Connecticut western news., 1874-09-11
In the London Tower.


 We extract the following from MT Bailey's account of his visit to the Tower of London. In speaking o1 Traitors Gate, within the Tower, he says
 Its very name calls up a flood of aw. full reflection, and to stand before it. and see with your own eyes the simple bar work which has struck terror to the strongest hearts forms ice about you1 own. Lady Jane Grey, her boyish bus. band, the beautiful Anne Boleyn, and 8 pleasing and varied assortment of dukes and earls, with foreign kings, have passed through the gloomy archway, up these very stone steps, over the very graveled way on which we are standing, and to noisome dungeons, and the somewhat fatal block.
 It was Mary Queen of Scots, I be- lieve, that landed at this dreaded por- tai. saw it's awful import, and faintly articulated, 'I am no traitor"
 When man came within it's shadow as prisoner, he began to put up his shutters. If he didn't feel the edge of the keen blade already at his neck, he was not of an imaginative turn, and would have starved, fear, as report 1 CT.
 What days those were for a wide- awake daily, with 8 ten-cylinder press, and a few wood outs. There were long periods when the Traitors Gate was almost constantly on the move, and the axe and block were in daily use.
 It was 8 rare opportunity for wide awake and industrious coroner. The wretched prisoners passed through the arch under the Bloody Tower into the court about the White Tower, and were thence distributed to the various Towers prepared for their reception. The White Tower was the first ereesed by the audacious Norman, and the first of the series. It is in the centre of what is called the inner ward, is a large square building with turret at each corner. It was formerly. I think, the warden intruded among his remarks, the royal palace, but it is now the receptacle of the ancient arms and armors used by Britons and their ene- mics, and is one of the most interesting spots within the enclosure. Adjoining it is the Horse Armory, 8 modern building, where the armors and weap- ons preserved from the fifteenth cen tury up to when plate armor was abol- ished. In the room devoted to this purpose one who has due reverence for the past can pleasantly and profita- ply spend whole day, but I fail to see the pleasure and profit of being run through it as if you were schooner loaded with plug tobacco, making 8 dash into blockaded port.
 It is intensely interesting-this view of the very articles worn next to the body, and handled and looked upon by the men whom distance of time has ar- rayed in our eyes with glory of TO- nance that is most attractive.
 s Here we have efigies of many of the warrior kings, mounted on efigies of horses, seated in the very saddles that sustained them in the shook of the great battles, which either strength ened or lost their kingdoms, grasping with mock fingers the actual bridle rein, and encased from toe to scalp with the identical pieces of furnished plate or ingeniously interlocked wire guards, which confounded spear and arrow hundreds of years ago.
 There are other effgies which have no name or title, being merely dummies to show off the various styles of armor. And there is an abundance of armor here. It is on every side of the long room, with spears, swords, pistols, guns, and other kinds of destructive warfare.
 But the armor is the main object. It was common enough four hundred years ago, when every knight was encased in it, and every common soldier was in part protected by it. Enormous sums of money were expended by the swell warriors of that time in bringing out the most gorgeous attire of steel, but nowadays if a soldier is caught with steel vest under his coat, or a plate of the same metal in the seat of his trow- sers, he becomes an object of derision to the rest of the regiment, who would scOrn to take so mean an advantage of an inquisitive bullet. Even the horses And it is just as well they did for go down, the prostrated iron-bound had had blacksmith shop on his chest. And any one who has never had black smith shop on his chest can hardly re- alize how it impedes full and perfect control of the body. Although @ man O0SorVeS OuL Ab6Ao CEou16 1OE 1ac1uS au enemy behind 8 wall of impregnable metal, still the wearers of armor compel our admiration by their qualities of pa- tience and industry. Iwell remember what task it was during the late re- bellion to keep 8 gunlock and bayonet up to the regulation shine, and when I think of the torture, agony, and sleep lessness the care of those two articles have cost me, am simply lost in ador- ation of the man who kept several square yards of burnished steel in daz- zling condition, and still had time to disembowel people and attend church.