em have been refilled with fine
glass from the abbey at Liege. Most of the ancient monuments were also
destroyed during the sieges, but many fine tombs of more modern
construction replace them, among them being the famous tomb by Chantrey
of the "Sleeping Children." The ancient chroniclers tell bad stories of
the treatment this famous church received during the Civil Wars. When
the spire was knocked down, crushing the roof, a marksman in the church
shot Lord Brooke, the leader of the Parliamentary besiegers, through his
helmet, of which the visor was up, and he fell dead. The marksman was a
deaf and dumb man, and the event happened on St. Chad's Day, March 2d.
The loss of their leader redoubled the ardor of the besiegers; they set
a battery at work and forced a surrender in three days. Then we are told
that they demolished monuments, pulled down carvings, smashed the
windows, destroyed the records, set up guard-houses in the
cross-aisles, broke up the pavement, every day hunted a cat through the
church, so as to enjoy the echo from the vaulted roof, and baptized a
calf at the font. The Royalists, however, soon retook Lichfield, and
gave King Charles a reception after the battle of Naseby, but it finally
surrendered to Cromwell in 1646. Until the Restoration of Charles II.
the cathedral lay in ruins, even the lead having been removed from the
roof. In 1661, Bishop Hacket was consecrated, and for eight years he
steadily worked at rebuilding, having so far advanced in 1669 that the
cathedral was reconsecrated with great ceremony. His last work was to
order the bells, three of which were hung in time to toll at his
funeral; his tomb is in the south aisle of the choir.

[Illustration: DR. JOHNSON'S BIRTHPLACE, LICHFIELD.]

Lichfield has five steeples grouped together in most views of the town
from the Vale of Trent, the other two steeples belonging to St. Mary's
and St. Michael's churches; the churchyard of the latter is probably the
largest in England, covering seven acres, through which an avenue of
stately elms leads up to the church. The town has not much else in the
way of buildings that is remarkable. In a plain house at a corner of the
market-place, where lived one Michael Johnson, a bookseller, Dr. Samuel
Johnson, his son, was born in 1709. and in the adjacent market-place is
Dr. Johnson's statue upon a pedestal adorned with bas-reliefs: one of
these represents the "infant Samuel" sitting on his father's shoulder to