From this time the Cross continually occurs in history.  “It was used not only for the instruction of mankind by the doctrine of the preacher, but for every purpose, political or ecclesiastical; for giving force to oaths; for promulgating of laws, or rather the royal pleasure; for royal contracts of marriage; for the emission of papal bulls; for anathematizing sinners; for benedictions; for exposing of penitents under the censure of the church; for recantations; for the private ends of the ambitious; and for the defaming of those who had incurred the displeasure of crowned heads.”

Bishop King preached the last sermon here, of any note, before James I., and his court on Midlent Sunday, 1620.  The object of the sermon was the repairing of the cathedral; and the ceremony was conducted with so much magnificence, that the prelate exclaims, in a part of his sermon,—­“But will it almost be believed, that a King should come from his court to this crosse, where princes seldom or never come, and that comming to bee in a state, with a kinde of sacred pompe and procession, accompanied with all the faire flowers of his field, and the fairest rose (the Queen) of his owne garden!” The cross was demolished by order of Parliament in 1643, executed by the willing hands of Isaac Pennington, the fanatical Lord Mayor of that year, who died a convicted regicide in the Tower.  It stood at the north-east end of St. Paul’s Churchyard; a print of the cross, and likewise the shrouds, where the company sat in wet weather, may be seen in Speed’s Theatre of Great Britain.

J.R.S.

* * * * *

ADA.

(For the Mirror.)

  She stood in the midst of that gorgeous throng,
  Her praise was the theme of every tongue;
  Warriors were there, whose glance of fire
  Spoke to their foes of vengeance dire,
  But they were enslaved by beauty’s power,
  And knelt at her shrine in that moonlit bower. 
  Sweet words were breathed in Ada’s ear
  By many a noble cavalier;
  Maidens with fairy steps were there,
  Who seemed to float on the ambient air,
  But none in the mazy dance could move
  Like Ada, the queen of this bower of love! 
  The moon in her silvery beauty shines
  On this joyous throng through the lofty pines;
  Lamps gleaming forth from every tree,
  All was splendour and revelry;
  Sweet perfumes were wafted by every breeze
  From the flowering shrubs and the orange trees,
  Mingling with sounds which were borne along
  From the lover’s lute and the minstrel’s song;
  Fair Ada’s praise was the theme of all,
  She was the queen of this festival.

* * * * *

She left the crowd and wandered on—­
Where, oh where is the maiden gone? 
She hears no longer the minstrel’s lay,
The last sweet notes have died away,
Like the low, faint sound of maiden’s sigh. 
When the youth that she loves is standing by.