erected there by his countryman, friend, and fellow-sculptor in Rome-the late John Gibson. Surely there is a mystic bond of brotherhood in all great minds, and art should hallow and strengthen it.

Wyatt's career was more than usually retired: he laboured incessantly on his works, and allowed nothing to interfere with his continuous devotion to art, for which alone he seemed to live. Rome was the home of his adoption; the Italian sculptor Rossi was his instructor; Canova was the artist who first invited him to "the Eternal City," giving the young sculptor the offer of a place in his studio, together with the benefit of his advice and assistance. Thither Wyatt travelled in 1821, and never revisited England except for a few months in 1841; for thirty years did he assiduously labour in Rome, rising before day had dawned, and working after lamp-light. He was an unmarried man, and his devotion to art was complete: in fact, he appears to have felt no other pleasure than in the employment which has made his name and memory famous.

Let us not depart from this small and sacred enclosure without a visit to two other graves of great and well-beloved Englishmen. Records connected with two great poetic names may be seen close to the old Roman defences of the city. On the sloping bank is a plain heavy slab; the simple inscription upon it was placed there by Byron; all that remains of Shelley lies beneath. His body was burnt in the Gulf of Spezzia, near which he was drowned: the burning was conducted after the manner of the ancients; the body was consumed, but the heart was found entire, and with the ashes

was placed beneath this stone. Two words only record the fact,Cor cordium-"The heart of hearts"-follows the simple name of Percy Bysshe Shelley, with the dates of his birth and death, and Shakspere's fine lines:

It is in front of the tree in our cut; that on the other side of the tree commemorates the grave of his daughter. In the old cemetery is a still more melancholy memorial of genius "done to death by slanderous tongues;" it is the gravestone of John Keats, thus inscribed:-"This grave contains all that was mortal of a

young English poet, who, on his death-bed, in the bitterness of his heart at the malicious power of his enemies, desired these words to be engraved on his tombstone-Here lies one whose name was writ in water.'" The harsh and inhuman character of the comments on this unfortunate son of the Muses undoubtedly hastened his death, and can only be excused by minds as coarsely unfeeling; for no rightly constituted judgment can reflect with anything but sorrow and shame at the brutality which squeezed the bitterest gall of criticism in the dying cup of sorrow fate proffered to this unfortunate young man.

M

SAMUEL COOPER.

ETROPOLITAN changes, since the commencement of

the present century, are among the most marvellous in their extent and variety of any that have occurred since the days of Elizabeth. Take any map of London published about 1810, and there we find "fresh fields and pastures" where now are densely populated streets. Quiet localities that, by some strange chance, were allowed to sleep on unmolested by the march of bricks and mortar, have suddenly become the centres of

streets, and bid an eternal adieu to rurality. Such a district is St. Pancras, in which terminus after terminus is being added of railways from the north, and of underground metropolitan lines.

In the reign of Queen Elizabeth its village church was, even then out of the beaten track of the good citizens of London, who were wont to ruralize in the country round about the city, at "Merrie Islington," and in the hunting-fields of Bayswater and Shepherd's Bush. In 1593 Norden thus describes it:-"Pancras Church standeth all alone, utterly forsaken, old and weather-beaten, which, for the antiquity thereof, is thought not to yield to Paul's in London. About this church have been many buildings, now decayed, leaving poor Pancras without company or comfort, yet it is now and then visited with Kentish-town and Highgate, which are members thereof; but they seldom come there, for they have chapels of ease within themselves; but, when there is a corpse to be interred, they are forced to leave the same within this forsaken church or churchyard, where, no doubt, it resteth as secure against the day of resurrection, as if it lay in stately St. Paul's."

The readers of Ben Jonson will not fail to remember his quaint "Tale of a Tub," that curious picture of "country life" in the immediate vicinity of the London of his day, in which "Sir Hugh," the Vicar of Pancras, helps to plot for his own benefit with Justice Bramble, of "Maribone," and the High Constable of Kentish-town; and the denizens of Kilburn and Islington talk a sort of Somersetshire dialect, which seems to breathe of a pure pastoral style; aided by such scenic directions as "the country near Maribone," or the country near Kentish-town." Where is