armor responded with a hollow ringing sound beneath,—­why, I should have felt that these shadows, once so familiar with the spot, had a better right in St. Mary’s Hall than I, a stranger from a far country which has no Past.  But the moral of the foregoing pages is to show how tenaciously this love of pompous dinners, this reverence for dinner as a sacred institution, has caught hold of the English character; since, from, the earliest recognizable period, we find them building their civic banqueting-halls as magnificently as their palaces or cathedrals.

I know not whether the hall just described is still used for festive purposes, but others of similar antiquity and splendor are so.  For example, there is Barber-Surgeons’ Hall, in London, a very fine old room, adorned with admirably carved wood-work on the ceiling and walls.  It is also enriched with Holbein’s master-piece, representing a grave assemblage of barbers and surgeons, all portraits, (with such extensive beards that methinks one-half of the company might have been profitably occupied in trimming the other,) kneeling before King Henry VIII.  Sir Robert Peel is said to have offered a thousand pounds for the liberty of cutting out one of the heads from this picture, he conditioning to have a perfect fac-simile painted in.  The room has many other pictures of distinguished members of the company in long-past times, and of some of the monarchs and statesmen of England, all darkened with age, but darkened into such ripe magnificence as only age could bestow.  It is not my design to inflict any more specimens of ancient hall-painting on the reader; but it may be worth while to touch upon other modes of stateliness that still survive in these time-honored civic feasts, where there appears to be a singular assumption of dignity and solemn pomp by respectable citizens, who would never dream of claiming any privilege of rank outside of their own sphere.  Thus, I saw two caps of state for the warden and junior warden of the company, caps of silver (real coronets or crowns, indeed, for these city-grandees) wrought in open-work and lined with crimson velvet.  In a strong-closet, opening from the hall, there was a great deal of rich plate to furnish forth the banquet-table, comprising hundreds of forks and spoons, a vast silver punch-bowl, the gift of some jolly king or other, and, besides a multitude of less noticeable vessels, two Loving-Cups, very elaborately wrought in silver gilt, one presented by Henry VIII., the other by Charles II.  These cups, including the covers and pedestals, are very large and weighty, although the bowl-part would hardly contain more than half a pint of wine, which, when the custom was first established, each guest was probably expected to drink off at a draught.  In passing them from hand to hand adown a long table of compotators, there is a peculiar ceremony which I may hereafter have occasion to describe.  Meanwhile, if I might assume such a liberty, I should be glad to invite the reader to the official dinner-table of his Worship, the Mayor, at a large English seaport where I spent several years.