'Think, Mrs. Dallas! I stood in that little chapel there,—the prisoners' chapel,—and beneath the pavement lay between thirty and forty people, the remains of them, who lay there with their heads separated from their bodies; and some of them with no heads at all. The heads had been set up on London bridge, or on Temple Bar, or some other dreadful place. And then as we went round I was told that here was the spot where Lady Jane Grey was beheaded; and there was the window from which she saw the headless body of her husband carried by; and there stood the rack on which Anne Askew was tortured; and there was the prison where Arabella Stuart died insane; and here was the axe which used to be carried before the Lieutenant when he took a prisoner to his trial, and was carried before the prisoner when he returned, mostly with the sharp edge turned towards him. I do not see how people used to live in those times. There are Anne Boleyn and her brother, Lady Jane Grey and her husband, and other Dudleys innumerable'—
'My dear, do stop,' said Mrs. Dallas. 'I cannot eat my dinner, and you cannot.'
'Eat dinner! Did anybody use to eat dinner, in those times? Did the world go on as usual? with such horrors on the throne and in the dungeon?'
'It is a great national monument,' said Mr. Dallas, 'that any people might be proud of.'
'Proud! Well, I am glad, as I said, that the sky is blue over America.'
'The blue looks down on nothing so fine as our old Tower. And it isn't so blue, either, if you could know all.'
'Where are you going to take us next, Pitt?' Mrs. Dallas asked, to give things a pleasanter turn.
'How did you like St. Paul's, Miss Betty?' her husband went on, before
Pitt could speak.
'It is very black!'
'That is one of its beauties,' remarked Pitt.