* Sir Robert Howard has drawn an excellent picture of a Puritan family, in his comedy of “The Committee.” The personages are Mr. Day, chairman to the committee of sequestrations; Mrs. Day, “the committee-man's utensil,” with “curled hair, white gloves, and Sabbath-day's cinnamon waistcoat;” Abel, their booby son, a fellow “whose heart is down in his breeches at every turn and Obadiah, chief clerk, dull, drawling, and heinously given to strong waters. We are admitted into the sanctum sanctorum, of pious fraud, where are seated certain honourable members, whose names cannot fail to enforce respect. Nehemiah Catch, Joseph Blemish, Jonathan Headstrong, and Ezekiel Scrape! The work of plunder goes bravely on. The robbing of widows and orphans is “building up the new Zion.” A parcel of notched rascals laying their heads together to cheat is “the cause of the righteous prospering when brethren dwell together in unity and when a canting brother gives up lying and the ghost, Mr. Day remarks that “Zachariah went off full of exhortation!” It was at the sacking of Basing House, the seat of the venerable Marquis of Winchester, that Harrison, the regicide and butcher's son, shot Major Robinson, exclaiming as he did the deed, “Cursed is he that doeth the work of the Lord negligently.” Hugh Peters, the buffooning priest, was of the party. ** The erection of upright stone crosses is generally supposed to have dated its origin from the custom which the first Christians in this island adopted of inscribing the Druid stones with a cross, that the worship of the converted idolator might be transferred from the idol to the emblem of his faith; and afterwards the Saxon kings frequently erected crosses previously to a battle, at which public prayers were offered up for victory. After the Norman conquest crosses became common, and were erected in market-places, to induce honesty by the sanction of religion: in churchyards, to inspire devout and pious feelings; in streets, for the deposit of a corpse when borne to its last home; and for various other purposes. Here the beggar stationed himself, and asked alms in the name of Him who suffered on the cross. They were used for landmarks, that men might learn to respect and hold sacred the boundaries of another's property. Du Cange says that crosses were erected in the 14th Richard II. as landmarks to define the boundaries between Kesteven and Holland. They were placed on public roads as a check to thieves, and to regulate processions. At the Reformation (?!! ) most of the crosses throughout the kingdom were destroyed, when the sweeping injunction of Bishop Horne was formally promulgated at his Visitation in 1571, that all images of the Trinity in glass windows, or