“On the side of the sarcophagus is a white marble slab, with figures in bas-relief.  One of these imaginary beings appears to be weighing the planets on a steel-yard.  They hang like peas!  Another has a pair of bellows and is blowing a fire.  A third is tending a plant.

“On this sarcophagus reclines a figure of Newton, of full size.  He leans his right arm upon four thick volumes, probably ‘The Principia,’ and he points his left hand to a globe above his head on which the goddess Urania sits; she leans upon another large book.

“Newton’s head is very fine, and is probably a portrait.  The left hand, which is raised, has lost two fingers.  I thought at first that this had been the work of some ‘undevout astronomer,’ but when I came to ’read up’ I found that at one time soldiers were quartered in the abbey, and probably one of them wanted a finger with which to crowd the tobacco into his pipe, and so broke off one.

“August 17.  To-day we have been to the far-famed British Museum.  I carried an ‘open sesame’ in the form of a letter given to me by Professor Henry, asking for me special attention from all societies with which the ‘Smithsonian’ at Washington is connected.

“I gave the paper first to a police officer; a police officer is met at every turn in London.  He handed it to another official, who said, ’You’d better go to the secretary.’

“I walked in the direction towards which he pointed, a long way, until I found the secretary.  He called another man, and asked him to show me whatever I wanted to see.

“This man took me into another room, and consigned me to still another man—­the fifth to whom I had been referred.  No. 5 was an intelligent and polite person, and he began to talk about America at once.

“I asked to see anything which had belonged to Newton, and he told me they had one letter only,—­from Newton to Leibnitz,—­which he showed me.  It was written in Latin, with diagrams and formulae interspersed.  The reply of Leibnitz, copied by Newton, was also in their collection, and an order from Newton written while he was director of the mint.

“No. 5 also showed me the illuminated manuscripts of the collection; they are kept locked in glass-topped cases, and a curtain protects them from the light.  We saw also the oldest copy of the Bible in the world.

“The art of printing has brought incalculable blessings; but as I looked at a neat manuscript book by Queen Elizabeth, copied from another as a present to her father, I could not help thinking it was much better than worsted work!

“A much-worn prayer-book was shown me, said to be the one used by Lady Jane Grey when on the scaffold.  Nothing makes me more conscious that I am on foreign soil than the constant recurrence of associations connected with the executioner’s block.  We hung the Quakers and we burned the witches, but we are careful not to remember the localities of our barbarisms; we show instead the Plymouth Rock or the Washington Elm.