "not necessarily for publication, but as a guarantee for the authenticity of the communication"), which appeared in the columns of that powerful journal within a day or two of the memorable 9th. With much confidence may it be said that this letter will be the death-warrant, in prospectu, of an unblushing, mean, priestly system of taxation; a taxation, indeed, pursued from days "beyond the memory of man." No one but a Dean, a sub-dean, a Canon, a minor Canon, and every creeping cathedral thing under them, can hesitate at demonstrating this practice a disgrace to religious edifices, a desecration of religion itself, and a black national dishonour!

t

It would seem to be one of those "whirligigs of fortune, which time brings about," that a citizen of London, and not a "Citizen of the World," should have it included in his destiny to place more glaringly before public attention, and to usher more effectively to the threshold of complete reform, a vicious custom, which has defied the labours of the English lover of his country, the agreeable moralist and truthful essayist, the pungent wit and light and playful humorist! That which neither Oliver Goldsmith nor Charles Lamb could accomplish, with their purest gold of patient prose, a given Mr. Andrew Dawkins, or a Mr. Joab Huggins, almost does at an after-dinner dash, in a plain little note, with an initial in the Times! If the journal itself would but introduce the dean and his black-gowned satellites, with due formalities and sober seriousness into its leading columns, all would be done. The Dean and Co. would soon break up their money-boxes, disband their twopenny trainband forces, disclaim their copper captain, and shut up shop. Better it were honestly to employ their vergers in watching with reverential care the temple itself, and in superintending (if that be necessary) "the tranquil delights" of its respectful and gratified visitants, than in struggling in frantic gowns for multitudinous halfpence at the gates, dismissing the penniless with churchly rigour from the steps, poring at intervals over their brazen accounts, and striking balances, after the anthem, or at shut of day. "The body" is, of course, as all corporate bodies are, firm for the antique right in the cause of fees; but we will venture to assert that there is not an individual of the money-taking party, from the dean, downwards, even to the very verge of the vergers, that would stand a personal examination with his name and character appended to it, as an exhibit, for five consecutive minutes. It is "the Dean and Chapter" that permits the steady existence of this unseemly diocesan exaction, and surely they are honourable men!

The name of Cassius honours the corruption,
And Chastisement doth therefore hide its head!

Let us seriously turn to those who have written, and written consider

ately and well, in favour of opening our English cathedrals free of portal petty charges. It must be borne in mind that Westminster Abbey is not a whit less disgraced by its very reverend masters and keepers, and minor black birds of prey, than in the cathedral of St. Paul. The citizen of London might have had his choler as justly "stirred up, as life were in it," at the little paltry wicket at Poets' Corner as under the lofty portico at St. Paul's. The peers going to the House of Lords; the queen, all in her robes, passing to open or to adjourn parliament; the creamcoloured Hanoverian horses and gilded state carriage, are all exhibitions of a high, living, Tussaud-interest, and might well justify "a penny more, and "the up-going" of that prototype of a civic hero, "the donkey." We know not whether in the Abbey, however, the charges are exaggerated on holidays. Still the customary system of extracting certain sums of gold from Englishmen for permission to see their own churches is the established practice. Here the heads-the very reverend heads of a venerable Abbey-can stoop, can live, EVER STOOPING to

Contaminate their fingers with base bribes,

And sell the mighty space of their large honours,
For so much trash as can be grasped thus!

But (we are still deviating) now let us see what plain old Noll-what the true-hearted, clear-prosed Oliver Goldsmith said-and said, too, in the wisest, simplest, and most forcible way, through the mouth of a foreigner, and with all the earnestness which unaffected truth innocently and silently brings to bear against a fraud, or a thing of absolute vicehe who could give birth to a "Vicar of Wakefield" is surely an honest and proud authority, on church monetary affairs, and may confidently be relied upon as one who would not utter a word that would tend to the injury of the dean, the clergyman, and the gentleman.

"Leaving this part of the Temple, we made up to an iron gate, through which my companion told me we were to pass in order to see the monuments of the kings. Accordingly I marched up without further ceremony, and was going to enter, when the person who held the gate in his hand told me I must pay first. I was surprised at such a demand, and asked the man whether the people of England kept a show? Whether the paltry sum he demanded was not a national reproach? Whether it was not more to the honour of the country to let their magnificence or their antiquities be openly seen, than thus meanly to tax a curiosity which tended to their own honour ? As for your questions,' replied the gatekeeper, to be sure they may be very right, because I don't understand them; but, as for that there threepence, I farm it from one, who rents it from another, who hires it from a third, who leases it from the guardians of the Tombs, and we must all live.' I expected, upon paying here, to see something extraordinary, since what I had seen for nothing filled me with so much surprise; but in this I was disappointed: there was little more within than black coffins, rusty armour, tattered standards, and some few slovenly figures I was sorry I had paid, but I comforted myself with thinking it would be my last payment. A person attended us, who, without once blushing, told a hundred lies; he talked of a lady who died by pricking her finger; of a king with a golden head, and twenty such pieces of absurdity. 'Look ye there, gentlemen,' says he, pointing to an old oak chair, there's a curiosity for ye; in that chair the kings of England were crowned; you see also a stone underneath, and that stone is Jacob's pillow.' I could see no curiosity either in the oak chair, or the stone-could I indeed, behold one of the old kings of England seated in this, or Jacob's head laid upon the other-there might be something curious in the sight, but in the present case there was no more reason

in wax.