and where now thy presence, together with that of Pym and Hampden, adds to the pleasure of him, who has written so beautifully of that rest, and who anticipated his meeting with thee there in words which the bigotry of others, not any change in his own convictions, tempted him to blot."

*See Note [20].

CHAPTER VI.

THE WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY.

"Great men have been amongst us,-hands that penned
And tongues that uttered wisdom."-WORDSWORTH.

In our last chapter the reader was conducted to Warwick Castle, that proud relic of a feudal age, which, since the days of Lord Brooke, has retained some associations unwont to haunt such edifices. Another building of a later date, rich in objects interesting to the architect, the antiquary, and the poet, is connected with our present chapter. Henry the Seventh's Chapel at Westminster is a magnificent specimen of the last period of mediaval church architecture in England. The art had passed through its springtide bloom and summer glory; and if, at the latter part of the fifteenth century, it gave signs of autumnal decay, in that decay, as in the appearance of the trees in October, there were tints of peculiar beauty. As one looks upon this edifice, with its panelled walls and airy pinnacles, it is impossible not to agree with a tasteful critic in such matters, who observes," it would seem as though the architect had intended to give to stone the character of embroidery, and inclose the walls in meshes of network." The vaulted roof, springing from the clustered pillars in the walls, like branches of

lofty trees interlaced together, forming a rich canopy of leaves, with those gorgeously bossed pendants piercing through, like gracefully drooping stalactites, or like the spider's web, covered with hoar-frost, must be acknowledged by every one who has a spark of taste to be an exquisite triumph of artistic skill. Nor can the tout ensemble of the edifice fail to strike such a person as the embodiment of conceptions redolent of genius and the muse; to make him feel that poetry is not confined to words, to paper books, and parchment rolls; that it can be written with the chisel as well as with the pen, and that a great architect is a great poet.

But while that and kindred structures appeal to the eye of refined taste as monuments of consummate genius and skill, the associations connected with the early history of these edifices, and their purposes in connection with the Papal religion, appeal to the heart of reformed piety as the sad memorials of superstition. These poems in stone, as they have been appropriately called, relate a mournful story when so regarded; and the fretwork, elaborately spread over the cold walls and roof, become no unapt symbol of that ingeniously wrought system of perverted religion which overarched society through the mediæval age, and has been fitly termed "a petrifaction of Christianity." Many a one, when pacing those dim aisles, has felt a struggle in his breast between the emotions of taste and the sentiments of a pure and elevated faith; the charms of artistic beauty and sublimity have been weakened, if not dispelled, by the affecting remembrance of the ecclesiastical despotism which, by means like these among others, for so many centuries held captive the minds of our forefathers.

Henry the Seventh's Chapel was only for a little while the scene of Papal worship, nor has it seen much of the

pageantry of feudal knighthood, though in the reign of James the First, the Order of the Bath there held their grand inaugurations; yet might it be deemed commemorative of the old system of things, both in religious and civil society;-a sign of the Roman Church, a sign of mediæval chivalry.

On the 1st of July, 1643, an unprecedented clerical assembly gathered within those walls. They came not to worship after the manner of those who had formerly trod that pavement. No bishop's rochet, no priestly alb, no deacon's dalmatic, not even an Anglican surplice, was to be seen on any one of them. They were attired in plain black cloaks and bands, in imitation of the foreign Protestants. Through "the great gates of brass," which, as Washington Irving says, "are richly and delicately wrought, and turn heavily upon their hinges, as if proudly reluctant to admit the feet of common mortals into this most gorgeous of sepulchres," did sixty-nine of these worthies, with a sprinkling of laymen, differently attired, pass to take their places in that gothic fane; and one fancies, if the gates could sympathize with those who hung them, they turned on their hinges that morning more reluctantly than ever. The Assembly had come there, first, to worship, according to Presbyterian order, and then, by the sanction, and, indeed, by the appointment of the High Court of Parliament, to confer on matters of high import, with a view to the promotion of the peace, unity, and welfare of England's distracted realm. The Houses of Lords and Commons joined these divines with their lay assessors. The knights' stalls were filled; all the benches were crowded. Extemporary prayer was then solemnly offered to God, after which Dr. Twiss preached a sermon, to which the congregation reverently listened. The scene marked an era, not only in the his

tory of that chapel and abbey, but in the history of the nation. The presence of these men, and the purpose for which they met, betokened the change that had come over things, temporal and spiritual, in old England. It was plain that the age of a feudal aristocracy was gone, and that the power of the Commons had gained the ascendant; that Popery and Prelacy had retired before the growing influence of Puritan heroism. The building remained the symbol of a past era. The assembly within it were the authors and the types of a new one. The past and the present were there in contrast; in other places they were in those days involved in fierce and sanguinary conflict. The battle of the commonwealth was a stern fight between men, on the one hand, in whose bosoms there lingered the spirit of the old civilization, religious and secular, and men, on the other hand, in whose hearts there rose the spirit of a new and better civilization in both forms. The grave worthies in black, probably, for the most part, had little regard for the artistic beauties of the place where they were met; stern indignation at the thought of the corrupt worship once conducted there, was the feeling uppermost in their minds as they looked around them. This temple of Prelacy was covered with gloomy associations in their minds. It was identified with a system under which they and their ancestors had been oppressed and persecuted. They thought of Laud, of the Star Chamber and High Commission Court, of the cropping of ears, and the slitting of noses, and the confiscation of goods; very sad remembrances, indeed, and giving to their countenances a grave and solemn expression, which all the gorgeousness of gothic architecture could not subdue. Who they were the reader need not be told. He will recognize at once the Westminster Assembly of Divines.