the dirt, with his service-book in his hand,
imitating in impious scorn the time, and usurping the words of the
Litany used formerly in the church. Near the public cross all these
monuments of idolatry must be sacrificed to the fire, not without much
ostentation of a zealous joy in discharging ordnance, to the cost of
some who professed how much they longed to see that day. Neither was it
any news upon this guild-day to have the cathedral, now open on all
sides, to be filled with musketeers, waiting for the mayor's return,
drinking and tobaccoing as freely as if it had turned ale-house."

At these sad spectacles (of which almost every ornamented church they
passed supplied an instance), Isabel contemplated with pleasure the
character of Barton[2], who displayed that moderation and liberality
which justified her predilection for him, and her hopes for themselves.
He reproved the conduct of the mob with severity, and even hazarded his
own safety by opposing their outrages. He exhorted the police to prevent
what he termed an Anti-christian triumph over good taste, good manners,
and good sense. He represented how grossly indecent it was that
magistrates should seem, by their presence, to sanction the violation of
authority, and the reverence due to antiquity, and he sometimes
prevailed upon them to order the rabble to disperse, whom they had
previously invited to the task of spoliation. He spoke to the
better-informed, of the degradation which England would suffer in the
eyes of surrounding nations, by thus wantonly "sweeping the land with
the besom of destruction," and annihilating all those records of her own
pre-eminence, which other countries, had they possessed them, would have
been so solicitous to preserve. He distinguished between excitements to
devotion and objects of worship, and he read from his little
pocket-bible a description of the decorations bestowed on the first and
second temples, and remarked, that when the Saviour of the world
predicted the ruin of the latter, he threw no censure on the munificence
of those who had adorned it. He shewed, that the plainness and poverty
which of necessity attached to an afflicted church in its infancy,
destined to make its way, not by the usual assistances of worldly
wisdom, but in opposition to principalities and powers, were no rule for
her government in future ages, when she was to be brought to her
heavenly spouse "in glorious attire, with joy and gladness," and instea