a grave smile? When unexpectedly and by surprise he came in among his familiar friends, it seemed as if he had blessed the room; as if a new soul or some good genius were come among them." [Sidenote: _Lamot._] Puritan gentlemen manifested in their own way virtues of a kind similar to those which adorned their Anglican neighbours. The biographer of Alderman John Lamot, who died in 1655, eulogizes the "holy carriage of his youth," his industry, thanksgiving, prudence, integrity, zeal, charity, sympathy, bounty, and patience. Mention is made especially of his religious duties--he was a member and elder of the Dutch Church--of his devoutly attending public lectures, and of his reading the Holy Scriptures in private. Every year, upon the 17th of November, he made a feast to commemorate the end of Queen Mary's persecution, and the commencement of Queen Elizabeth's reign. Upon these occasions he would deliver a hearty Protestant speech, and bless God for the quenching of the Smithfield fires. At other times he invited friends "to eat bread with him before the Lord, as Jethro and Moses did," when, with singular fulness--for his memory is called a living library--he traced those Divine deliverances which had been wrought out for the Church in England and in the Netherlands, ending his conversation, as it regards the latter, with the words: "Their case might have been ours, and who knows but it may yet be?"[454] Sir Nathaniel Barnardston may be mentioned as a person of the same order. The time of his conversion is specified, and the foundation of his faith is recorded by his biographer; who also draws a full length portrait of him as a man and a magistrate--and as belonging both to his own family and to God's Church. He rarely met his pastor but they prayed together. "His tongue dropped honey, and his breath was as sweet and fragrant as the roses in spring." He sanctified the Sabbath, and diligently attended the preaching of the word. He prepared for the sacrament, and loved the Christian ministry--and fasted and prayed before exercising his right as a patron of Church livings, and sought to draw his neighbours to a religious life. He also celebrated, like the London alderman we have just mentioned, "The thrice happy day of Elizabeth's inauguration," and forgot not the Fifth of November, and the gunpowder treason, which last plot he was wont to pronounce "black as hell."