igious associations in the minds of
the people. A gallery, now hidden by the gigantic orchestra built over
it, savours also strongly of the primitive dedication of the building,
else it has retained little more than its architectural beauties of
outline to testify its original consecration. And now to trace its
history, since, wrested from the mendicants, and deprived of its rights
as a cemetery for the wealthy and beneficent dead, it first became the
banquet chamber for municipal feasts, its walls shone gorgeously with
tapestry hangings, and its tables groaned beneath the weight of luscious
dainties. The kitchens and monster chimneys, with their long rows of
spit-hooks and fire-places, that now stand gaping in silent desolation at
the empty larders and boiling-houses in out-of-the-way corners of the
premises, look like giant ghosts of ancient civic gastronomy, lurking
about in dark places, mocking the shadowy forms of latter-day epicurism,
that may be satisfied with the achievements to be performed by modern
"ranges," on ever so improved a scale. But the glories of the St.
George's feast are likewise departed from it; the corn-merchants, to whom
its limits were awhile devoted, have built unto themselves an exchange;
the assizes, once held in it, have been transferred to the little
castellated encrustation that has grown out of one side of the real
castle mound, and reft of all regular employment, the Hall now stands at
the mercy of the city mayor, by him to be lent to whom he wills, for any
or every purpose his judgment may deem consistent with propriety; hence
the same walls echo one day the eloquent pleadings of a league advocate,
the next to the cries of the distressed agriculturist; now to the
advantages of temperance or peace societies, and the musical streams of
eloquence that an Elihu Burritt can send forth, or witness the fires of
enthusiasm a Father Matthew can elicit. Another week shall see it
thronged with eager listeners to the reports of missionary societies,
Church, London, or Baptist; the next with ready auditors to the claims of
the Jews and the heathen calls for Bibles; interspersed among them shall
be lectures on every branch of art and science, and every fashionable or
unfashionable doctrine under the sun that can find advocates, down to
Mormonism or Bloomerism itself. But prior to all in its claims upon the
services of the magnificent old structure stands _music_--why else are
its proportions hi