This paper had a rude illustration: Mr. Roach Smith gives a copy of it from a drawing by Fairholt. A similar prayer is still distributed at the shrine of the Three Kings. Throughout Christendom the feast of the Epiphany, or Twelfth Day, holds an honoured place, as commemorating the appearance or manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles, more especially to the Kings or Wise Men, who came from the East to do Him homage. In Spain it is called Fiesta de los Reyes, in France La Fête de Rois. In the year 1792 it was there pronounced an anti-civic feast which made every priest that kept it a Royalist, and the name was for a time changed to Fête de Sans-Culottes. It is hard to say whether the sign of the Seven Stars had its origin from the shield of an Astronomer King, Gaspar or Melchior, or from the seven bright stars of the constellation usually called the Great Bear,[23] or whether it was suggested by the mystic pages of the Apocalypse; but from whatever source derived, it was common in London about the time of the Great Fire. A fine sculptured specimen with ornamental border was to be seen in Cheapside as late as the year 1851, when Archer drew it. A cognate sign was the Sun,[24] a stone carving of which was formerly imbedded in the front of a house in the Poultry. It had at the corners the date 1668. The neighbourhood was at one time rich in astronomical signs. In 1532 Richard Collier, citizen and mercer of London, left his messuage called the Sun, in the parish of St. Mary le Bow, to be sold, and the proceeds to be devoted to the founding of a free school at Horsham in Sussex, which still exists, and is in the hands of the Mercers’ Company. Other signs of this description in Cheapside, were the Star, the Man in the Moon, and the Half-Moon--the sign of a celebrated tavern on the north side, close to Gutter Lane, rebuilt after the Great Fire. Here in 1682 Elias Ashmole presided at a dinner, given at the charge of newly accepted Freemasons; and, from a rare print of the early part of the eighteenth century, it seems that here one of their lodges was held. The following appeared in the _General Advertiser_ in 1748: ‘HALF-MOON TAVERN, CHEAPSIDE.--Saturday next, the 16 April, being the anniversary of the Glorious Battle of Culloden, the Stars will assemble in the Moon, at six in the evening. Therefore, the choice spirits are desired to make their appearance and to fill up the joy.’ The house belonged to the Saddlers’ Company, and was burnt down in 1821; No. 140 is said to occupy the site. [Illustration]