Page:Three Years in Europe.djvu/146

114 other poets. I also noticed another thing which I did not notice, and which I believe was not generally known to the visitors of the Abbey, 16 or 18 years ago. The Chapter House of the Abbey is a solemn and dimly lighted place with stony seats along the walls for the ancient monks to sit and hold their Chapter. A notice issued by the late Dean Stanley informs the public that it was in this small and obscure corner of the Abbey that the House of Commons held its sittings for three hundred years up to the time of the Tudors, and the first foundations of the free and noble English constitution were laid!

Other places were also duly visited. The Crystal Palace is a sight which children are never tired of seeing, and the splendid shops with which it is crowded, the beautiful gardens by which it is surrounded, and the illuminations and fireworks given on two nights in the week, add to the attractions of the place. Madame Tussaud's figures were a source of surprise and infinite pleasure to my children. The Albert Palace was also visited, but the Colonial and Indian Exhibition was the most attractive of the sights in London. As a sight the Indian Court far surpassed the other Courts; and backward as India is in machinery and in practical and useful modern products, her ancient arts, her exquisite workmanship in gold, silver and ivory, and her fabrics of fine texture and unsurpassed beauty, are still the wonder of the modern world, and were the theme of unbounded admiration among hundreds of thousands of English ladies who visited these Courts.