He might be a bricklayer or a road-sweeper if you judge by his
appearance. This is the tomb I was telling you about."
We halted before the plain coffer of stone, weathered and wasted by age,
but yet kept in decent repair by some pious hands, and read the
inscription, setting forth with modest pride, that here reposed Anna,
sixth daughter of Richard Cromwell, "The Protector." It was a simple
monument and commonplace enough, with the crude severity of the ascetic
age to which it belonged. But still, it carried the mind back to those
stirring times when the leafy shades of Gray's Inn Lane must have
resounded with the clank of weapons and the tramp of armed men; when
this bald recreation-ground was a rustic churchyard, standing amidst
green fields and hedgerows, and countrymen leading their pack-horses
into London through the Lane would stop to look in over the wooden gate.
Miss Bellingham looked at me critically as I stood thus reflecting, and
presently remarked, "I think you and I have a good many mental habits in
common.
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