ST. DUNSTAN'S IN THE EAST.

-Not harsh and rugged are the ways
Of hoar antiquity, but strewn with flowers."

JOSEPH WARTON.

IN early times when learning was confined to nearly one class of men, and the power of handing down the remembrance of events, and chronicling the reputation of individuals, was exercised principally by the monks and priests of the period: the light under which occurrences should afterwards be viewed, and the opinions in regard to men which should be received by posterity, depended in a greater measure upon the prejudices or political bias of a single narrator than can be the case now that knowledge is more extensively diffused ;-the mis-statements of one sect or party being ordinarily balanced by the, perhaps, undeserved praises bestowed on the same individual by those of opposite opinions. The sainted Arch-bishop to whom the church now referred to, and others in London, were dedicated, may serve as an illustration of this remark: for it appears certain, if his character had been drawn, not merely by the monks, (of whom he was a warm partisan, and for whose aggrandizement, indeed, he scrupled