How sweet the communing with oneself; the thoughts that rise and flee; the dreams of solitude, away from the busy hum of men—quiet—alone with God, thinking of His wonders and His powers, the beauty and skillfulness of His works. As late at night I sat at my open study-window gazing over the forest of roofs and chimneys of the sleeping city, with its towers and church-spires pointing to the holy heavens and star-lit sky, for the first time I heard the great bell of Westminster toll out the midnight hour—sonorous, solemn, slow, as if clinging with throbbing pulse and quivering frame to Time's flowing garments to arrest him in his sturdy march. Solemn and slow the changing hours of past creations have passed away, with no “Big Ben” to mark their passage; but solemn and slow has Time himself impressed his footsteps on the yielding sands of earth, and left us his own record of his onward course.