"This tree was a most choice and remarkable piece (134 feet high): it was made below bridge, and brought in two parts up to Scotland-yard, and from thence it was conveyed, April 14th, to the Strand to be erected. It was brought with a streamer flourishing before it, drums beating all the way, and other sorts of music. It was supposed to be so long, that landsmen could not possibly raise it. Prince James, the Duke of York, Lord High Admiral of England, commanded twelve seamen off aboard to come and officiate the business; whereupon they came, and brought their cables, pullies, and other tacklins, with six great anchors. The May-pole then being joined together, and hooped about with bands of iron, the crown and vane, with the king's arms richly gilded, was placed on the head of it, [and] a large top like a balcony was about the middle of it; this being done, the trumpets did sound, and in four hours space it was advanced upright." [Four hours to draw up a May-pole! a slow age, my masters; they could not have built Hungerford Suspension-Bridge in those days, which is a toy compared to that now stretched across the Menai Straits. But to proceed with our extract.] "After which, being established fast in the ground, six drums did beat, and the trumpets did sound: again great shouts and acclamation the people gave, that it did ring throughout all the Strand. * * * * It is placed as near at hand as they could guess in the very same pit where the former stood, but far more glorious, bigger, and higher than ever any one that stood before it. * * * Little children did much rejoice, and ancient people did clap their hands, saying, 'Golden days begin to appear.'" This was in 1661. Whether a May-pole was erected after the one given to Sir Isaac Newton, it "being old and decayed," we have not discovered. The one given to Newton was afterwards used for raising a telescope at Wansted in Essex. Cleveland, the bold cavalier colonel under Charles I., has a few spirited lines on the May-pole, but which are scarcely quotable, so hard does he hit the puritanical Tabithas and Obadiahs; we quote a few lines: "Whether it be a pole painted, or wrought Far otherwise than from the wood 'twas brought, Whose head the idol-maker's hand doth crop, Where a profane bird, towering on the top, Looks like the calf in Horeb, at whose root The unyoked youth doth exercise his foot: * * * * * How canst thou chuse, but, seeing it, complain That Baal's worshipp'd in his groves again?"