Time has brought many changes since old Drayton thus vaunted the stateliness of Coventry. The walls, the cross are gone, and of the twelve stately gates, but two remain. Gone, too, is the splendid conduit in the Cross Cheaping, S. Nicholas' Hall in the West Orchard, meeting-place of the Corpus Christi guild; and S. Nicholas' Church, out to the north beyond Bishop Street, which fell to ruin soon after the Reformation. But the "proud pyramidès," the "three spires," remain yet, and give greeting to all who approach Coventry, dominating the flat midland country for many a mile, changing their relative position as the spectator moves, and their colour in the shifting lights. Highest and fairest of all--so "the Archangel," says Fuller, "eclipseth the Trinity,"--is the nine-storied belfry of S. Michael's, tower, octagon and spire, a wonderful example of symbolism of design and harmonious disposal of ornament. The tower, begun in 1373, was the gift--says tradition--of the men of the Botoner family, the spire of its women, not the least among the many noteworthy achievements that in Coventry history are linked with a woman's name. [Illustration: THE TWO SPIRES FROM TOP OF BISHOP STREET] Such a medley is Coventry that the great steeple over-shadows quiet, memory-haunted places, and streets filled with the clamour of traffic, pleasant houses rich men have lately built, and squalid courts, that occupy the site of many an ancient burgage croft and garden. It is a typically English city, whose history might serve as the "abstract and brief chronicle" of England. A thoroughly corrupt borough in the worst days of municipal corruption, rigidly Puritan under the Stuarts, loyal under Elizabeth, steady for hereditary right at Mary's accession--but Protestant, as witness its martyrs--Lollard in the hey-day of Lollardry, patriotic and Talbot-worshipping in the Hundred Years' War--as England was, so was Coventry. In art and letters, also, the city recalls what is most characteristic in the achievements of the English people. Here flourished mediæval architecture, an art wherein Englishmen have excelled greatly, and the mediæval religious drama, foundation of Shakespeare's greatness; while chance, and the sojourn of George Eliot, have given the city associations with the literary outburst of the Victorian time. The doings of Coventry folk or the happenings within the city must have impressed the minds of generations of English folk, since the name has entered into folk rhymes[1] and flower names, and proverbial English speech. Old botanists speak of "Coventry bells" and "Coventry Marians," where now we say "Canterbury bells"; children play card-games called "Peeping Tom" or "Moll of Coventry"; and we still, by silent avoidance of our friends, "send them to Coventry," a reminiscence maybe of the uncivil treatment the city Roundheads gave to imprisoned Cavaliers what time the bitterness engendered by the Civil War was abroad in the land.