their solemn league and covenant, and Carisbrook Castle, for that, ye crop-eared Puritan,” he yelled. “If it had not been for them, I would have taken measure of the king for a velvet cloak as high as the Tower of London, and one flirt of its folds would have knocked the “copper nose” into the Thames, and sent it a-drift to Hell.” “Ye lie, in your teeth,” echoed the weaver; “and I will prove it unarmed, with my shuttle against your needle, and smite you to the earth thereafter, as David smote Goliath. It was _the man’s_ (such was the indecent language in which Charles the First was spoken of by the Puritans)--it was the man’s carnal, self-seeking, world-loving, prelatical hierarchy, that drove the godly to seek the sweet word in season from their own pastors, who righteously abominated the Popish garniture of lawn-sleeves, lewd organs, and steeple houses. Sister Ruth, tempt me not with that calf’s head, it is all streaming with blood;--drop it, I beseech thee, sister, it is unmeet in a woman’s hand, though the brethren drink of it.--Woe be unto thee, gainsayer, dost thou not see how flames envelope the accursed city under his Arminian and Popish son?--London is on fire!--on fire!” he yelled; “and the brands are lit by the half-papist, whole-arminian, all-damned people thereof.--Fire!--fire!” The voice in which he shrieked out the last words was powerfully horrible, but it was like the moan of an infant, compared to the voice which took up and re-echoed the cry, in a tone that made the building shake. It was the voice of a maniac, who had lost her husband, children, subsistence, and finally her reason, in the dreadful fire of London. The cry of fire never failed to operate with terrible punctuality on her associations. She had been in a disturbed sleep, and now started from it as suddenly as on that dreadful night. It was Saturday night, too, and she was always observed to be particularly violent on that night,--it was the terrible weekly festival of insanity with her. She was awake, and busy in a moment escaping from the flames; and she dramatized the whole scene with such hideous fidelity, that Stanton’s resolution was far more in danger from her than from the battle between his neighbours _Testimony_ and _Hothead_. She began exclaiming she was suffocated by the smoke; then she sprung from her bed, calling for a light, and appeared to be struck by the sudden glare that burst through her casement.--“The last day,” she shrieked, “The last day! The very heavens are on fire!”--“That will not come till the Man of Sin be first destroyed,” cried the weaver; “thou ravest of light and fire, and yet thou art in utter darkness.--I pity thee, poor mad soul, I pity thee!” The maniac never heeded him; she appeared to be scrambling up a stair-case to her children’s room. She exclaimed she was scorched, singed, suffocated; her courage appeared to fail, and she retreated. “But my children are there!” she cried in a voice of