The captive Croesus.

CYMBELINE.

* * * * *


PAUL'S CROSS.

(_For the Mirror_.)


"----Friers and faytours have fonden such questions
To plese with the proud men, sith the pestilence time,[4]
And preachen at St. Paul's, for pure envi fo clarkes,
That praiers have no powre the pestilence to lette."

_Piers Plowman's Visions_.

[4] The great plague in 1347.

The early celebrity of Paul's Cross, as the greatest seat of pulpit
eloquence, is evinced in the lines above quoted, which give us to
understand that the most subtle and abstract questions in theology were
handled here by the Friars, in opposition to the secular clergy, almost
at the first settlement of that popular order of preachers in England.

Of the custom of preaching at crosses it is difficult to trace the
origin; it was doubtless far more remote than the period alluded to, and
_Pennant_ thinks, at first accidental. The sanctity of this species of