the _red cross_, which was the cross of St George, and also of the red cross knights, who acted as a sort of police on the roads between Europe and the Holy Land to protect pilgrims. This badge, therefore, could not fail to be very popular. In France it used to be, and in all probability is still, a common rebus to see _le signe de la croix_ represented by a swan with a cross on his back, (_cygne de la croix_.) Only very few signs of the cross are now remaining. The GOLDEN CROSS in the Strand is one of these, and has been in that locality for centuries. It was one of the first upon which the Puritans brooked their ill-humour and hatred of popery; for in 1643 it was taken down by order of a committee from the House of Commons, as “superstitious and idolatrous.” This was the precursor of the fall of old Charing Cross itself. The sign, however, was put up again at the Restoration, and figures prominently in Canaletti’s well-known view of Charing Cross, in the Northumberland Collection. The tavern was probably pulled down at the formation of Trafalgar Square. At a point on the road between Dunchurch and Daventry, where three roads meet, there was formerly an inn with the sign of the THREE CROSSES, in allusion to the three roads. Swift, in one of his pedestrian excursions, happened to stop at that inn. Not being very elegantly dressed, and rather importunate to be served, the landlady told him that she could not leave her customers for “such as he,” upon which the Dean, who was not the most modest, nor the most patient of men, wrote the following epigram on one of the windows:-- “TO THE LANDLORD. There hang three crosses at thy door, Hang up thy wife and she’ll make four.”