The soul of the honest and refined tailor, the sentiment of the zealous antiquary, was shocked at the spectacle of gallants, emancipated apprentices, and giggling City girls, knocking about the mazzard of the gallant king, as they sipped their muscadel or tasted their cakes and ale. John Stow expostulated, and the glazier consented to ransom the royal sconce. The tailor quietly and decently interred it within the old Church of St. Michael’s, Wood-street, the site of which is now occupied by Wren’s edifice; and the dust of the once-crowned brow of James of Scotland forms a portion of a path daily trodden by the unconscious lieges of Wood-street. I have already noticed what incident induced our literary tailor to meditate upon the delusions of history. Another incident taught him that appeals to the passions are destructive in their results, and confirmed him in his opinion that gentleness has more real power for good than violence. Nearly opposite the East India House stands the Church of St. Andrew Undershaft, “because that of old time, every year,” says Stow in that admirable ‘Survey of London’ with which his name is associated, “on May-day in the morning, it was used that an high or long shaft or May-pole was set up there before the south door of the said church.” The church was not so high as the pole or shaft, and it received, in consequence, its name of “Undershaft,” to distinguish it from other edifices dedicated to St. Andrew. Chaucer, describing a lofty braggart, says he “bears his head as high as the great shaft of Cornhill.” The pride of the shaft fell, and the shaft too, on the evil May-day of the year 1517.