minister as the City might choose, a sermon for the commemoration of the recent deliverance. The Assembly of Divines also received an invitation to the festival; and further, the sheriff and aldermen, in chains and gowns, called on Baillie and his colleagues at Worcester House to join the other notabilities who were to be present at the municipal entertainment. On Thursday, the 18th of January, the Parliament, the Assembly, and the Scotch Commissioners met between nine and ten o'clock in the morning at Christ Church in the City, to hear Stephen Marshall, the preacher selected by the corporation to deliver a sermon at the request of the Commons. The exordium to his discourse was ingenious. Right honourable and well-beloved in our Lord, "This day is a day purposely set apart for feasting, and it is like one of the Lord's feasts, where you have a feast and an holy convocation, and you are first met here to feast your souls with the fat things of God's house, with a feast of fat things, full of marrow; and wine on the lees well refined; and afterwards to feast your bodies with the fat things of the land and sea, both plenty and dainty. But if you please you may first feast your eyes. Do but behold the face of the assembly. I dare say it is one of the excellentest feasts that ever your eyes were feasted with. Here in this assembly you may first see the two Houses of Parliament-the honourable Lords and Commons, who after thus many years wrestling with extreme difficulties, in their endeavouring to preserve an undone kingdom, and to purge and reform a backsliding and a polluted Church, you may behold them still not only preserved from so many treacherous designs, and open violences, but as resolved as ever to go on with this great work which God hath put into their hands. Here you may also see his excellency my most honoured lord, and near him that other noble lord the commander of our forces by sea, as the other is by land; and with them abundance of lords and resolute commanders, all of them with their faces like lions, who after so many terrible. battles, and abundance of difficulties, and charging in the faces of so many deaths, are yet all of them preserved,. and not a hair of their head fallen to the ground. Here also you may behold the representative body of the City of London, the Lord Mayor, the Court of Aldermen, the Common Council, the militia, and in them the face and affection of this glorious city; this city which, under God, hath had the honour of being the greatest means of the salvation of the whole kingdom, and after the expense of millions of treasure, and thousands of their lives, still as courageous and resolute to live and die in the cause of God as ever heretofore. Here you may likewise see a reverend assembly of grave and learned divines, who daily wait upon the angel in the mount, to receive from him the lively oracles and the pattern of God's house to present unto you. All these of our own nation, and with them you may see the honourable, reverend, and learned commissioners of the Church of Scotland, and in them behold the wisdom and the affection of their whole nation, willing to live and die with us; all these may you behold in one view. And not only so, but you may behold them all of one mind, after so many plots and conspiracies to divide them one from another. And, which is yet more, you may see them all met together this day on purpose both to praise God for this union, and to hold it out to the whole world, and thereby to testify that as one man they will live and die together in this cause of God. Oh, beloved, how beautiful is the face of this assembly! Verily, I may say of it, as it was said of Solomon's throne, that the like was never to be seen in any other nation. I question whether the like assembly was ever to be seen this thousand years upon the face of the earth. Methinks I may call this assembly the host of God; I may call this place Mahanaim, and I believe there are many in this assembly that would say as old Jacob did when he had seen his son Joseph's face, 'Let me now die, seeing my son Joseph is yet alive.' And for mine own part, I am almost like the Queen of Sheba, when she had seen the court of Solomon, it is said that she had no spirit in her; and I could send you away and say that you had no cause to weep to-day or to-morrow, but to eat the fat and drink the sweet, and send portions one unto another; and I should send you away presently, but that I have first some banqueting stuff for your souls, such as the hand of God hath set before you for your inward refreshing; the ground whereof you shall find in the twelfth chapter of the first book of Chronicles, and three last verses: All these men of war, that could keep rank, came with a perfect heart to Hebron, to make David king over all Israel: and all the rest also of Israel were of one heart to make David king. And there they were with David three days, eating and drinking; for their brethren had prepared for them. Moreover, they that were nigh them even unto Issachar, and Zebulun and Naphtali, brought bread on asses, and on camels, and on mules, and on oxen, and meat, meal, cakes of figs, and bunches of raisins, and wine, and oil, and oxen, and sheep abundantly: for there was joy in Israel.'"1 After the preacher had delivered a pertinent discourse from this text, which was felicitously chosen, the guests who had attended the church marched in long and imposing procession to Merchant-Taylors' Hall, where the banquet was served. 1 Vicars' Chronicle, iii. Train bands lined the streets. Common Councilmen in their gowns walked first. The Mayor and Aldermen, arrayed in scarlet, followed on horseback. The General and Admiral of the Parliament, with the rest of the Lords and the Officers of the Army, trudged on foot. Then came the Commons, with their Speaker and his mace-bearer; and next to these the Westminster Divines. It had been appointed that the Scotch Commissioners, clerical and lay, should have a post of honour between the Commons and the Assembly, but as Lord Maitland went with the other lords, the modesty of his clerical companions would not let them take precedence of the English brethren. So Baillie and his colleagues" stole away to their coach," and when there was no room for coaches along the thronged streets, they went on foot, "with great difficulty through huge crowdings of people." Passing through Cheapside they saw,-where the Cross used to stand, a great bonfire kindled, "many fine pictures of Christ and the saints, of relics, beads, and such trinkets," being piled up for the special entertainment of the reverend gentlemen, and kindled into a blaze just as they marched by. The feast cost £4,000, though, in the spirit of Puritan moderation, it included neither dessert, nor music, only "drums and trumpets." The Mayor sat on the dais. Two long tables supplied the Divines; Dr. Twiss the Prolocutor, sitting at the head. The Speaker of the Commons proposed the health of the Lords. The Lords stood up, every one with his glass, and drank to the Commons. The Mayor toasted both in the name of the citizens. The swordbearer, wearing his cap of maintenance, carried the loving cup from the chief magistrate to the Commissioners. The whole ceremony was to them a "fair demonstration" of union between those whom the Oxford plotters endeavoured to divide. The feast ended with the singing of the 67th Psalm," whereof Dr. Burgess read the line." "A religious precedent," says Vicars, in his Chronicle, "worthy to be imitated by all godly Christians in their both public and private feastings and meetings.' The Cheapside bonfire of papistical trinkets illuminated the spot where once stood the famous cross. That cross, also the one at Charing, and even the venerable building of a like description in St. Paul's Churchyard-although so rich in memories of the Reformation-had been destroyed by the axes of puritanical zeal. In his honest hatred of superstition, the Puritan did not perceive that objects once devoted to its service, if intrinsically beautiful, might yet deserve preservation, and that monuments of antiquity, though they may not advance the cultivation of taste, may render valuable aids to the study of history. But the use and appreciation of ancient art is of modern growth, and the Puritan must not be blamed for being, in this respect, only on a level with the reformers of an earlier age, and with many of his own contemporaries of a different creed.2 The House of Commons had early 1 Vicars' Chronicle, iii. 128, Baillie, ii. 134, and Perfect Diurnal. In the Perfect Diurnal of Thursday, June 19th, 1645, there is an account of another City feast. After dinner, and grace said by Mr. Marshall, both Houses of Parliament, the Assembly of Divines, the Aldermen of the City, and all the rest being assembled in the hall, they sung the 46th Psalm, and after that they departed. 2 Mr. Bruen, of Tarvin, in the Deanery of Chester, an eminent Puritan (born 1560, died 1625) "the phoenix of his age," distinguished himself as an iconoclast. Finding in his own chapel superstitious |