ls, and doubtless many other
devices, of which the admirable Gothic art is wasted in the duskiness
that has so long been brooding there. Over the entrance of the hall,
opposite the great arched window, the party-colored radiance of which
glimmers faintly through the interval, is a gallery for minstrels; and a
row of ancient suits of armor is suspended from its balustrade. It
impresses me, too, (for, having gone so far, I would fain leave nothing
untouched upon,) that I remember, somewhere about these venerable
precincts, a picture of the Countess Godiva on horseback, in which the
artist has been so niggardly of that illustrious lady's hair, that, if
she had no ampler garniture, there was certainly much need for the good
people of Coventry to shut their eyes. After all my pains, I fear that I
have made but a poor hand at the description, as regards a transference
of the scene from my own mind to the reader's. It gave me a most vivid
idea of antiquity that had been very little tampered with; insomuch
that, if a group of steel-clad knights had come clanking through the
door-way, and a bearded and beruffed old figure had handed in a stately
dame, rustling in gorgeous robes of a long-forgotten fashion, unveiling
a face of beauty somewhat tarnished in the mouldy tomb, yet stepping
majestically to the trill of harp and viol from the minstrels' gallery,
while the rusty 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 othe