and the old gray tower.  Nevertheless, a walk of a minute or two brings a person from the center of the market-place to the church-door; and Michael Johnson might very conveniently have located his stall and laid out his literary ware in the corner at the tower’s base; better there, indeed, than in the busy center of an agricultural market.  But the picturesque arrangement and full impressiveness of the story absolutely require that Johnson shall not have done his penance in a corner, ever so little retired, but shall have been the very nucleus of the crowd—­the midmost man of the market-place—­a central image of Memory and Remorse, contrasting with and overpowering the petty materialism around him.  He himself, having the force to throw vitality and truth into what persons differently constituted might reckon a mere external ceremony, and an absurd one, would not have failed to see this necessity.  I am resolved, therefore, that the true site of Dr. Johnson’s penance was in the middle of the market-place.

How strange and stupid it is that tradition should not have marked and kept in mind the very place!  How shameful (nothing less than that) that there should be no local memorial of this incident, as beautiful and touching a passage as can be cited out of any human life!  No inscription of it, almost as sacred as a verse of Scripture on the wall of the church!  No statue of the venerable and illustrious penitent in the market-place to throw a wholesome awe over its earthliness, its frauds and petty wrongs of which the benumbed fingers of conscience can make no record, its selfish competition of each man with his brother or his neighbor, its traffic of soul-substance for a little worldly gain!  Such a statue, if the piety of the people did not raise it, might almost have been expected to grow up out of the pavement of its own accord on the spot that had been watered by the rain that dript from Johnson’s garments, mingled with his remorseful tears.