Page:Three Years in Europe.djvu/67

Rh lie also live remains of Sir Thomas More, the Protector Somerest, his brother Lord Seymour, Dudley, the husband of Lady Jane, Essex the favourite of Elizabeth, the cruel Jeffery, the unfortunate Monmouth, &c., &c.

Outside the Tower is the Tower Hill where traitors were executed.

We visited St. Paul's Cathedral, one of the largest and most magnificent in the world and containing the tombs of Nelson and Wellington.

The Polytechnic Institution is a scientific one where there are a great many things amusing and instructive. Here we went down under water in a diving-bell. The compressed air causes a painful sensation in the ear.

All seems to be over with France in this disastrous war. Army after army has surrendered, battle after battle has been lost, fortress after fortress taken, and Paris—the great, the beautiful, the magnificent—has been closely invested. And yet the French have not been inactive, they have strained every nerve, they have shewed the world a phenomenon,—what a great nation can do when brought to straits. Not once or twice, but repeatedly they have levied and sent succouring armies from north, south, and west but as often have these armies been beaten back north, south and west by the vigilance and foresight of the besiegers, such as the world never witnessed before. But defeats and disasters have failed to quell the spirit of the French, the annihilation of entire