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A Trip Abroad by Don Carlos Janes
page 24 of 168 (14%)

I will only mention Nelson's monument in Trafalgar Square, the
Parliament Buildings, St. Paul's Cathedral, Kew Gardens, Hampton Court
Palace, and the Zoological Gardens. I also visited the Bank of England,
which "stands on ground valued at two hundred and fifty dollars per
square foot. If the bank should ever find itself pressed for money, it
could sell its site for thirty-two million seven hundred and seventy
thousand dollars." It is a low building that is not noted for its
beauty. If it were located in New York, probably one of the tall
buildings characteristic of that city would be erected on the site.

The British Museum occupied my time for hours, and I shall not undertake
to give a catalogue of the things I saw there, but will mention a few of
them. There are manuscripts of early writers in the English tongue,
including a copy of Beowulf, the oldest poem in the language; autograph
works of Daniel De Foe, Ben Jonson, and others; the original articles of
agreement between John Milton and Samuel Symmons relating to the sale of
the copyright of "a poem entitled 'Paradise Lost.'" There was a small
stone inscribed in Phoenician, with the name of Nehemiah, the son of
Macaiah, and pieces of rock that were brought from the great temple of
Diana at Ephesus; a fragment of the Koran; objects illustrating Buddhism
in India; books printed by William Caxton, who printed the first book in
English; and Greek vases dating back to 600 B.C. In the first verse of
the twentieth chapter of Isaiah we have mention of "Sargon, the king of
Assyria." For centuries this was all the history the world had of this
king, who reigned more than seven hundred years before Christ. Within
recent times his history has been dug up in making excavations in the
east, and I saw one of his inscribed bricks and two very large,
human-headed, winged bulls from a doorway of his palace.

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