One thing we would fain have seen, instead of the plain crimson drapery which covered the doorways, namely, "Arras rich with huntsman, hawk, and hound," to have corresponded with the ancient armour and blazoned banners that were placed around. After healths were drunk and speeches made, we ventured into the retiring-rooms, which seemed set apart for love and beauty; and we marvelled how there could be a bachelor in all London, while looking on that long array of sweet faces. Not that they were all dwellers in the City; but such as we often see in our suburban rambles pacing smooth grassy lawns, or peering over green hedgerows, before the neat villas that are scattered in hundreds around the skirts of this huge metropolis. There was the soft hazel eye of England, a look from which goes at once to the heart; lips that lay like roses resting upon each other; hair so bright and soft, that the richest silk would be coarse in comparison, though spun by the worms that fed on the mulberry-trees of Eden. Ever and anon forms swam by us more graceful than swans--beautiful as silver clouds sailing side by side over the noiseless blue of heaven. Here one coquetted with her fan; there another played with her bouquet; a third sat with her tiny hand half-buried amid a dark cluster of flowing ringlets; while a fourth beat her little foot to some well-remembered tune. On every hand stood flowers and choice greenhouse-plants high-piled, while a chastened light fell on the crimson carpet; and when we escaped, we scarcely knew whether we stood on our head or our heels, so entangled were our senses in jewels, flowers, rich dresses, bright eyes, long ringlets, and a thousand other sweet temptations, from which we prayed to be delivered. From a work now before me, entitled the _Royal Entertainments in London_, (the title-page of which is wanting), I find the following account of Charles I.'s entertainment at Guildhall: "Among the most important of the preliminary arrangements was that of providing a road for their majesties into the City, for the way from Kingsland to Shoreditch was impassable 'in regard of the depth and foulness of it.' A temporary approach was in consequence made across the meadows, in a line from Moorfields to Barnes, near Kingsland, 'a retiring-house of Sir George Whitmore,' who was then one of the aldermen; the banks being thrown down, and bridges fourteen feet wide thrown over the ditches. The previous night being rainy, and the morning gloomy and cloudy, the Lord Mayor commanded his tent to be pitched in a field, where his lordship and principal citizens, with some of the nobility, reposed themselves until their majesties came.* * * *