its Gothic aisles and choir, and mediaval adornments. That broad nave is a sort of public promenade and thoroughfare, where crowds of London citizens might at times be seen transacting business or seeking pleasure; but now we seem to see it filled with a congregation very grave and thoughtful--and well they may be, for Richard Baxter is delivering to them one of his characteristic discourses, not spiced with political declamation like so many at the time of the Restoration, but full of plain scriptural searching truth, which makes my Lord Mayor and Aldermen, sitting there in their scarlet gowns, look very thoughtful, and causes not a few of the crowded audience to tremble and weep.

His memory haunts many other spots in London. In the street called London Wall, there stands one of those old-fashioned edifices, which we meet with here and there in the heart of the City -within whose gates, when we enter, we seem to find ourselves in another world-some old world from which the inhabitants are gone, or only a few are left to keep watch in it; like the halls of the Alhambra, desolate and silent, as if time and its troubles had left it high and dry upon the beach of antiquity. We mean Sion College-a place many people hear of, and but few see, with its almshouses founded by Dr. Thomas White, the vicar of St. Dunstan's in the West, and its library, the munificent gift of John Simson, the rector of St. Olave's Hart-street. It is still an occasional gathering-place for the London clergy. In Baxter's time, there were famous meetings held there. "We appointed," says he, "to meet from day to day at Sion College, and to consult there openly with any of our brethren that would please to join, that none might say they were excluded. Some city ministers came upon us and some came not, and divers country ministers who were in the city came also to us; as Dr. Worth, since a bishop in Ireland; Mr. Fulwood, since archdeacon of Totness; but Mr. Matthew Newcomen was most constant among us." Pausing by

the gateway, among carts and cabs, and porters and merchants' clerks, and men of business of all kinds-who are evidently thinking of invoices and bills-we see gliding in and out, worthies of two hundred years ago, Richard Baxter the most noticeable by far. On entering the fine old library, the dusty square little volumes of Puritan theology seem to drop down from the shelves, and swell into veritable presbyterian divines. There they are with gowns, and caps -not like the books of square dimensions, but of orthodox roundness; and as they take their seats at the black oak table, Richard Baxter is the chief of the party. He spreads out terrifying bundles of papers to read to his brethren, full of diverse objections to the old order of ecclesiastical government, and arguments in favour of a modified scheme like Archbishop Ussher's; and he pleads against opponents with the skill and dexterity of an accomplished schoolman. Linked with Sion College,* not in local neighbourhood, but in biographical association, is the Savoy; chiefly noticed now by the wayfarer along the Strand, as one of those descending avenues to the Thames whence there ever and anon come up gigantic coal waggons, which provokingly interruptthe ever flowing stream of pavement passengers; but noticed two centuries ago for far other things. It had been a palace, a prison, and an hospital. There John of Gaunt feasted, and John of France was a captive; in Elizabeth's time, rogues and vagabonds made it their "chief nurserie;" but at the time of which we speak, the chapel within it, was just being turned into a French church, and other parts of it were employed for ecclesiastical purposes. A conference between certain bishops on the one side, and certain presbyterians on the other, was held there in July, 1661, and is known in English history, from the place of meeting, as the Savoy Conference. It was a fruitless attempt at union. There Baxter went with Dr. Bates and Dr. Jacomb, and others, expecting to have a

* Old Sion College was burnt in the Fire of London.

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verbal discussion with the opposite party, and by mutual explanations get at harmonious action; but the plan of free talk which Baxter loved was overruled, and it was determined that he and his brethren should state in writing what they objected and what they wanted: whereupon they set to work most diligently, the larger part of the task devolving upon Baxter, who not only drew up in the main a huge paper of objections, but entirely compiled a reformed liturgy. The poor man complained, and well he might, that his papers were never read. Whatever may be thought of his opinions, or his papers, his motives were above suspicion. Earnestly did he desire union; and beautifully did he say, "I thought it a cause that I could comfortably suffer for, and should as willingly be a martyr for charity as for faith."

Baxter was one of those men who, honestly intent upon a public purpose, sacrifice to it time and toil, and suppose that those with whom they must confer, are just as disinterested and sincere as themselves. But, like all such persons, he was met by some who, whatever might be their professions, were influenced by utterly different views and motives, and who were quite willing to let him read and write, and think over and digest no end of considerations pro and con, while they were letting the questions which tasked his intellect take a shape and get an answer as best they could from worldly politicians, or were themselves, by craft and intrigue, securing a settlement of the matters on their own side. Thus they attained success by a short and easy cut; while good Richard, in his simplicity, was trying to compass his end by a circuit of most conscientious and self-denying labours.

We must tarry no longer in the Savoy, but hasten off to St. Dunstan's in the West-that handsome church which stands in Fleetstreet, hard by Chancery-lane. No remains of the old building exist, but people by no means old can remember the clock which pro

jected far into the highway, and the two quaint-looking figures which stood behind to strike the quarters. In that church, Richard Baxter used to preach, and amazing congregations of people there were to hear the Puritan Demosthenes. Once on a time, he tells us, "It fell out in St. Dunstan's church, in the midst of a sermon, a little lime and dust, and perhaps a piece of a brick or two, fell down in the steeple or belfry, near the boys, so that they thought the steeple and church were falling, which put them all into so confused a haste to get away, that the noise of their feet in the galleries sounded like the falling of stones. The people crowded out of doors, the women left some of them a scarf, and some a shoe behind them, and some in the galleries cast themselves down upon those below, because they could not get down the stairs. I sat down in the pulpit, seeing and pitying their vain distemper, and, as soon as I could be heard, I entreated their silence and went on. The people were no sooner quieted and got in again, and the audience composed, but some who stood upon a wainscot bench, near the communion table, brake the bench with their weight, so that the noise renewed the fear again, and they were worse disordered than before. One old woman was heard at the church door asking forgiveness of God for not taking the first warning, and promising, if God would deliver her this once, she would take heed of coming hither again. When they were again quieted, I went on." Bates tells us he improved the catastrophe by saying, "We are in the service of God to prepare ourselves, that we may be fearless at the great noise of the dissolving world, when the heavens shall pass away, and the elements melt with fervent heat.”

As we go by St. Bride's, the shadow of Baxter going in to preach, meets us there. As we walk through Milk-street-upon which, as the birthplace of Sir Thomas More, Fuller could not help perpetrating the pun, that "he was the brightest star that ever. shone in that Via Lactea "-again we are reminded of our zealous

divine, for there he shone as a guiding star to Christ, and there he tells us that Mr. Ashhurst and twenty citizens desired him to preach a lecture, for which they allowed him 407. per annum. The parish church of St. Anne's, Blackfriars, is no more, having never been rebuilt after the Fire of London (the church of St. Andrew by the Wardrobe serving instead): had it remained, it too would have been by association suggestive of Baxter's eloquent memory.

There is a church in King-street, Cheapside, called St. Lawrence Jewry. We recollect stepping in one evening when service was being performed, and not a dozen people were scattered over the place. On its site there stood, before the Fire, a church, described by Stowe as "fair and large," which presented a startling contrast to the miserable desolation in service time of its architecturally pretentious successor. Baxter was asked to preach there. He tells us he had no time to study, and was "fain to deliver a sermon which he had preached before in the country." So immense was the crowd gathered to hear him, that though he sent the day before to secure room for Lord Braghill, and the Earl of Suffolk, yet when they came, there was no possibility of getting near enough to listen. So they had to go home again. The Earl of Warwick stood in the lobby, and the minister of the church was obliged to sit in the pulpit behind the preacher. "He was fain to get up into the pulpit," says Baxter, "and sit behind me, and I stood between his legs." We can imagine the congregation in that old church-aisles, galleries, and stairs filled to overflowing-the people clustering about the windows like bees-all intent upon what the preacher was saying, as with awful earnestness he warned them against the sin of "making light" of the gospel and of Christ.

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Men," said he, "have houses and lands to look after, they have wife and children to mind, they have their body and outward estate