Page:Three Years in Europe.djvu/65

Rh space than those which are more remote, even so in the great picture of the world before us the importance of objects near us, not exactly by position but by interest, is made larger by the perspective of selfishness. For of our own needs and requirements we are fully aware, but who cares to or can realize to that full extent the requirements of others?

The other day we went to see the Tower of London,—the "Towers of Julius, London's lasting shame." We entered by the "Lion's Gate," and passed the "Bell Tower" where Elizabeth was kept in imprisonment by her cruel sister Mary. Walking on we came to the "Traitor's Gate."—

The gate opens on the Thames, and traitors were brought into the towers by boats from the Thames through this gate. Nearly opposite to this gate rises the "Bloody Tower," gloomy and ominous in name, and so called because the infant children of Edward IV. were cruelly butchered here by the inhuman Richard III. Passing under a terrible portcullusportcullis [sic] we came to the "White Tower" and saw the room in which Raleigh was confined for twelve years and where he began his celebrated "History of the World." In that room are the axe and the block which had severed the heads of three of the queens of Henry VIII., as well as of many other so called traitors. The axe fell so heavily that it went deep into the block and has left marks on it a quarter of an inch in depth.