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Though in some points of doe, and perhaps of discipline I am diffident of lending a perfect assent to that church which you have so worthily historified, yet may the ill time never e to me, when with a chilled heart, or a portion of irrevereiment, I shall enter her beautiful and time-hallowed Edifices. Judge then of my mortification when, after attending the choral anthems of last Wednesday at Westminster, and being desirous of renewing my acquaintance, after lapsed years, with the tombs and antiquities there, I found myself excluded; turned out like a dog, or some profane person, into the on street９９ｌｉｂ?, with feelings not very genial to the place, or to the solemn service which I had been listening to. It was a jar after that music.You had your education at Westminster; and doubtless among those dim aisles and cloisters, you must have gathered much of that devotional feeling in those young years, on which your purest mind feeds still -- and may it feed! The antiquarian spirit, strong in you, and graceful blending ever with the religious, may have been sown in you among those wrecks of splendid mortality. You owe it to the place of your education; you owe it to your learned fondness for the architecture of your aors; you owe it to the venerableness of your ecclesiastical establishment, which is daily lessened and called iion through these practices -- to speak aloud your sense of them; o desist raising your voice against them, till they be totally done away with and abolished; till the doors of Westminster Abbey be no longer closed against the det, though low-in-purse, enthusiast, or blameless devotee, who must it an injury against his family ey, if he would be indulged with a bare admission within its walls. You owe it to the decies, which you wish to see maintained in its impressive services, that our Cathedral be no longer an object of iion to the poor at those times only, in which they must rob from their attendan the worship every minute which they bestow upon the fabri vain the public prints have taken up this subject, in vain such poor nameless writers as myself express their indignation. A word from you, Sir -- a hint in your Journal would be suffit to fling open the doors of the Beautiful Temple again, as we remember them when we were boys. At that tin,e of life, what would the imaginative faculty (such as it is) in both of us, have suffered, if the entrao so much refle had been obstructed by the demand of so much silver -- If we had scraped it up to gain an occasional admission (as we c99liｂ?ainly should have done) would the sight of those old tombs have been as impressive to us (while we had been weighing anxiously prudence against se) as whees stood open, as those of the adjat Park; when we could walk in at any time, as the moht us, for a shorter or loime, as that lasted? Is the being shown over a place the same as silently for ourselves deteg the genius of it? In no part of our beloved Abbey now a person firance (out of service time) uhe sum of two shillings. The rid the great will smile at the anticlimax, presumed to lie iwo short words. But you tell them, Sir, how much quiet worth, how much capacity for enlarged feeling, how much taste and genius, may coexist, especially in youth, with a purse inpetent to this demand. -- A respected friend of ours, during his late visit to the metropolis, presented himself for admission to Sa<samp>藏书网</samp>int Pauls. At the same time a detly clothed man, with as det a wife, and child, were bargaining for the same indulgehe price was only two-pence each person. The poor but det maated, desirous to go in; but there were three of them, aurned away relutly. Perhaps he wished to have seeomb of Nelson. Perhaps the Interior of the Cathedral was his object. But iate of his finances, even sixpence might reasonably seem too much. Tell the Aristocracy of the try (no man do it more impressively); instruct them of what value these insignifit pieohese minims to their sight, may be to their humbler brethren. Shame these Sellers out of the Temple. Stifle not the suggestions of your better nature with the pretext, that an indiscriminate admission would expose the Tombs to violation. Remember your boy-days. Did you ever see, or hear, of a mob in the Abbey, while it was free t<bdo>.</bdo>o all? Do the rabble e there, or trouble their heads about such speculations? It is all that you do to drive them into your churches; they do not voluntarily offer themselves. They have, alas! no passion for antiquities; for tomb of king or prelate, sage or poet. If they had, they would be no lohe rabble.
For forty years that I have known the Fabric, the only well-attested charge of violation adduced, has been -- a ridiculous dismemberment itted upon the effigy of that amiable spy, Major Andre. And is it for this -- the wanton mischief of some schoolboy, fired perhaps with raw notions of Transatlantic Freedom or the remote possibility of such a mischief again, so easily to he prevented by stationing a stable within the walls, if the vergers are inpetent to the duty -- is it upon such wretched pretehat the people of England are made to pay a new Peters Pence, so long abrogated; or must tent themselves with plating the ragged Exterior of their Cathedral? The mischief was done about the time that you were a scholar there. Do you know any thing about the unfortunate relic? --
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