A Trip Abroad. Don Carlos Janes

has been seven thousand a year. The poet's grave is in Trinity Church, at Stratford, beneath a stone slab in the floor bearing these lines:

      "Good friend, for Jesus' sake, forbear

       To digg the dust enclosed here.

       Blest be ye man y spares these stones,

       And curst be he ty moves my bones."

      On the wall, just at hand, is a bust made from a cast taken after his death. Near by is a stained-glass window with the inscription, "America's gift to Shakespeare's church," and not far away is a card above a collection-box with an inscription which informs "visitors from U.S.A." that there is yet due on the window more than three hundred dollars. The original cost was about two thousand five hundred dollars. The Shakespeare Memorial is a small theater by the side of the Avon, with a library and picture gallery attached. The first stone was laid in 1877, and the building was opened in 1879 with a performance of "Much Ado About Nothing." The old school once attended by the poet still stands, and is in use, as is also the cottage of Anne Hathaway, situated a short distance from Stratford. I returned to Birmingham, and soon went on to Bristol and saw the orphans' homes founded by George Muller.

      These homes, capable of accommodating two thousand and fifty orphans, are beautifully situated on Ashley Downs. Brother William Kempster and I visited them together, and were shown through a portion of one of the five large buildings by an elderly gentleman, neat, clean, and humble, who was sent down by the manager of the institution, a son-in-law of Mr. Muller, who died in 1898, at the advanced age of ninety-three years. We saw one of the dormitories, which was plainly furnished, but everything was neat and clean. We were also shown two dining-rooms, and the library-room in which Mr. Muller conducted a prayer-meeting only a night or two before his death. In this room we saw a fine, large picture of the deceased, and were told by the "helper" who was showing us around that Mr. Muller was accustomed to saying: "Oh, I am such a happy man!" The expression on his face in this picture is quite in harmony with his words just quoted. One of his sayings was: "When anxiety begins, faith ends; when faith begins, anxiety ends."

      Mr. Muller spent seventy years of his life in England and became so thoroughly Anglicized that he wished his name pronounced "Miller." He was the founder of the "Scriptural Knowledge Institution for Home and Abroad" and was a man of much more than ordinary faith. His work began about 1834, with the distribution of literature, and the orphan work, if I mistake not, was begun two years later. "As the result of prayer to God" more than five millions of dollars have been applied for the benefit of the orphans. He never asked help of man, but made his wants known to God, and those who are now carrying on the work pursue the same course, but the collection-boxes put up where visitors can see them might be considered by some as an invitation to give. The following quotation from the founder of the orphanages will give some idea of the kind of man he was. "In carrying on this work simply through the instrumentality of prayer and faith, without applying to any human being for help, my great desire was, that it might be seen that, now, in the nineteenth century, God is still the Living God, and now, as well as thousands of years ago, he listens to the prayers of his children and helps those who trust in him. In all the forty-two countries through which I traveled during the twenty-one years of my missionary service, numberless instances came before me of the benefit which this orphan institution has been, in this respect, not only in making men of the world see the reality of the things of God, and by converting them, but especially by leading the children of God more abundantly to give themselves to prayer, and by strengthening their faith. Far beyond what I at first expected to accomplish, the Lord has been pleased to give me. But what I have seen as the fruit of my labor in this way may not be the thousandth part of what I shall see when the Lord Jesus comes again; as day by day, for sixty-one years, I have earnestly labored, in believing prayer, that God would be pleased, most abundantly, to bless this service in the way I have stated."

      The objects of the Scriptural Knowledge Institution are set forth as follows: "To assist day schools and Sunday-schools in which instruction is given upon scriptural principles," etc. By day schools conducted on scriptural principles, they mean "those in which the teachers are believers; where the way of salvation is pointed out, and in which no instruction is given opposed to the principles of the Gospel." In these schools the Scriptures are read daily by the children. In the Sunday-schools the "teachers are believers, and the Holy Scriptures alone are the foundation of instruction." The second object of the Institution is "to circulate the Holy Scriptures." In one year four thousand three hundred and fifty Bibles were sold, and five hundred and twenty-five were given away; seven thousand eight hundred and eighty-one New Testament were sold, and one thousand five hundred and seventy-four were given away; fifty-five copies of the Psalms were sold, and thirty-eight were given away; two thousand one hundred and sixty-three portions of the Holy Scriptures were sold, and one hundred and sixty-two were given away; and three thousand one hundred illustrated portions of the Scriptures were given away. There have been circulated through this medium, since March, 1834, three hundred and eleven thousand two hundred and seventy-eight Bibles, and one million five hundred and seven thousand eight hundred and one copies of the New Testament. They keep in stock almost four hundred sorts of Bibles, ranging in price from twelve cents each to more than six dollars a copy.

      Another object of the Institution is to aid in missionary efforts. "During the past year one hundred and eighty laborers in the Word and doctrine in various parts of the world have been assisted." The fourth object is to circulate such publications as may be of benefit both to believers and unbelievers. In a single year one million six hundred and eleven thousand two hundred and sixty-six books and tracts were distributed gratuitously. The fifth object is to board, clothe, and scientifically educate destitute orphans. Mr. Muller belonged to that class of religious people who call themselves Brethren, and are called by others "Plymouth Brethren."

      After leaving Bristol, I went to London, the metropolis of the world. The first important place visited was Westminster Abbey, an old church, founded in the seventh century, rebuilt in 1049, and restored to its present form in the thirteenth century. Many eminent men and women are buried here. Chaucer, the first poet to find a resting place in the Abbey, was interred in 1400. The place where Major Andre is buried is marked by a small piece of the pavement bearing his name. On the wall close by is a monument to him. Here are the graves of Isaac Newton, Charles Dickens, Alfred Tennyson, Charles Darwin, and many others, including Kings and Queens of England for centuries. In the Poets' Corner are monuments to Coleridge, Southey, Shakespeare, Burns, Tennyson, Milton, Gray, Spencer, and others, and one bearing the inscription "O Rare Ben Jonson." There is also a bust of Longfellow, the only foreigner accorded a memorial in the Abbey. The grave of David Livingstone, the African explorer and missionary, is covered with a black stone of some kind, which forms a part of the floor or pavement, and contains an inscription in brass letters, of which the following quotation is a part: "All I can add in my solitude is, may heaven's rich blessings come down on every one, American, English, or Turk, who will help to heal this open sore of the world."

      Concerning this interesting old place which is visited by more than fifty thousand Americans annually, Jeremy Taylor wrote: "Where our Kings are crowned, their ancestors lie interred, and they must walk over their grandsires to take the crown. There is an acre sown with royal seed, the copy of the greatest change, from rich to naked, from ceiled roofs to arched coffins, from living like gods to die like men. There the warlike and the peaceful, the fortunate and the miserable, the beloved and despised princes mingle their dust and pay down their symbol of mortality, and tell all the world that when we die our ashes shall be equal to Kings, and our accounts easier, and our pains for our sins shall be less." While walking about in the Abbey, I also found these lines from Walter Scott:

      "Here, where the end of earthly things

       Lays heroes, patriots, bards and kings;

       Where stiff the hand and still the tongue

       Of those who fought, and spoke, and sung;

       Here, where the fretted aisles prolong

       The distant notes of holy song,

       As if some Angel spoke again

       'All peace on earth, good will to men';

       If ever from an English heart,

       Here