on any given part of the earth, than when the rays fall more direct.
From the slanting direction of his rays they pass through a more dense
region of the atmosphere, and are somewhat intercepted; while another
cause of the cold is the shortness of our days and the length of our
nights; the sun continuing only about seven hours and a half above the
horizon, while he is absent for about sixteen hours and a half.

This position of the earth relatively to the sun is exemplified in the
Popular Lectures on Astronomy, now delivering at the Assembly-room,
Paul’s Head, Cateaton-street, by Mr. John Wallis, on _Tuesday_ and
_Thursday_ evenings. His explanations of this noble science are
familiarly and beautifully illustrated, by an original and splendid
apparatus devised and constructed by his own hands. It consists of
extensive mechanism and numerous brilliant transparencies. Mr. Wallis’s
lectures on _Tuesday_ and _Thursday_ next, the 18th and 20th of January,
1825, are under the patronage of the Lord Mayor. Here is a sure mode of
acquiring astronomical knowledge, accompanied by the delightful
gratification of witnessing a display of the heavens more bewitching
than the mind can conceive. Ladies, and young persons especially, have a
delightful opportunity of being agreeably entertained by the novelty and
beauty of the exhibition and the eloquent descriptions of the
enlightened lecturer.

The holly with its red berries, and the “fond ivy,” still stick about
our houses to maintain the recollection of the seasonable festivities.
Let us hope that we may congratulate each other on having, while we kept
them, kept ourselves within compass. Merriment without discretion is an
abuse for which nature is sure to punish us. She may suffer our
violence for a while in silence; but she is certain to resume her rights
at the expense of our health, and put us to heavy charges to maintain
existence.

~January 7.~

  _St. Lucian._ _St. Cedd._ _St. Kentigerna._ _St. Aldric._ _St.
  Thillo._ _St. Canut._

_St. Lucian._

This saint is in the calendar of the church of England on the following
day, 8th of January. He was a learned Syrian. According to Butler, he
corrected the Hebrew version of the Scriptures for the inhabitants of
Palestine, during some years was separated from the Romish church,
afterwards conformed to it, and died after nine years imprisonment,
either by famine or the sword, on this day, in the year 312. It further
appears from Butler, that the Arians affirmed of St. Lucian, that to him
Arius was indebted for his distinguishing doctrine, which Butler however
denies.

ST. DISTAFF’S DAY, OR ROCK-DAY.

The day after Twelfth-day was so called because it was celebrated in
honour of the _rock_, which is a _distaff_ held in the hand, from whence
wool is spun by twirling a ball below. It seems that the burning of the
flax and tow belonging to the women, was the men’s diversion in the
evening of the first day of labour after the twelve days of Christmas,
and that the women repaid the interruption to their industry by sluicing
the mischief-makers. Herrick tells us of the custom in his Hesperides:--

_St. Distaff’s day, or the morrow after Twelfth-day._

    Partly work, and partly play,
    Ye must on S. Distaff’s day:
    From the plough soone free your teame,
    Then come home and fother them.
    If the maides a spinning goe,
    Burne the flax, and fire the tow;

    Bring in pailes of water then,
    Let the maides bewash the men:
    Give S. Distaffe all the right,
    Then bid Christmas sport good-night.
    And next morrow, every one
    To his owne vocation.

In elder times, when boisterous diversions were better suited to the
simplicity of rustic life than to the comparative refinement of our
own, this contest between fire and water must have afforded great
amusement.

CHRONOLOGY.

  1772. “An authentic, _candid, and circumstancial_ narrative _of the_
  astonishing transactions _at_ Stockwell, _in the county of Surry, on
  Monday and Tuesday, the 6th and 7th days of_ January, 1772,
  _containing a series of the most surprising and unaccountable_ events
  _that ever happened; which continued from first to last upwards of
  twenty hours, and at different places. Published with the consent and
  approbation of the family, and other parties concerned, to
  authenticate which, the original Copy is signed by them._”

This is the title of an octavo tract published in “London, printed for
J. Marks, bookseller, in St. Martin’s-lane, 1772.” It describes Mrs.
Golding, an elderly lady, at Stockwell, in whose house the transactions
happened, as a woman of unblemished honour and character; her niece,
Mrs. Pain, as the wife of a farmer at Brixton-causeway, the mother of
several children, and well known and respected in the parish; Mary
Martin as an elderly woman, servant to Mr. and Mrs. Pain, with whom she
had lived two years, having previously lived four years with Mrs.
Golding, from whom she went into Mrs. Pain’s service; and Richard Fowler
and Sarah, his wife, as an honest, industrious, and sober couple, who
lived about opposite to Mr. Pain, at the Brick-pound. These were the
subscribing witnesses to many of the surprising transactions, which were
likewise witnessed by some others. Another person who bore a principal
part in these scenes was Ann Robinson, aged about twenty years, who had
lived servant with Mrs. Golding but one week and three days. The
“astonishing transactions” in Mrs. Golding’s house were these:

On Twelfth-day 1772, about ten o’clock in the forenoon, as Mrs. Golding
was in her parlour, she heard the china and glasses in the back kitchen
tumble down and break; her maid came to her and told her the stone
plates were falling from the shelf; Mrs. Golding went into the kitchen
and saw them broke. Presently after, a row of plates from the next shelf
fell down likewise, while she was there, and nobody near them; this
astonished her much, and while she was thinking about it, other things
in different places began to tumble about, some of them breaking,
attended with violent noises all over the house; a clock tumbled down
and the case broke; a lantern that hung on the staircase was thrown down
and the glass broke to pieces; an earthen pan of salted beef broke to
pieces and the beef fell about; all this increased her surprise, and
brought several persons about her, among whom was Mr. Rowlidge, a
carpenter, who gave it as his opinion that the foundation was giving way
and that the house was tumbling down, occasioned by the too great weight
of an additional room erected above: “so ready,” says the narrative,
“are we to discover natural causes for every thing!”

Mrs. Golding ran into Mr. Gresham’s house, next door to her, where she
fainted, and in the interim, Mr. Rowlidge, and other persons, were
removing Mrs. Golding’s effects from her house, for fear of the
consequences prognosticated. At this time all was quiet; Mrs. Golding’s
maid remaining in her house, was gone up stairs, and when called upon
several times to come down, for fear of the dangerous situation she was
thought to be in, she answered very coolly, and after some time came
down deliberately, without any seeming fearful apprehensions.

Mrs. Pain was sent for from Brixton-causeway, and desired to come
directly, as her aunt was supposed to be dead;--this was the message to
_her_. When Mrs. Pain came, Mrs. Golding was come to herself, but very
faint from terror.

Among the persons who were present, was Mr. Gardner, a surgeon, of
Clapham, whom Mrs. Pain desired to bleed her aunt, which he did; Mrs.
Pain asked him if the blood should be thrown away; he desired it might
not, as he would examine it when cold. These minute particulars would
not be taken notice of, but as a chain to what follows. For the next
circumstance is of a more astonishing nature than any thing that had
preceded it; the blood that was just congealed, sprung out of the basin
upon the floor, and presently after the basin broke to pieces; this
china basin was the only thing broke belonging to Mr. Gresham; a bottle
of rum that stood by it broke at the same time.

Among the things that were removed to Mr. Gresham’s was a tray full of
china, &c., a japan bread-basket, some mahogany waiters, with some
bottles of liquors, jars of pickles, &c. and a pier glass, which was
taken down by Mr. Saville, (a neighbour of Mrs. Golding’s;) he gave it
to one Robert Hames, who laid it on the grass-plat at Mr. Gresham’s; but
before he could put it out of his hands, some parts of the frame on each
side flew off; it raining at that time, Mrs. Golding desired it might be
brought into the parlour, where it was put under a side-board, and a
dressing-glass along with it; it had not been there long before the
glasses and china which stood on the side-board, began to tumble about
and fall down, and broke both the glasses to pieces. Mr. Saville and
others being asked to drink a glass of wine or rum, both the bottles
broke in pieces before they were uncorked.

Mrs. Golding’s surprise and fear increasing, she did not know what to do
or where to go; wherever she and her maid were, these strange,
destructive circumstances followed her, and how to help or free herself
from them, was not in her power or any other person’s present: her mind
was one confused chaos, lost to herself and every thing about her, drove
from her own home, and afraid there would be none other to receive her,
she at last left Mr. Gresham’s, and went to Mr. Mayling’s, a gentleman
at the next door, here she staid about three quarters of an hour, during
which time nothing happened. Her maid staid at Mr. Gresham’s, to help
put up what few things remained unbroken of her mistress’s, in a back
apartment, when a jar of pickles that stood upon a table, turned upside
down, then a jar of raspberry jam broke to pieces.

Mrs. Pain, not choosing her aunt should stay too long at Mr. Mayling’s,
for fear of being troublesome, persuaded her to go to her house at Rush
Common, near Brixton-causeway, where she would endeavour to make her as
happy as she could, hoping by this time all was over, as nothing had
happened at that gentleman’s house while she was there. This was about
two o’clock in the afternoon.

Mr. and Miss Gresham were at Mr. Pain’s house, when Mrs. Pain, Mrs.
Golding, and her maid went there. It being about dinner time they all
dined together; in the interim Mrs. Golding’s servant was sent to her
house to see how things remained. When she returned, she told them
nothing had happened since they left it. Sometime after Mr. and Miss
Gresham went home, every thing remaining quiet at Mr. Pain’s: but about
eight o’clock in the evening a fresh scene began; the first thing that
happened was, a whole row of pewter dishes, except one, fell from off a
shelf to the middle of the floor, rolled about a little while, then
settled, and as soon as they were quiet, turned upside down; they were
then put on the dresser, and went through the same a second time: next
fell a whole row of pewter plates from off the second shelf over the
dresser to the ground, and being taken up and put on the dresser one in
another, they were thrown down again. Two eggs were upon one of the
pewter shelves, one of them flew off, crossed the kitchen, struck a cat
on the head, and then broke to pieces.

Next Mary Martin, Mrs. Pain’s servant, went to stir the kitchen fire,
she got to the right hand side of it, being a large chimney as is usual
in farm houses, a pestle and mortar that stood nearer the left hand end
of the chimney shelf, jumped about six feet on the floor. Then went
candlesticks and other brasses: scarce any thing remaining in its place.
After this the glasses and china were put down on the floor for fear of
undergoing the same fate.

A glass tumbler that was put on the floor jumped about two feet and then
broke. Another that stood by it jumped about at the same time, but did
not break till some hours after, when it jumped again and then broke. A
china bowl that stood in the parlour jumped from the floor, to behind a
table that stood there. This was most astonishing, as the distance from
where it stood was between seven and eight feet, but was not broke. It
was put back by Richard Fowler, to its place, where it remained some
time, and then flew to pieces.

The next thing that followed was a mustard-pot, that jumped out of a
closet and was broke. A single cup that stood upon the table (almost the
only thing remaining) jumped up, flew across the kitchen, ringing like a
bell, and then was dashed to pieces against the dresser. A tumbler with
rum and water in it, that stood upon a waiter upon a table in the
parlour, jumped about ten feet and was broke. The table then fell down,
and along with it a silver tankard belonging to Mrs. Golding, the waiter
in which had stood the tumbler, and a candlestick. A case bottle then
flew to pieces.

The next circumstance was, a ham, that hung on one side of the kitchen
chimney, raised itself from the hook and fell down to the ground. Some
time after, another ham, that hung on the other side of the chimney,
likewise underwent the same fate. Then a flitch of bacon, which hung up
in the same chimney, fell down.

All the family were eye-witnesses to these circumstances as well as
other persons, some of whom were so alarmed and shocked, that they could
not bear to stay.

At all the times of action, Mrs. Golding’s servant was walking backwards
and forwards, either in the kitchen or parlour, or wherever some of the
family happened to be. Nor could they get her to sit down five minutes
together, except at one time for about half an hour towards the morning,
when the family were at prayers in the parlour; then all was quiet; but,
in the midst of the greatest confusion, she was as much composed as at
any other time, and with uncommon coolness of temper advised her
mistress not to be alarmed or uneasy, as she said these things could not
be helped.

“This advice,” it is observed in the narrative, surprised and startled
her mistress, almost as much as the circumstances that occasioned it.
“For how can we suppose,” says the narrator, “that a girl of about
twenty years old, (an age when female timidity is too often assisted by
superstition,) could remain in the midst of such calamitous
circumstances, (except they proceeded from causes best known to
herself,) and not be struck with the same terror as every other person
was who was present. These reflections led Mr. Pain, and at the end of
the transactions, likewise Mrs. Golding, to think that she was not
altogether so unconcerned as she appeared to be.”

About ten o’clock at night, they sent over the way to Richard Fowler, to
desire he would come and stay with them. He came and continued till one
in the morning, when he was so terrified, that he could remain no
longer.

As Mrs. Golding could not be persuaded to go to bed, Mrs. Pain, at one
o’clock, made an excuse to go up stairs to her youngest child, under
pretence of getting it to sleep; but she really acknowledged it was
through fear, as she declared she could not sit up to see such strange
things going on, as every thing one after another was broken, till there
was not above two or three cups and saucers remaining out of a
considerable quantity of china, &c., which was destroyed to the amount
of some pounds.

About five o’clock on Tuesday morning, the 7th, Mrs. Golding went up to
her niece, and desired her to get up, as the noises and destruction were
so great she could continue in the house no longer. Mrs. Golding and her
maid went over the way to Richard Fowler’s: when Mrs. Golding’s maid had
seen her safe to Richard Fowler’s, she came back to Mrs. Pain, to help
her to dress the children in the barn, where she had carried them for
fear of the house falling. At this time all was quiet: they then went to
Fowler’s, and then began the same scene as had happened at the other
places. All was quiet here as well as elsewhere, till the maid returned.

When they got to Mr. Fowler’s, he began to light a fire in his back
room. When done, he put the candle and candlestick upon a table in the
fore room. This apartment Mrs. Golding and her maid had passed through.
Another candlestick with a tin lamp in it that stood by it, were both
dashed together, and fell to the ground. At last the basket of coals
tumbled over, and the coals rolling about the room, the maid desired
Richard Fowler not to let her mistress remain there, as she said,
wherever she was, the same things would follow. In consequence of this
advice, and fearing greater losses to himself, he desired Mrs. Golding
would quit his house; but first begged her to consider within herself,
for her own and the public sake, whether or not she had not been guilty
of some atrocious crime, for which Providence was determined to pursue
her on this side the grave. Mrs. Golding told him she would not stay in
his house, or any other person’s, as her conscience was quite clear, and
she could as well wait the will of Providence in her own house as in any
other place whatever; upon which she and her maid went home, and Mrs.
Pain went with them.

After they had got to Mrs. Golding’s, a pail of water, that stood on the
floor, boiled like a pot; a box of candles fell from a shelf in the
kitchen to the floor, and they rolled out, but none were broken, and the
table in the parlour fell over.

Mr. Pain then desired Mrs. Golding to send her maid for his wife to come
to them, and when she was gone all was quiet; upon her return she was
immediately discharged, and no disturbances happened afterwards; this
was between six and seven o’clock on Tuesday morning. At Mrs. Golding’s
were broken the quantity of three pails full of glass, china, &c. Mrs.
Pain’s filled two pails.

The accounts here related are in the words of the “narrative,” which
bears the attestation of the witnesses before mentioned. The affair is
still remembered by many persons: it is usually denominated the
“Stockwell Ghost,” and deemed inexplicable. It must be recollected,
however, that the mysterious movements were never made but when Ann
Robinson, Mrs. Golding’s maid-servant, was present, and that they wholly
ceased when she was dismissed. Though these two circumstances tend to
prove that this girl was the cause of the disturbances, scarcely any one
who lived at that time listened patiently to the presumption, or without
attributing the whole to witchcraft. One lady, whom the editor of the
_Every-Day Book_ conversed with several times on the subject, firmly
believed in the witchcraft, because she had been eye-witness to the
animation of the inanimate crockery and furniture, which she said could
not have been effected by human means--it was impossible. He derived,
however, a solution of these “impossibilities” from the late Mr. J.
B------, at his residence in Southampton-street, Camberwell, towards the
close of the year 1817. Mr. B------ said, all London was in an uproar
about the “Stockwell Ghost” for a long time, and it would have made more
noise than the “Cock-lane Ghost,” if it had lasted longer; but attention
to it gradually died away, and most people believed it was supernatural.
Mr. B------, in continuation, observed, that some years after it
happened, he became acquainted with this very Ann Robinson, without
knowing for a long time that she had been the servant-maid to Mrs.
Golding. He learned it by accident, and told her what he had heard. She
admitted it was true, and in due season, he says, he got all the story
out. She had fixed long horse hairs to some of the crockery, and put
wires under others; on pulling these, the “movables” of course fell.
Mrs. Golding was terribly frightened, and so were all who saw any thing
tumble. Ann Robinson herself, dexterously threw many of the things down,
which the persons present, when they turned round and saw them in motion
or broken, attributed to unseen agency. These spectators were all too
much alarmed by their own dread of infernal power to examine any thing.
They kept at an awful distance, and sometimes would not look at the
utensils, lest they might face fresh horrors; of these tempting
opportunities she availed herself. She put the eggs in motion, and after
one only fell down, threw the other at the cat. Their terrors at the
time, and their subsequent conversations magnified many of the
circumstances beyond the facts. She took advantage of absences to loosen
the hams and bacon, and attach them by the skins; in short, she effected
all the mischief. She caused the water in the pail to appear as if it
boiled, by slipping in a paper of chemical powders as she passed, and
afterwards it bubbled. “Indeed,” said Mr. B------, “there was a love
story connected with the case, and when I have time, I will write out
the whole, as I got it by degrees from the woman herself. When she saw
the effect of her first feats, she was tempted to exercise the dexterity
beyond her original purpose for mere amusement. She was astonished at
the astonishment she caused, and so went on from one thing to another;
and being quick in her motions and shrewd, she puzzled all the simple
old people, and nearly frightened them to death.” Mr. B------ chuckled
mightily over his recollections; he was fond of a practical joke, and
enjoyed the tricks of Ann Robinson with all his heart. By his acuteness,
curiosity, and love of drollery, he drew from her the entire confession;
and “as the matter was all over years ago, and no more harm could be
done,” said Mr. B., “I never talked about it much, for her sake; but of
this I can assure you, that the only magic in the thing was, her
dexterity and the people’s simplicity.” Mr. B. promised to put down the
whole on paper; but he was ailing and infirm, and accident prevented the
writer from caring much for a “full, true, and particular account,”
which he could have had at any time, till Mr. Brayfield’s death rendered
it unattainable.

THE SEASON.

Mr. Arthur Aikin, in his “Calendar of Nature,” presents us with a
variety of acceptable information concerning the operations of nature
throughout the year. “The plants at this season,” he says, “are provided
by nature with a sort of winter-quarters, which secure them from the
effects of cold. Those called _herbaceous_, which die down to the root
every autumn, are now safely concealed under-ground, preparing their new
shoots to burst forth when the earth is softened in spring. Shrubs and
trees, which are exposed to the open air, have all their soft and tender
parts closely wrapt up in buds, which by their firmness resist all the
power of frost; the larger kinds of buds, and those which are almost
ready to expand, are further guarded by a covering of resin or gum, such
as the horse-chestnut, the sycamore, and the lime. Their external
covering, however, and the closeness of their internal texture, are of
themselves by no means adequate to resist the intense cold of a winter’s
night: a bud _detached_ from its stem, enclosed in glass, and thus
protected from all access of external air, if suspended from a tree
during a sharp frost, will be entirely penetrated, and its parts
deranged by the cold, while the buds on the same tree will not have
sustained the slightest injury; we must therefore attribute to the
_living principle_ in vegetables, as well as animals, the power of
resisting cold to a very considerable degree: in animals, we know, this
power is generated from the decomposition of air by means of the lungs,
and disengagement of heat; how vegetables acquire this property remains
for future observations to discover. If one of these buds be carefully
opened, it is found to consist of young leaves rolled together, within
which are even all the blossoms in miniature that are afterwards to
adorn the spring.”

During the mild weather of winter, slugs are in constant motion preying
on plants and green wheat. Their covering of slime prevent the escape of
animal heat, and hence they are enabled to ravage when their brethren of
the shell, who are more sensible of cold, lie dormant. Earthworms
likewise appear about this time; but let the man of nice order, with a
little garden, discriminate between the destroyer, and the innocent and
useful inhabitant. One summer evening, the worms from beneath a small
grass plat, lay half out of their holes, or were dragging “their slow
length” upon the surface. They were all carefully taken up, and
preserved as a breakfast for the ducks. In the following year, the
grass-plat, which had flourished annually with its worms, vegetated
unwillingly. They were the under-gardeners that loosened the sub-soil,
and let the warm air through their entrances to nourish the roots of the
herbage.

    “Their calm desires that asked but little room,”

were unheeded, and their usefulness was unknown, until their absence was
felt.

[Illustration: ~Plough Monday~]

The first _Monday_ after Twelfth-day is called _Plough_ Monday, and
appears to have received that name because it was the first day after
Christmas that husbandmen resumed the _plough_. In some parts of the
country, and especially in the north, they draw the plough in procession
to the doors of the villagers and townspeople. Long ropes are attached
to it, and thirty or forty men, stripped to their clean white shirts,
but protected from the weather by waistcoats beneath, drag it along.
Their arms and shoulders are decorated with gay-coloured ribbons, tied
in large knots and bows, and their hats are smartened in the same way.
They are usually accompanied by an old woman, or a boy dressed up to
represent one; she is gaily bedizened, and called the _Bessy_. Sometimes
the sport is assisted by a humorous countryman to represent a _fool_. He
is covered with ribbons, and attired in skins, with a depending tail,
and carries a box to collect money from the spectators. They are
attended by music, and Morris-dancers when they can be got; but there is
always a sportive dance with a few lasses in all their finery, and a
superabundance of ribbons. When this merriment is well managed, it is
very pleasing. The money collected is spent at night in conviviality. It
must not be supposed, however, that in these times, the twelve days of
Christmas are devoted to pastime, although the custom remains. Formerly,
indeed, little was done in the field at this season, and according to
“Tusser Redivivus,” during the Christmas holidays, gentlemen feasted the
farmers, and every farmer feasted his servants and taskmen. Then _Plough
Monday_ reminded them of their business, and on the morning of that day,
the men and maids strove who should show their readiness to commence the
labours of the year, by rising the earliest. If the ploughman could get
his whip, his plough-staff, hatchet, or any field implement, by the
fireside, before the maid could get her kettle on, she lost her
Shrove-tide cock to the men. Thus did our forefathers strive to allure
youth to their duty, and provided them innocent mirth as well as labour.
On Plough Monday night the farmer gave them a good supper and strong
ale. In some places, where the ploughman went to work on Plough Monday,
if, on his return at night, he came with his whip to the kitchen-hatch,
and cried “Cock in pot,” before the maid could cry “Cock on the
dunghill,” he gained a cock for Shrove Tuesday.

Blomefield’s History of Norfolk tends to clear the origin of the annual
processions on Plough Monday. Anciently, a light called the
_Plough-light_, was maintained by old and young persons who were
husbandmen, before images in some churches, and on Plough Monday they
had a feast, and went about with a plough and dancers to get money to
support the _Plough-light_. The Reformation put out these lights; but
the practice of going about with the plough begging for money remains,
and the “money for _light_” increases the income of the village
alehouse. Let the sons of toil make glad their hearts with
“Barley-wine;” let them also remember to “be merry and wise.” Their old
acquaintance, “Sir John Barleycorn,” has had heavy complaints against
him. There is “_The Arraigning and Indicting of_ SIR JOHN BARLEYCORN,
_knt._ printed for Timothy Tosspot.” This whimsical little tract
describes him as of “noble blood, well beloved in England, a great
support to the crown, and a maintainer of both rich and poor.” It
formally places him upon his trial, at the sign of the _Three
Loggerheads_, before “_Oliver_ and _Old Nick_ his holy father,” as
judges. The witnesses for the prosecution were cited under the hands and
seals of the said judges, sitting “at the sign of the _Three merry
Companions in Bedlam_; that is to say, Poor Robin, Merry Tom, and Jack
Lackwit.” At the trial, the prisoner, sir John Barleycorn, pleaded not
guilty.

_Lawyer Noisy._--May it please your lordship, and gentlemen of the jury,
I am counsel for the king against the prisoner at the bar, who stands
indicted of many heinous and wicked crimes, in that the said prisoner,
with malice propense and several wicked ways, has conspired and brought
about the death of several of his majesty’s loving subjects, to the
great loss of several poor families, who by this means have been brought
to ruin and beggary, which, before the wicked designs and contrivances
of the prisoner, lived in a flourishing and reputable way, but now are
reduced to low circumstances and great misery, to the great loss of
their own families and the nation in general. We shall call our
evidence; and if we make the facts appear, I do not doubt but you will
find him guilty, and your lordships will award such punishment as the
nature of his crimes deserve.

_Vulcan, the Blacksmith._--My lords, sir John has been a great enemy to
me, and many of my friends. Many a time, when I have been busy at my
work, not thinking any harm to any man, having a fire-spark in my
throat, I, going over to the sign of the Cup and Can for one pennyworth
of ale, there I found sir John, and thinking no hurt to any man, civilly
sat me down to spend my twopence; but in the end, sir John began to pick
a quarrel with me. Then I started up, thinking to go away; but sir John
had got me by the top of the head, that I had no power to help myself,
and so by his strength and power he threw me down, broke my head, my
face, and almost all my bones, that I was not able to work for three
days; nay, more than this, he picked my purse, and left me never a
penny, so that I had not wherewithal to support my family, and my head
ached to such a degree, that I was not able to work for three or four
days; and this set my wife a scolding, so that I not only lost the good
opinion my neighbours had of me, but likewise raised such a storm in my
family, that I was forced to call in the parson of the parish to quiet
the raging of my wife’s temper.

_Will, the Weaver._--I am but a poor man, and have a wife and a charge
of children: yet this knowing sir John will never let me alone; he is
always enticing me from my work, and will not be quiet till he hath got
me to the alehouse; and then he quarrels with me, and abuses me most
basely; and sometimes he binds me hand and foot, and throws me in the
ditch, and there stays with me all night, and next morning leaves me but
one penny in my pocket. About a week ago, we had not been together above
an hour, before he began to give me cross words: at our first meeting,
he seemed to have a pleasant countenance, and often smiled in my face,
and would make me sing a merry catch or two; but in a little time, he
grew very churlish, and kicked up my heels, set my head where my heels
should be, and put my shoulder out, so that I have not been able to use
my shuttle ever since, which has been a great detriment to my family,
and great misery to myself.

_Stitch, the Tailor_, deposed to the same effect.

_Mr. Wheatly._--The inconveniencies I have received from the prisoner
are without number, and the trouble he occasions in the neighbourhood is
not to be expressed. I am sure I have been oftentimes very highly
esteemed both with lords, knights, and squires, and none could please
them so well as James Wheatly, the baker; but now the case is altered;
sir John Barleycorn is the man that is highly esteemed in every place. I
am now but poor James Wheatly, and he is _sir_ John Barleycorn at every
word; and that word hath undone many an honest man in England; for I can
prove it to be true, that he has caused many an honest man to waste and
consume all that he hath.

The prisoner, sir John Barleycorn, being called on for his defence,
urged, that to his accusers he was a friend, until they abused him; and
said, if any one is to be blamed, it is my brother _Malt_. My brother is
now in court, and if your lordships please, may be examined to all those
facts which are now laid to my charge.

_Court._--Call Mr. Malt.

_Malt_ appears.

_Court._--Mr. Malt, you have (as you have been in court) heard the
indictment that is laid against your brother, sir John Barleycorn, who
says, if any one ought to be accused, it should be you; but as sir John
and you are so nearly related to each other, and have lived so long
together, the court is of opinion he cannot be acquitted, unless you can
likewise prove _yourself_ innocent of the crimes which are laid to his
charge.

_Malt._--My lords, I thank you for the liberty you now indulge me with,
and think it a great happiness, since I am so strongly accused, that I
have such learned judges to determine these complaints. As for my part,
I will put the matter to the bench. First, I pray you consider with
yourselves, all tradesmen would live; and although Master Malt does make
sometimes a cup of good liquor, and many men come to taste it, yet the
fault is neither in me nor my brother John, but in such as those who
make this complaint against us, as I shall make it appear to you all.

In the first place, which of you all can say but Master Malt can make a
cup of good liquor, with the help of a good brewer; and when it is made,
it will be sold. I pray which of you all can live without it? But when
such as these, who complain of us, find it to be good, then they have
such a greedy mind, that they think they never have enough, and this
overcharge brings on the inconveniences complained of, makes them
quarrelsome with one another, and abusive to their very friends, so that
we are forced to lay them down to sleep. From hence it appears it is
from their own greedy desires all these troubles arise, and not from
wicked designs of our own.

_Court._--Truly, we cannot see that you are in the fault. Sir John
Barleycorn, we will show you so much favour, that if you can bring any
person of reputation to speak to your character, the court is disposed
to acquit you. Bring in your evidence, and let us hear what they can say
in your behalf.

_Thomas, the Ploughman._--May I be allowed to speak my thoughts freely,
since I shall offer nothing but the truth.

_Court._--Yes, thou mayest be bold to speak the truth, and no more, for
that is the cause we sit here for; therefore speak boldly, that we may
understand thee.

_Ploughman._--Gentlemen, sir John is of an ancient house, and is come of
a noble race; there is neither lord, knight, nor squire, but they love
his company, and he theirs; as long as they don’t abuse him, he will
abuse no man, but doth a great deal of good. In the first place, few
ploughmen can live without him; for if it were not for him, we should
not pay our landlords their rent; and then what would such men as you do
for money and clothes? Nay, your gay ladies would care but little for
you, if you had not your rents coming in to maintain them; and we could
never pay, but that sir John Barleycorn feeds us with money; and yet
would you seek to take away his life! For shame, let your malice cease,
and pardon his life, or else we are all undone.

_Bunch, the Brewer._--Gentlemen, I beseech you, hear me. My name is
Bunch, a brewer; and I believe few of you can live without a cup of good
liquor, no more than I can without the help of sir John Barleycorn. As
for my own part, I maintain a great charge, and keep a great many men at
work; I pay taxes forty pounds a year to his majesty, God bless him, and
all this is maintained by the help of sir John; then how can any man for
shame seek to take away his life.

_Mistress Hostess._--To give evidence in behalf of sir John Barleycorn,
gives me pleasure, since I have an opportunity of doing justice to so
honourable a person. Through him the administration receives large
supplies; he likewise greatly supports the labourer, and enlivens the
conversation. What pleasure could there be at a sheep-clipping without
his company, or what joy at a feast without his assistance? I know him
to be an honest man, and he never abused any man, if they abused not
him. If you put him to death, all England is undone, for there is not
another in the land can do as he can do, and hath done; for he can make
a cripple go, the coward fight, and a soldier neither feel hunger nor
cold. I beseech you, gentlemen, let him live, or else we are all undone;
the nation likewise will be distressed, the labourer impoverished, and
the husbandman ruined.

_Court._--Gentlemen of the jury, you have now heard what has been
offered against sir John Barleycorn, and the evidence that has been
produced in his defence. If you are of opinion he is guilty of those
wicked crimes laid to his charge, and has with malice propense conspired
and brought about the death of several of his majesty’s loving subjects,
you are then to find him guilty; but if, on the contrary, you are of
opinion that he had no real intention of wickedness, and was not the
immediate, but only the accidental, cause of these evils laid to his
charge, then, according to the statute law of this kingdom, you ought to
acquit him.

  _Verdict_, NOT GUILTY.

From this facetious little narrative may be learned the folly of excess,
and the injustice of charging a cheering beverage, with the evil
consequences of a man taking a cup more of it than will do him good.

~January 8.~

  _St. Lucian_--Holiday at the Exchequer.

  _St. Appollinaris._ _St. Severinus._ _St. Pega._ _St. Vulsin._ _St.
  Gudula._ _St. Nathalan._

_St. Lucian._

The _St. Lucian_ of the Romish church on this day was from Rome, and
preached in Gaul, where he suffered death about 290, according to
Butler, who affirms that he is the St. Lucian in the English Protestant
calendar. There is reason to suppose, however, that the St. Lucian of
the church of England was the saint of that name mentioned yesterday.

_St. Gudula_

Is the patroness of Brussels, and is said to have died about 712. She
suffered the misfortune of having her candle blown out, and possessed
the miraculous power of praying it a-light again, at least, so says
Butler; “whence,” he affirms, “she is usually represented in pictures
with a lantern.” He particularizes no other miracle she performed.
Surius however relates, that as she was praying in a church without
shoes, the priest compassionately put his gloves under her feet; but she
threw them away, and they miraculously hung in the air for the space of
an hour--whether in compliment to the saint or the priest does not
appear.

CHRONOLOGY.

1821. A newspaper of January 8, mentions an extraordinary feat by Mr.
Huddy, the postmaster of Lismore, in the 97th year of his age. He
travelled, for a wager, from that town to Fermoy in a Dungarvon
oyster-tub, drawn by a pig, a badger, two cats, a goose, and a hedgehog;
with a large red nightcap on his head, a pig-driver’s whip in one hand,
and in the other a common cow’s-horn, which he blew to encourage his
team, and give notice of this new mode of posting.

Let us turn away for a moment from the credulity and eccentricity of
man’s feebleness and folly, to the contemplation of “the firstling of
the year” from the bosom of our common mother. The Snow-drop is
described in the “Flora Domestica” as “the earliest flower of all our
wild flowers, and will even show her head above the snow, as if to prove
her rivalry in whiteness;” as if

    --Flora’s breath, by some transforming power,
    Had chang’d an icicle into a flower.

  _Mrs. Barbauld._

One of its greatest charms is its “coming in a wintry season, when few
others visit us: we look upon it as a friend in adversity; sure to come
when most needed.”

    Like pendent flakes of vegetating snow,
      The early herald of the infant year,
    Ere yet the adventurous crocus dares to blow,
      Beneath the orchard-boughs, thy buds appear.

    While still the cold north-east ungenial lowers,
      And scarce the hazel in the leafless copse,
    Or sallows, show their downy powder’d flowers,
      The grass is spangled with thy silver drops.

  _Charlotte Smith._

~January 9.~

  _St. Peter of Sebaste._ _St. Julian and Basilissa._ _St. Marciana._
  _St. Brithwald._ _St. Felan._ _St. Adrian._ _St. Vaneng._

Of the seven Romish saints of this day scarcely an anecdote is worth
mentioning.

CHRONOLOGY.

1766. On the 9th of January died Dr. Thomas Birch, a valuable
contributor to history and biography. He was born on the 23d of
November, 1705, of Quaker parents. His father was a coffee-mill maker,
and designed Thomas for the same trade; but the son “took to reading,”
and being put to school, obtained successive usherships; removing each
time into a better school, that he might improve his studies; and
stealing hours from sleep to increase his knowledge. He succeeded in
qualifying himself for the church of England, without going to the
university; obtained orders from bishop Hoadley in 1731, and several
preferments from the lord chancellor Hardwicke and earl Hardwicke;
became a member of the Royal Society before he was thirty years of age,
and of the Antiquarian Society about the same time; was created a doctor
of divinity, and made a trustee of the British Museum; and at his death,
left his books and MSS. to the national library there. Enumeration of
his many useful labours would occupy several of these pages. His
industry was amazing. His correspondence was extensive; his
communications to the Royal Society were various and numerous, and his
personal application may be inferred from there being among his MSS. no
less than twenty-four quarto volumes of Anthony Bacon’s papers
transcribed by his own hand. He edited Thurloes’ State Papers in 7 vols.
folio; wrote the Lives of Illustrious Persons of Great Britain, and a
History of the Royal Society; published miscellaneous pieces of Lord
Bacon, before unprinted, and produced a large number of other works. The
first undertaking wherein he engaged, with other learned men, was the
“General Dictionary, Historical and Critical,”--a most useful labour,
containing the whole of Bayle’s Dictionary newly translated, and several
thousand additional lives. He was enabled to complete his great
undertakings by being a very early riser, and by usually executing the
business of the morning before most persons had commenced it.

WINTER.

_From_ “Poetic Vigils,” _by_ BERNARD BARTON

    The flowret’s bloom is faded,
      Its glossy leaf grown sere;
    The landscape round is shaded
      By Winter’s frown austere.

    The dew, once sparkling lightly
      On grass of freshest green,
    In heavier drops unsightly
      On matted weeds is seen.

    No songs of joy, to gladden,
      From leafy woods emerge;
    But winds, in tones that sadden,
      Breathe Nature’s mournful dirge.

    All sights and sounds appealing,
      Through merely outward sense,
    To joyful thought and feeling,
      Seem now departed hence.

    But not with such is banished
      The bliss that life can lend;
    Nor with such things hath vanished
      Its truest, noblest end.

    The toys that charm, and leave us,
      Are fancy’s fleeting elves;
    All that should glad, or grieve us,
      Exists within ourselves.

    Enjoyment’s gentle essence
      Is virtue’s godlike dower;
    Its most triumphant presence
      Illumes the darkest hour.

~January 10.~

  _St. William._ _St. Agatho, Pope._ _St. Martian._

_St. William._

This saint, who died in 1207, was archbishop of Bourges, always wore a
hair shirt, never ate flesh meat, when he found himself dying caused his
body to be laid on ashes in his hair shirt, worked miracles after his
death, and had his relics venerated till 1562, when the Hugonots burnt
them without their manifesting miracles at that important crisis. A bone
of his arm is still at Chaalis, and one of his ribs at Paris; so says
Butler, who does not state that either of these remains worked miracles
since the French revolution.

1820. The journals of January relate some particulars of a gentleman
remarkable for the cultivation of an useful quality to an extraordinary
extent. He drew from actual memory, in twenty-two hours, at two
sittings, in the presence of two well-known gentlemen, a correct plan of
the parish of St. James, Westminster, with parts of the parishes of St.
Mary-le-bone, St. Ann, and St. Martin; which plan contained every
square, street, lane, court, alley, market, church, chapel, and all
public buildings, with all stable and other yards, also every
public-house in the parish, and the corners of all streets, with every
minutiæ, as pumps, posts, trees, houses that project and inject,
bow-windows, Carlton-house, St. James’s palace, and the interior of the
markets, without scale or reference to any plan, book, or paper
whatever. He did the same with respect to the parish of St. Andrew,
Holborn, in the presence of four gentlemen, from eight to twelve, one
evening at a tavern; and he also undertook to draw the plan of St.
Giles-in-the-fields, St. Paul’s, Covent-garden, St. Mary-le-strand, St.
Clement’s, and three-fourths of Mary-le-bone, or St. George’s. The plans
before alluded to were drawn in the presence of John Willock, Esq.
Golden-square; Mr. Robinson, of Surrey-road; William Montague, Esq. of
Guildhall; Mr. Allen, vestry clerk of St. Ann’s; John Dawson, Esq. of
Burlington-street; N. Walker, Holborn; and two other gentlemen. He can
tell the corner of any great and leading thoroughfare-street from Hyde
Park-corner, or Oxford-street, to St. Paul’s; or from the New-road to
Westminster abbey; and the trade or profession carried on at such corner
house. He can tell every public shop of business in Piccadilly, which
consists of two hundred and forty-one houses, allowing him only
twenty-four mistakes; he accomplished this in the presence of four
gentlemen, after five o’clock, and proved it before seven in the same
evening. A house being named in any public street, he will name the
trade of the shop, either on the right or left hand of the same, and
whether the door of such house so named is in the centre, or on the
right or left. He can take an inventory, from memory only, of a
gentleman’s house, from the attic to the groundfloor, and afterwards
write it out. He did this at lord Nelson’s, at Merton, and likewise at
the duke of Kent’s, in the presence of two noblemen. He is known by the
appellation of “Memory-corner Thompson.” The plan of his house, called
Priory Frognall, Hampstead, he designed, and built it externally and
internally, without any working-drawing, but carried it up by the eye
only. Yet, though his memory is so accurate in the retention of objects
submitted to the eye, he has little power of recollecting what he
hears. The dialogue of a comedy heard once, or even twice, would, after
an interval of a few days, be entirely new to him.

~January 11.~

  _St. Theodosius._ _St. Hyginus._ _St. Egwin._ _St. Salvius._

_St. Theodosius_

This saint visited St. Simeon Stylites on his pillar and had his fortune
told. He ate coarse pulse and wild herbs, never tasted bread for thirty
years, founded a monastery for an unlimited number of monks, dug one
grave large enough to hold the whole community, when he received
strangers, and had not food enough, he prayed for its miraculous
increase and had it multiplied accordingly, prophesied while he was
dying, died in 529, and had his hair shirt begged by a count, who won a
victory with it. He was buried according to Butler, who relates these
particulars, in the cave wherein the three kings of Cologne were said to
have lodged on their way to Bethlehem.

FISH IN WINTER

In hard frosts holes must be broken in the ice that forms upon fish
ponds, or the fish will die. It is pleasing to watch the finny tenants
rising half torpid beneath a new-formed hole for the benefit of the air.
Ice holes should be kept open during the frost: one hole to a pond is
sufficient.

At Logan or Port Nessock in Wigtownshire, North Britain, a large
_saltwater_ pond was formed for Cod in 1800. It is a basin of 30 feet in
depth, and 160 feet in circumference, hewn out from the solid rock, and
communicating with the sea by one of those fissures which are common to
bold and precipitous coasts. Attached to it is a neat Gothic cottage for
the accommodation of the fisherman, and the rock is surmounted all round
by a substantial stone wall at least 300 feet in circumference. In every
state of the wind or tide, winter and summer, when not a single boat
dare venture to sea, Colonel M‘Dowal can command a supply of the finest
fish, and study at his leisure the instincts and habits of the “finny
nations,” with at least all the accuracy of those sage naturalists, who
rarely travel farther than Exeter ’Change. From the inner or back door
of the lodge, a winding stair-way conducts to the usual halting place--a
large flat stone projecting into the water, and commanding a view of
every part of the aquatic prison. When the tide is out, this stone is
left completely dry, and here a stranger perceives with surprise, a
hundred mouths simultaneously opened to greet his arrival.

The moment the fisherman crosses his threshold, the pond is agitated by
the action of some hundred fins, and otherwise thrown into a state of
anarchy and confusion. Darting from this, that, and the other corner,
the whole population move as it were to a common centre, elevate their
snouts, lash their tails, and jostle one another with such violence,
that on a first view they actually seem to be menacing an attack on the
poor fisherman, in place of the creel full of limpets he carries. Many
of the fish are so tame, that they will feed greedily from the hand, and
bite your fingers into the bargain, if you are foolish enough to allow
them; while others again are so shy, that the fisherman discourses of
their _different tempers_, as a thing quite as palpable as the gills
they breathe, or the fins they move by. One gigantic cod, which seems to
answer to the name of “Tom,” and may well be described as the patriarch
of the pond, forcibly arrests attention. This unfortunate, who passed
his youth in the open sea, was taken prisoner at the age of five, and
has since sojourned at Port Nessock, for the long period of twelve
years, during all which time he has gradually increased in bulk and
weight. He is now wholly blind from age or disease, and he has no chance
whatever in the general scramble. The fisherman, however, is very kind
to him, and it is affecting as well as curious, to see the huge animal
raise himself in the water; and then resting his head on the flat stone,
allow it to be gently patted or stroked, gaping all the while to implore
that food which he has no other means of obtaining. In this pond, cod
appears to be the prevailing species; there are also blochin or glassin,
haddocks, flounders, and various other kinds. Salmon, which at spawning
time visit the highest rivers, could not of course obey their instincts
here, and accordingly there is only one specimen of this favourite fish
in the pond at present. As the fisherman remarked, “he is far _soupler_
than any o’ the rest,” and by virtue of this one quality, chases, bites,
and otherwise annoys a whole battalion of gigantic cod, that have only,
one would think, to open their mouths and swallow him. To supply them
with food is an important part of the fisherman’s duty; and with this
view, he must ply the net, and heave the line, during two or three days
of every week. He has also to renew the stock, when the pond appears to
be getting thin, from the contributions levied on it by the cook.

A letter from Cairo, in a journal of January 1824, contains a whimsical
exemplification of Turkish manners in the provinces, and the absurdity
of attempting to honour distant authorities, by the distinctions of
civil society. A diploma of honorary member of the Society of Frankfort
was presented to the Pacha, at the divan (or council.) The Pacha, who
can neither read nor write, thought it was a _firman_ (despatch) from
the Porte. He was much surprised and alarmed; but the interpreter
explained to him that it was written in the _Nemptchee_ (German)
language, contained the thanks of the _ulemas_ (scholars) of a German
city named Frankfort, for his kindness to two _Nemptchee_ travelling in
Egypt.

But the most difficult part was yet to come; it was to explain to him
that he had been appointed a _member_ of their society; and the Turkish
language having no word for this purely European idea, the interpreter,
after many hesitations and circumlocutions, at last succeeded in
explaining, “that as a mark of respect and gratitude, the society had
made him one of their _partners_.” At these words the eyes of the Pacha
flashed with anger, and with a voice of thunder he roared that he would
never again be the _partner_ of any firm; that his _partnership_ with
Messrs. Briggs and Co. in the Indian trade, cost him nearly 500,000 hard
piasters; that the association for the manufactory of sugar and rum paid
him nothing at all; and, in short, that he was completely tired of his
connections with Frank merchants, who were indebted to him 23,000,000 of
piasters, which he considered as completely lost. In his rage, he even
threatened to have the interpreter drowned in the Nile, for having
presumed to make offer of a mercantile connection, against his positive
orders.

The poor interpreter was confounded, and unable to utter a word in his
defence. At this critical moment, however, Messrs. Fernandez, Pambonc,
and others who have access to the Pacha, interposed; and it was some
time before they could reduce his Highness to reason; his passion had
thrown him into an hysterical hiccup. When his Highness was a little
recovered, Mr. Fernandez endeavoured to explain to him that there was no
question about business: that the _ulemas_ of Frankfort were possessed
of no stock but _books_, and had no capital. “So much the worse,”
replied the Pacha; “then they are _sahhaftehi_, (booksellers,) who carry
on their business without money, like the Franks at Cairo and
Alexandria.” “Oh, no, they are no _sahhaftehi_, but _ulemas_, _kiatibs_,
(authors,) physicians, _philoussoufs_, &c., who are only engaged in
science.” “Well,” said he, “and what am I then to do in their society;
I, a Pacha of three horse tails?” “Nothing at all, your Highness, like
perhaps most of the members of their society, but by receiving you into
their society, these gentlemen intended to show you their respect and
gratitude.” “That is a strange custom, indeed,” cried the Pacha, “to
show respect to a person by telling or writing to him in funny
letters--_you are worthy of being one of us_.” “But this _is_ the
custom,” added Divan Effendi (his Secretary.) “Your _Happiness_ knows
that the _friends_ (Franks) have many customs different from ours, and
often such as are very ridiculous. For instance, if they wish to salute
a person, they bare their heads, and scrape with their right foot
backwards; instead of sitting down comfortably on a sofa to rest
themselves, they sit on little wooden chairs, as if they were about to
be shaved: they eat the _pillao_ with spoons, and the meat with
_pincers_; but what seems most laughable is, that they humbly kiss the
hands of their women, who, instead of the _yashmak_, (veil,) carry straw
baskets on their heads; and that they mix sugar and milk with their
coffee.” This last sally set the whole assembly (his Highness excepted)
in a roar of laughter. Among those who stood near the fountain in the
middle of the hall, several exclaimed with respect to the coffee with
sugar and milk, _Kiafirler_! (Ah, ye infidels!)

In the end the Pacha was pacified, and “All’s well that ends well;” but
it had been better, it seems, if, according to the customs of the east,
the society of Frankfort had sent the Pacha the unquestionable civility
of a present, that he could have applied to some use.

ST. BRIDE’S CHURCH.

On the 11th of January, 1825, a sketch of this church was taken from a
second-floor window in the house No. 115, Fleet-street, which stands on
the opposite side of the way to that whereon the opening was made by the
late fire; and the subjoined engraving from the sketch is designed to
perpetuate the appearance through that opening. Till then, it had been
concealed from the view of passengers through Fleet-street by the houses
destroyed, and the conflagration has been rightly deemed a favourable
opportunity for endeavouring to secure a space of sufficient extent to
render the church a public ornament to the city. To at least one person,
professionally unskilled, the spire of St. Bride’s appears more chaste
and effective than the spire of Bow. In 1805, it was 234 feet high,
which is thirty-two feet higher than the Monument, but having been
struck by lightning in that year, it was lowered to its present
standard.

[Illustration: ~St. Bride’s Church, London, as it appeared Jan. 11,
1825.~

_From the opening in Fleet-street made by the Fire of Sunday, November
14, 1824._]

St. Bride’s church was built by sir Christopher Wren, and completed in
1680. It has been repeatedly beautified: its last internal decorations
were effected in 1824. In it are interred Thomas Flatman the poet,
Samuel Richardson the novelist, and William Bingley, a bookseller,
remarkable for his determined and successful resistance to
interrogatories by the court of King’s Bench--a practice which that
resistance abated for ever: his latter years were employed, or rather
were supported, by the kindness of the venerable and venerated John
Nichols, Esq. F. S. A. whose family tablet of brass is also in this
church. As an ecclesiastical edifice, St. Bride’s is confessedly one of
the most elegant in the metropolis: an unobstructed view of it is
indispensable therefore to the national character. Appeals which will
enable the committee to purchase the interests of individuals on the
requisite site are now in progress, and can scarcely be unheeded by
those whom wealth, taste, and liberality dispose to assist in works of
public improvement. The engraved sketch does not claim to be more than
such a representation as may give a distant reader some grounds for
determining whether a vigorous effort to save a building of that
appearance from enclosure a second time ought not now to be made. The
proceedings for that purpose are in this month, and are entitled to a
place in this sheet.

[Illustration: ~Card-playing.~]

This diversion, resorted to at visitings during the twelve days of
Christmas, as of ancient custom, continues without abatement during the
prolongation of friendly meetings at this season. Persons who are
opposed to this recreation from religious scruples, do not seem to
distinguish between its use and its abuse. Mr. Archdeacon Butler refers
to the “harmless mirth and innocent amusements of society,” in his
sermon on “Christian Liberty,” before the duke of Gloucester, and the
university of Cambridge, on his royal highness’s installation as
chancellor, June 30, 1811. The archdeacon quotes, as a note on that
point in his sermon, a remarkable passage from Jeremy Taylor, who says,
“that _cards_, &c. are of themselves lawful, I do not know any reason to
doubt. He can never be suspected, in any criminal sense, to tempt the
Divine Providence, who by contingent things recreates his labour. As for
the evil appendages, they are all separable from these games, and they
may be separated by these advices, &c.” On the citation, which is here
abridged, the archdeacon remarks, “Such are the sentiments of one of the
most truly pious and most profoundly learned prelates that ever adorned
any age or country; nor do I think that the most rigid of our
disciplinarians can produce the authority of a wiser or a better man
than bishop Jeremy Taylor.” Certainly not; and therefore an objector to
this pastime will do well to read the reasoning of the whole passage as
it stands at the end of the archdeacon’s printed sermon: if he desire
further, let him peruse Jeremy Taylor’s “advices.”

Cards are not here introduced with a view of seducing parents to rear
their sons as gamblers and blacklegs, or their daughters to

    “a life of scandal, an old age of cards;”

but to impress upon them the importance of “not morosely refusing to
participate in” what the archdeacon refers to, as of the “harmless mirth
and innocent amusements of society.” Persons who are wholly debarred
from such amusements in their infancy, frequently abuse a pleasure they
have been wholly restrained from, by excessive indulgence in it on the
first opportunity. This is human nature: let the string be suddenly
withdrawn from the overstrained bow, and the relaxation of the bow is
violent.

Look at a juvenile card-party--not at that which the reader sees
represented in the engraving, which is somewhat varied from a design by
Stella, who grouped boys almost as finely as Fiamingo modelled their
forms--but imagine a juvenile party closely seated round a large table,
with a Pope Joan board in the middle; each well supplied with
mother-o’-pearl fish and counters, in little Chinese ornamented red and
gold trays; their faces and the candles lighting up the room; their
bright eyes sparkling after the cards, watching the turn-up, or peeping
into the pool to see how rich it is; their growing anxiety to the
rounds, till the lucky card decides the richest stake; then the shout
out of “Rose has got it!” “It’s Rose’s!” “Here, Rose, here they
are--take ’em all; here’s a _lot_!” Emma, and John, and Alfred, and
William’s hands thrust forth to help her to the prize; Sarah and Fanny,
the elders of the party, laughing at their eagerness; the more sage
Matilda checking it, and counting how many fish Rose has won; Rose,
amazed at her sudden wealth, talks the least; little Samuel, who is too
young to play, but has been allowed a place, with some of the “pretty
fish” before him, claps his hands and halloos, and throws his playthings
to increase Rose’s treasure; and baby Ellen sits in “mother’s” lap, mute
from surprise at the “uproar wild,” till a loud crow, and the quick
motion of her legs, proclaim her delight at the general joy, which she
suddenly suspends in astonishment at the many fingers pointed towards
her, with “Look at baby! look at baby!” and gets smothered with kisses,
from which “mother” vainly endeavours to protect her. And so they go on,
till called by Matilda to a new game, and “mother” bids them to “go and
sit down, and be good children, and not make so much noise:” whereupon
they disperse to their chairs; two or three of the least help up Samuel,
who is least of all, and “mother” desires them to “take care, and mind
he does not fall.” Matilda then gives him his pretty fish “to keep him
quiet;” begins to dress the board for a new game; and once more they are
“as merry as grigs.”

In contrast to the jocund pleasure of children at a round game, take the
picture of “old Sarah Battle,” the whist-player. “A clear fire, a clean
hearth, and the rigour of the game,” was her celebrated wish. “She was
none of your lukewarm gamesters, your half-and-half players, who have no
objection to take a hand, if you want one to make up a rubber; who
affirm that they have no pleasure in winning; that they like to win one
game, and lose another; that they can wile away an hour very agreeably
at a card-table, but are indifferent whether they play or no; and will
desire an adversary, who has slipt a wrong card, to take it up and play
another. Of such it may be said that they do not play at cards, but only
play at playing at them. Sarah Battle was none of that breed; she
detested them from her heart and soul; and would not, save upon a
striking emergency, willingly seat herself at the same table with them.
She loved a thorough-paced partner, a determined enemy. She took and
gave no concessions; she hated favours; she never made a revoke, nor
ever passed it over in her adversary, without exacting the utmost
forfeiture. She sat bolt upright, and neither showed you her cards, nor
desired to see yours. All people have their blind side--their
superstitions; and I have heard her declare, under the rose, that Hearts
was her favourite suit. I never in my life (and I knew Sarah Battle many
of the best years of it) saw her take out her snuffbox when it was her
turn to play, or snuff a candle in the middle of a game, or ring for a
servant till it was fairly over. She never introduced, or connived at,
miscellaneous conversation during its process: as, she emphatically
observed, cards were cards. A grave simplicity was what she chiefly
admired in her favourite game. There was nothing silly in it, like the
nob in cribbage--nothing superfluous. To confess a truth, she was never
greatly taken with cribbage. It was an essentially vulgar game, I have
heard her say,--disputing with her uncle, who was very partial to it.
She could never heartily bring her mouth to pronounce ‘go,’ or ‘that’s a
go.’ She called it an ungrammatical game. The pegging teased her. I once
knew her to forfeit a rubber, because she would not take advantage of
the turn-up knave, which would have given it her, but which she must
have claimed by the disgraceful tenure of declaring ‘two for his heels.’
Sarah Battle was a gentlewoman born.” These, omitting a few delicate
touches, are her features by the hand of _Elia_. “No inducement,” he
says, “could ever prevail upon her to play at _her favourite_ game for
nothing.” And then he adds, “With great deference to the old lady’s
judgment on these matters, I think I have experienced some moments in my
life when playing at cards _for nothing_ has even been agreeable. When I
am in sickness, or not in the best spirits, I sometimes call for the
cards, and play a game at piquet _for love_ with my cousin
Bridget--Bridget Elia.” Cousin Bridget and the gentle Elia seem beings
of that age wherein lived Pamela, whom, with “old Sarah Battle,” we may
imagine entering their room, and sitting down with them to a _square_
game. Yet Bridget and Elia live in our own times: she, full of kindness
to all, and of soothings to Elia especially;--he, no less kind and
consoling to Bridget, in all simplicity holding converse with the world,
and, ever and anon, giving us scenes that Metzu and De Foe would admire,
and portraits that Denner and Hogarth would rise from their graves to
paint.

~January 12.~

  _St. Arcadius._ _St. Benedict Biscop, or Bennet._ _St. Ælred,
  Tygrius._

_St. Benedict Biscop, or Bennet._

Butler says he was in the service of Oswi, king of the Northumbrians;
that at twenty-five years old he made a pilgrimage to Rome, returned and
carried Alcfrid, the son of Oswi, back to the shrines of the apostles
there, became a monk, received the abbacy of Sts. Peter and Paul,
Canterbury, resigned it, pilgrimaged again to Rome, brought home books,
relics, and religious pictures, founded the monastery of Weremouth, went
to France for masons to build a church to it, obtained glaziers from
thence to glaze it, pilgrimaged to Rome for more books, relics, and
pictures, built another monastery at Jarrow on the Tine, adorned his
churches with pictures, instructed his monks in the Gregorian chant and
Roman ceremonies, and died on this day in 690. He appears to have had a
love for literature and the arts, and, with a knowledge superior to the
general attainment of the religious in that early age, to have rendered
his knowledge subservient to the Romish church.

CHRONOLOGY

1807. The 12th of January in that year is rendered remarkable by a fatal
accident at Leyden, in Holland. A vessel loaded with gunpowder entered
one of the largest canals in the Rapenburg, a street inhabited chiefly
by the most respectable families, and moored to a tree in front of the
house of professor Rau, of the university. In Holland, almost every
street has a canal in the middle, faced with a brick wall up to the
level of the street, and with lime trees planted on both sides, which
produce a beautiful effect, and form a delightful shade in hot weather.
Vessels of all kinds are frequently moored to these trees, but Leyden
being an inland town, the greater part of those which happened to be in
the Rapenburg were country vessels. Several yachts, belonging to parties
of pleasure from the Hague and other places, were lying close to the
newly arrived vessel, and no person was aware of the destructive cargo
it contained.

A student of the university, who, at about a quarter past four o’clock
in the afternoon, was passing through a street from which there was a
view of the Rapenburg, with the canal and vessels, related the following
particulars to the editor of the _Monthly Magazine_:--

“At that moment, when every thing was perfectly tranquil, and most of
the respectable families were sitting down to dinner in perfect
security, at that instant, I saw the vessel torn from its moorings: a
stream of fire burst from it in all directions, a thick, black cloud
enveloped all the surrounding parts and darkened the heavens, whilst a
burst, louder and more dreadful than the loudest thunder, instantly
followed, and vibrated through the air to a great distance, burying
houses and churches in one common ruin. For some moments horror and
consternation deprived every one of his recollection, but an universal
exclamation followed, of “O God, what is it?” Hundreds of people might
be seen rushing out of their falling houses, and running along the
streets, not knowing what direction to take; many falling down on their
knees in the streets, persuaded that the last day was come; others
supposed they had been struck by lightning, and but few seemed to
conjecture the real cause. In the midst of this awful uncertainty, the
cry of “O God, what is it?” again sounded mournfully through the air,
but it seemed as if none could answer the dreadful question. One
conjecture followed another, but at last, when the black thick cloud
which had enveloped the whole city had cleared away a little, the awful
truth was revealed, and soon all the inhabitants of the city were seen
rushing to the ruins to assist the sufferers. There were five large
schools on the Rapenburg, and all at the time full of children. The
horror of the parents and relations of these youthful victims is not to
be described or even imagined; and though many of them were saved
almost miraculously, yet no one dared to hope to see his child drawn
alive from under a heap of smoking ruins.

“Flames soon broke out from four different parts of the ruins, and
threatened destruction to the remaining part of Leyden. The multitude
seemed as it were animated with one common soul in extricating the
sufferers, and stopping the progress of the flames. None withdrew from
the awful task, and the multitude increased every moment by people
coming from the surrounding country, the explosion having been heard at
the distance of fifty miles. Night set in, the darkness of which, added
to the horrors of falling houses, the smothered smoke, the raging of the
flames, and the roaring of the winds on a tempestuous winter night,
produced a scene neither to be described nor imagined; while the
heart-rending cries of the sufferers, or the lamentations of those whose
friends or children were under the ruins, broke upon the ear at
intervals. Many were so entirely overcome with fear and astonishment,
that they stared about them without taking notice of any thing, while
others seemed full of activity, but incapable of directing their efforts
to any particular object.”

In the middle of the night, Louis Bonaparte, then king of Holland,
arrived from the palace of Loo, having set out as soon as the express
reached him with the dreadful tidings. Louis was much beloved by his
subjects, and his name is still mentioned by them with great respect. On
this occasion his presence was very useful. He encouraged the active and
comforted the sufferers, and did not leave the place till he had
established good order, and promised every assistance in restoring both
public and private losses. He immediately gave a large sum of money to
the city, and granted it many valuable privileges, besides exemption
from imposts and taxes for a number of years.

Some degree of order having been restored, the inhabitants were divided
into classes, not according to their rank, but the way in which they
were employed about the ruins. These classes were distinguished by bands
of different colours tied round their arms. The widely extended ruins
now assumed the appearance of hills and valleys, covered with multitudes
of workmen, producing to the eye an ever-varying scene of different
occupations. The keel of the vessel in which the catastrophe commenced,
was found buried deep in the earth at a considerable distance, together
with the remains of a yacht from the Hague with a party of pleasure,
which lay close to it. The anchor of the powder vessel was found in a
field without the city, and a very heavy piece of lead at the foot of
the mast was thrown into a street at a great distance.

One of the most affecting incidents was the fate of the pupils of the
different schools on the Rapenburg. At the destructive moment, the wife
of the principal of the largest of them was standing at the door with
her child in her arms; she was instantly covered with the falling beams
and bricks, the child was blown to atoms, and she was thrown under a
tree at some distance. Part of the floor of the school-room sunk into
the cellar, and twelve children were killed instantly; the rest,
miserably wounded, shrieked for help, and one was heard to call, “Help
me, help me, I will give my watch to my deliverer.” Fathers and mothers
rushed from all parts of the city to seek their children, but after
digging five hours they found their labour fruitless; and some were even
obliged to leave the spot in dreadful suspense, to attend to other near
relations dug out in other quarters. They at last succeeded, by
incredible efforts, in bringing up some of the children, but in such a
state that many of their parents could not recognise them, and not a few
were committed to the grave without its being known who they were. Many
of these children, both among the dead and those who recovered, bled
profusely, while no wound could be discovered in any part of their
bodies. Others were preserved in a wonderful manner, and without the
least hurt. Forty children were killed. In some houses large companies
were assembled, and in one, a newly married couple, from a distance, had
met a numerous party of their friends. One person who was writing in a
small room, was driven through a window above the door, into the
staircase, and fell to the bottom without receiving much hurt. Many were
preserved by the falling of the beams or rafters in a particular
direction, which protected them, and they remained for many hours, some
for a whole day and night. A remarkable fact of this kind happened,
when the city of Delft was destroyed by an explosion of gunpowder in
1654; a child, a year old, was found two days afterwards sucking an
apple, and sitting under a beam, with just space left for its body. Two
others at a little distance were in their cradles quite safe. At that
time almost the whole of Delft was destroyed.

Leyden is as large a city, but not so populous, as Rotterdam, the second
city in Holland. Upwards of two hundred houses were overthrown on this
occasion, besides churches and public buildings; the Stadt, or
town-house, was among the latter.

_One hundred and fifty-one_ dead bodies were taken from the ruins,
besides many that died after. Upwards of _two thousand_ were wounded
more or less dangerously. It is remarkable that none of the students of
the university were either killed or wounded, though they all lodge in
different parts of the city, or wherever they please. Contributions were
immediately began, and large sums raised. The king of Holland gave
30,000 gilders, and the queen 10,000; a very large sum was collected in
London.

Leyden suffered dreadfully by siege in 1573, and by the plague in 1624
and 1635, in which year 15,000 of the inhabitants were carried off
within six months. In 1415 a convent was burnt, and most of the nuns
perished in the flames. An explosion of gunpowder, in 1481, destroyed
the council-chamber when full of people, and killed most of the
magistrates.

The misfortunes of this city have become proverbial, and its very name
has given rise to a pun. “_Leyden_” is “_Lijden_;” _Leyden_, the name of
the city, and _Lijden_, (to suffer,) have the same pronunciation in the
Dutch language.

The chirp of the crickets from the kitchen chimney breaks the silence of
still evenings in the winter. They come from the crevices, when the
house is quiet, to the warm hearth, and utter their shrill monotonous
notes, to the discomfiture of the nervous, and the pleasure of those who
have sound minds in sound bodies. This insect and the grasshopper are
agreeably coupled in a pleasing sonnet. The “summoning brass” it speaks
of, our country readers well know, as an allusion to the sounds usually
produced from some kitchen utensil of metal to assist in swarming the
bees:--

_To the Grasshopper and the Cricket._

    Green little vaulter in the sunny grass,
      Catching your heart up at the feel of June,
      Sole voice that’s heard amidst the lazy noon,
    When ev’n the bees lag at the summoning brass;
    And you, warm little housekeeper, who class
      With those who think the candles come too soon,
      Loving the fire, and with your tricksome tune
    Nick the glad silent moments as they pass;
    Oh, sweet and tiny cousins, that belong,
      One to the fields, the other to the hearth,
    Both have your sunshine; both, though small, are strong
      At your clear hearts; and both were sent on earth
    To sing in thoughtful ears this natural song,--
      In doors and out, summer and winter, Mirth.

  _L. Hunt._

~January 13.~

  CAMBRIDGE LENT TERM _begins_.

  _St. Veronica of Milan._ _St. Kentigern._

_St. Hilary._

The festival of St. Hilary is not, at this time, observed by the Romish
church until to-morrow, but it stands in old calendars, and in Randle
Holmes’s Heraldry, on this day, whereon it is also placed in the English
calendar. Butler says, he was born at Poictiers, became bishop of that
city, was a commentator on Scripture, an orator, a poet, wrote against
the Arians, was banished for his orthodoxy, but returned to his see,
worked miracles, and died on the 13th of January, 368. Ribadeneira says,
that in a certain island, uninhabitable by reason of venemous serpents,
they fled from his holiness; that he put up a stake as a boundary,
commanding them not to pass it, and they obeyed; that he raised a dead
child to life, prayed his daughter to death, and did other astonishing
things; especially after his decease, when two merchants, at their own
cost and by way of venture, offered an image at his shrine, but as one
begrudged the cost of his share, St. Hilary caused the image to divide
from top to bottom, while being offered, keeping the one half, and
rejecting the niggard’s moiety. The Golden Legend says, that St. Hilary
also obtained his wife’s death by his prayers; and that pope Leo, who
was an Arian, said to him, “Thou art Hilary the cock, and not the son of
a hen;” whereat Hilary said, “I am no cock, but a bishop in France;”
then said the pope, “Thou art Hilary _Gallus_ (signifying a cock) and I
am Leo, judge of the papal see;” whereupon Hilary replied, “If thou be
Leo, thou art not (a lion) of the tribe of Juda.” After this railing the
pope died, and Hilary was comforted.

_St. Veronica._

She was a nun, with a desire to live always on bread and water, died in
1497, and was canonized, after her claim to sanctity was established to
the satisfaction of his holiness pope Leo X.

_St. Kentigern._

He was bishop of Glasgow, with jurisdiction in Wales, and, according to
Butler, “favoured with a wonderful gift of miracles.” Bishop Patrick, in
his “Devotions of the Romish Church,” says, “St. Kentigern had a
singular way of kindling fire, which _I_ could never have hit upon.”
Being in haste to light candles for vigils, and some, who bore a spite
to him, having put out all the fire in the monastery, he snatched the
green bough of an hazel, blessed it, blew upon it, the bough produced a
great flame, and he lighted his candles: “whence we may conjecture,”
says Patrick, “that tinder-boxes are of a later invention than St.
Kentigern’s days.”

THE LAW TERMS.

_Term_ is derived from _Terminus_, the heathen god of boundaries,
landmarks, and limits of time. In the early ages of Christianity the
whole year was one continued term for hearing and deciding causes; but
after the establishment of the Romish church, the daily dispensation of
justice was prohibited by canonical authority, that the festivals might
be kept holy.

Advent and Christmas occasioned the winter vacation; Lent and Easter the
spring; Pentecost the third; and hay-time and harvest, the long
vacation between Midsummer and Michaelmas.

Each term is denominated from the festival day immediately preceding its
commencement; hence we have the terms of St. Hilary, Easter, the Holy
Trinity, and St. Michael.

There are in each term stated days called _dies in banco_, (days in
bank,) that is, days of appearance in the court of common bench. They
are usually about a week from each other, and have reference to some
Romish festival. All original writs are returnable on these days, and
they are therefore called the return days.

The first return in every term is, properly speaking, the first day of
the term. For instance, the octave of St. Hilary, or the eighth day,
inclusive, after the saint’s feast, falls on the 20th of January,
because his feast is on the 13th of January. On the 20th, then, the
court sits to take _essoigns_, or excuses for non-appearance to the
writ; “but,” says Blackstone, “as our ancestors held it beneath the
condition of a freeman to appear or to do any thing at the precise time
appointed,” the person summoned has three days of grace beyond the day
named in the writ, and if he appear on the fourth day inclusive it is
sufficient. Therefore at the beginning of each term the court does not
sit for despatch of business till the fourth, or the appearance day,
which is in Hilary term, for instance, on the 23d of January. In Trinity
term it does not sit till the fifth day; because the fourth falls on the
great Roman catholic festival of _Corpus Christi_. The first
_appearance_ day therefore in each term is called the first day of the
term; and the court sits till the _quarto die post_, or appearance day
of the last return, or end of the term.

In each term there is one day whereon the courts do not transact
business; namely, on Candlemas day, in Hilary term; on Ascension day, in
Easter term; on Midsummer day, in Trinity term; and on All Saints’ day,
in Michaelmas term. These are termed _Grand_ days in the inns of court;
and _Gaudy_ days at the two universities; they are observed as _Collar_
days at the king’s court of St. James’s, for on these days, knights wear
the collars of their respective orders.

An old January journal contains a remarkable anecdote relative to the
decease of a M. Foscue, one of the farmers-general of the province of
Languedoc. He had amassed considerable wealth by means which rendered
him an object of universal detestation. One day he was ordered by the
government to raise a considerable sum: as an excuse for not complying
with the demand, he pleaded extreme poverty; and resolved on hiding his
treasure in such a manner as to escape detection. He dug a kind of a
cave in his wine-cellar, which he made so large and deep, that he used
to go down to it with a ladder; at the entrance of it was a door with a
spring lock on it, which on shutting would fasten of itself. He was
suddenly missed, and diligent search made after him; ponds were drawn,
and every suggestion adopted that could reasonably lead to his
discovery, dead or alive. In a short time after, his house was sold; and
the purchaser beginning to make some alterations, the workmen discovered
a door in the wine-cellar with a key in the lock. On going down they
found Foscue lying dead on the ground, with a candlestick near him, but
no candle in it. On searching farther, they found the vast wealth that
he had amassed. It is supposed, that, when he had entered his cave, the
door had by some accident shut after him; and thus being out of the call
of any person, he perished for want of food, in the midst of his
treasure.

SIGNS OF FOUL WEATHER.

    The _hollow winds_ begin to blow;
    The _clouds look black_, the _glass is low_;
    The _soot falls down_, the _spaniels sleep_;
    And _spiders_ from their _cobwebs peep_.
    Last night the _sun_ went _pale to bed_;
    The _moon_ in _halos_ hid her head.
    The boding shepherd heaves a sigh,
    For, see, a _rainbow_ spans the sky.
    The _walls are damp_, the _ditches smell_,
    _Clos’d_ is the pink-ey’d _pimpernel_.
    Hark! how the _chairs_ and _tables_ crack,
    _Old Betty’s joints_ are on the rack:
    Her _corns_ with _shooting pains_ torment her,
    And to her bed untimely send her.
    Loud _quack the ducks_, the _sea fowl cry_,
    The _distant hills_ are _looking nigh_.
    How restless are the _snorting swine_!
    The _busy flies_ disturb the _kine_.
    _Low_ o’er the _grass_ the _swallow wings_
    The _cricket_ too, how _sharp he sings_!
    _Puss_ on the hearth, with _velvet paws_,
    Sits _wiping_ o’er her _whisker’d jaws_.
    The _smoke_ from _chimneys right ascends_
    Then spreading, _back to earth it bends_.
    The _wind_ unsteady _veers around_,
    Or settling in the _South is found_.
    Through the clear stream the _fishes rise_,
    And _nimbly catch_ the incautious _flies_.
    The _glow-worms_ num’rous, clear and bright,
    _Illum’d_ the _dewy hill_ last night.
    At dusk the squalid _toad_ was seen,
    Like _quadruped_, stalk o’er the green.
    The _whirling wind_ the dust obeys,
    And in the _rapid eddy_ plays.
    The _frog_ has chang’d his _yellow vest_,
    And in a _russet coat_ is drest.
    The _sky is green_, the air is still.
    The _mellow_ blackbird’s voice is shrill.
    The _dog_, so alter’d is his taste,
    Quits mutton-bones, on _grass_ to feast.
    Behold the _rooks_, how odd their flight
    They imitate the _gliding kite_,
    And seem _precipitate to fall_,
    As if they felt the piercing ball.
    The _tender colts on back do lie_,
    Nor heed the traveller passing by.
    In _fiery red_ the _sun_ doth _rise_,
    Then _wades through clouds_ to mount the skies.
    ’Twill _surely rain_, we see’t with sorrow,
    No _working in the fields to-morrow_.

  _Darwin._

~January 14.~

  OXFORD LENT TERM _begins_.

  _St. Hilary._ _St. Felix._ _Sts. Isaias and Sabbas._ _St.
  Barbasceminus_, _&c._

St. Felix of Nola, an exorcist, and afterwards a priest, was, according
to Butler and Ribadeneira, a great miraculist. He lived under Decius, in
250; being fettered and dungeoned in a cell, covered with potsherds and
broken glass, a resplendent angel, seen by the saint alone, because to
him only was he sent, freed him of his chains and guided him to a
mountain, where bishop Maximus, aged and frozen, lay for dead, whom
Felix recovered by praying; for, straightway, he saw a bramble bear a
bunch of grapes, with the juice whereof he recovered the bishop, and
taking him on his back carried him home to his diocese. Being pursued by
pagans, he fled to some ruins and crept through a hole in the wall,
which spiders closed with their webs before the pagans got up to it, and
there lay for six months miraculously supported. According to the
Legend, his body, for ages after his death, distilled a liquor that
cured diseases.

CHRONOLOGY.

In January, 1784, died suddenly in Macclesfield-street, Soho, aged 79,
Sam. Crisp, esq., a relation of the celebrated sir Nicholas Crisp.
There was a remarkable singularity in the character of this gentleman.
He was a bachelor, had been formerly a broker in ’Change-alley, and many
years since had retired from business, with an easy competency. His
daily amusement, for fourteen years before, was going from London to
Greenwich, and immediately returning from thence, in the stage; for
which he paid regularly £27 a year. He was a good-humoured, obliging,
and facetious companion, always paying a particular attention, and a
profusion of compliments, to the ladies, especially to those who were
agreeable. He was perpetually projecting some little schemes for the
benefit of the public, or, to use his own favourite maxim, pro bono
publico; he was the institutor of the Lactarium in St. George’s Fields,
and selected the Latin mottoes for the facetious Mrs. Henniver, who got
a little fortune there. He projected the mile and half stones round
London; and teased the printers of newspapers into the plan of
letter-boxes. He was remarkably humane and benevolent, and, without the
least ostentation, performed many generous and charitable actions, which
would have dignified a more ample fortune.

THE WINTER ROBIN.

    A suppliant to your window comes,
      Who trusts your faith, and fears no guile:
    He claims admittance for your crumbs,
      And reads his passport in your smile.

    For cold and cheerless is the day,
      And he has sought the hedges round;
    No berry hangs upon the spray,
      Nor worm, nor ant-egg, can be found.

    Secure his suit will be preferred,
      No fears his slender feet deter;
    For sacred is the household bird
      That wears the scarlet stomacher.

  _Charlotte Smith._

~January 15.~

  _St. Paul_, the first Hermit. _St. Maurus._ _St. Main._ _St. John_,
  Calybite. _St. Isidore._ _St. Bonitus._ _St. Ita_, or _Mida._ _St.
  Paul_, A. D. 342.

The life of St. Paul, the first hermit, is said, by Butler, to have been
written by St. Jerome in 365, who received an account of it from St.
Anthony and others. According to him, when twenty-two years old, St.
Paul fled from the persecution of Decius to a cavern, near which grew a
palm-tree, that supplied him with leaves for clothing, and fruit for
food, till he was forty-three years of age; after which he was daily fed
by a raven till he was ninety, and then died. St. Anthony, in his old
age, being tempted by vanity, imagined himself the first hermit, till
the contrary was revealed to him in a dream, wherefore, the next
morning, he set out in search of St. Paul. “St. Jerome relates from his
authors,” says Butler, “that he met a centaur, or creature, not with the
nature and properties, but with something of the mixt shape of man and
horse; and that this monster, or phantom of the devil, (St. Jerome
pretends not to determine which it was,) upon his making the sign of the
cross, fled away, after pointing out the way to the saint. Our author
(St. Jerome) adds, that St. Anthony soon after met a satyr, who gave him
to understand that he was an inhabitant of those deserts, and one of the
sort whom the deluded gentiles adored for gods.” Ribadeneira describes
this satyr as with writhed nostrils, two little horns on his forehead,
and the feet of a goat. After two days’ search, St. Anthony found St.
Paul, and a raven brought a loaf, whereupon they took their corporal
refection. The next morning, St. Paul told him he was going to die, and
bid him fetch a cloak given to St. Anthony by St. Athanasius, and wrap
his body in it. St. Anthony then knew, that St. Paul must have been
informed of the cloak by revelation, and went forth from the desert to
fetch it; but before his return, St. Paul had died, and St. Anthony
found two lions digging his grave with their claws, wherein he buried
St. Paul, first wrapping him in St. Athanasius’s cloak, and preserving,
as a great treasure, St. Paul’s garment, made of palm-tree leaves,
stitched together. How St. Jerome, in his conclusion of St. Paul’s life,
praises this garment, may be seen in Ribadeneira.

FLOWERS.

A writer, who signs himself “Crito” in the “Truth Teller,” No. 15,
introduces us to an honest enthusiast, discoursing to his hearers on the
_snow-drop_ of the season, and other offerings from Flora, to the
rolling year. “Picture to your imagination, a poor, ‘dirty’ mendicant,
of the order of St. Francis, who had long prayed and fasted in his
sanctuary, and long laboured in his garden, issuing out on the morning
of his first pilgrimage, without money and without provisions, clad in
his mantle and hood, ‘like a sad votarist in palmer’s weeds;’ and thus,
and in these words, taking leave of the poor flock who lived round his
gothic habitation.--‘Fellow-men, I owe you nothing, and I give you all;
you neither paid me tithe nor rent, yet I have bestowed on you food and
clothing in poverty, medicine in sickness, and spiritual counsel in
adversity. That I might do all these things, I have devoted my life in
the seclusion of those venerable walls. There I have consulted the
sacred books of our church for your spiritual instruction and the good
of your souls; to clothe you, I have sold the embroidered garment, and
have put on the habit of mendicity. In the intercalary moments of my
canonical hours of prayer, I have collected together the treasures of
Flora, and gathered from her plants the useful arts of physic, by which
you have been benefited. Ever mindful of the useful object of the labour
to which I had condemned myself, I have brought together into the garden
of this priory, the lily of the valley and the gentian of the mountain,
the nymphæa of the lake, and the cliver of the arid bank; in short, I
have collected the pilewort, the throatwort, the liverwort, and every
other vegetable specific which the kind hand of nature has spread over
the globe, and which I have designated by their qualities, and have
converted to your use and benefit. Mindful also of the pious festivals
which our church prescribes, I have sought to make these charming
objects of floral nature, the timepieces of my religious calendar, and
the mementos of the hastening period of my mortality. Thus I can light
the taper to our Virgin Mother on the blowing of the white snowdrop,
which opens its floweret at the time of Candlemas; the lady’s smock and
the daffodil remind me of the Annunciation; the blue harebell, of the
festival of St. George; the ranunculus, of the Invention of the Cross;
the scarlet lychnis, of St. John the Baptist’s day; the white lily, of
the Visitation of our Lady; and the virgin’s bower, of her Assumption;
and Michaelmas, Martinmas, Holy Rood, and Christmas, have all their
appropriate monitors. I learn the time of day from the shutting of the
blossoms of the star of Jerusalem and the dandelion, and the hour of the
night by the stars.”’

From kind feelings to the benevolence of the Franciscan mendicant’s
address, which we may suppose ourselves to have just heard, we
illustrate something of his purpose, by annexing the rose, the tulip,
and the passion-flower, after an engraving by a catholic artist, who has
impressed them with devotional monograms, and symbols of his faith.

RURAL MUSINGS.

    _Margaret._--What sports do you use in the forest?--

       _Simon._--Not many; some few, as thus:--
                 To see the sun to bed, and to arise,
                 Like some hot amourist with glowing eyes,
                 Bursting the lazy bands of sleep that bound him,
                 With all his fires and travelling glories round him.
                 Sometimes the moon on soft night clouds to rest,
                 Like beauty nestling in a young man’s breast,
                 And all the winking stars, her handmaids, keep
                 Admiring silence, while those lovers sleep,
                 Sometimes outstretcht, in very idleness,
                 Naught doing, saying little, thinking less,
                 To view the leaves thin dancers upon air,
                 Go in eddy ground; and small birds, how they fare,
                 When mother Autumn fills their beaks with corn,
                 Filch’d from the careless Amalthea’s horn;
                 And how the woods berries and worms provide
                 Without their pains, when earth has naught beside
                 To answer their small wants.

  C. LAMB.

~January 16.~

  _St Marcellus_, Pope. _St. Macarius the elder_, of Egypt. _St.
  Honoratus._ _St. Fursey._ _St. Henry_, Hermit, &c.

_St. Marcellus_, Pope.

According to Butler, he was so strict in penance, that the Christians
disliked him; he was banished by Maxentius, “for his severity against a
certain apostate;” and died pope in 310.

WINTER RAINBOW _in Ireland_.

In the first of the “Letters from the Irish Islands,” in 1823, the
writer addresses to his friend, a description of the rainbow on the
hills at this season of the year. He says, “I could wish (provided I
could ensure you one fine day in the course of the week) that you were
here, to enjoy, in rapid succession, and, with all its wild
magnificence, the whirlwind, the tempest, the ocean’s swell, and, as
Burns beautifully expresses it,

    Some gleams of sunshine, ’mid renewing storms.

To-day there have been fine bright intervals, and, while returning from
a hasty ride, I have been greatly delighted with the appearance of a
rainbow, gradually advancing before the lowering clouds, sweeping with
majestic stride across the troubled ocean, then, as it gained the beach,
and seemed almost within my grasp, vanishing amid the storm, of which it
had been the lovely, but treacherous, forerunner. It is, I suppose, a
consequence of our situation, and the close connection between sea and
mountain, that the rainbows here are so frequent, and so peculiarly
beautiful. Of an amazing breadth, and with colours vivid beyond
description, I know not whether most to admire this aerial phenomenon,
when, suspended in the western sky, one end of the bow sinks behind the
island of Boffin, while, at the distance of several leagues, the other
rests upon the misty hills of Ennis Turc; or when, at a later hour of
the day, it has appeared stretched across the ample sides of Mülbrea,
penetrating far into the deep blue waters that flow at its base. With
feelings of grateful recollection too, we may hail the repeated visits
of this heavenly messenger, occasionally, as often as five or six times
in the course of the same day, in a country exposed to such
astonishing, and, at times, almost incessant floods of rain.”

    Behold yon bright, ethereal bow,
    With evanescent beauties glow;
    The spacious arch streams through the sky,
    Deck’d with each tint of nature’s dye,
    Refracted sunbeams, through the shower,
    A humid radiance from it pour;
    Whilst colour into colour fades,
    With blended lights and softening shades.

  ATHENÆUM

“It is a happy effect of extreme mildness and moisture of climate, that
most of our hills (in Ireland) are covered with grass to a considerable
height, and afford good pasturage both in summer and winter. The grasses
most abundant are the dogstail, (cynosurus cristatus,) several species
of the meadow grass, (poa,) the fescue, (festuca duriuscula and
pratensis,) and particularly the sweet-scented vernal grass,
(anthoxanthum odoratum,) which abounds in the dry pastures, and mountain
sides; where its withered blossoms, which it is remarkable that the
cattle do not eat, give a yellowish brown tint to the whole pasture. Our
bog lands are overrun with the couch, or fiorin grass, (agrostis
stolonifera,) several other species of the agrostis, and the aira. This
is, indeed, the country for a botanist; and one so indefatigable as
yourself, would not hesitate to venture with us across the rushy bog,
where you would be so well rewarded for the labour of springing from one
knot of rushes to another, by meeting with the fringed blossoms of the
bog-bean, (menyanthes trifoliata,) the yellow asphodel, (narthecium
ossifragum,) the pale bog violet, (viola palustris,) both species of the
pinguicula, and of the beautiful drosera, the English fly-trap,
spreading its dewy leaves glistening in the sun. I could also point out
to you, almost hid in the moist recesses of some dripping rock, the
pretty miniature fern, (trichomanes Tunbridgensis,) which you may
remember showing me for the first time at Tunbridge Wells: the osmunda
lunaria and regalis are also to be found, with other ferns, mosses, and
lichens, which it is far beyond my botanical skill to distinguish.--The
man of science, to whatever branch of natural history his attention is
directed, will indeed find never-failing sources of gratification, in
exploring paths, hitherto almost untrodden, in our wild country.
Scarcely a county in England is without its peculiar Flora, almost every
hill and every valley have been subject to repeated, scientific
examination; while the productions of nature, so bountifully accorded to
poor Ireland, are either unknown or disregarded.”

A SEASONABLE DIVERSION.

From the many games of forfeits that are played in parlours during
in-door weather, one is presented to the perusal of youthful readers
from “Winter Evening Pastimes.”

_Aunty’s Garden._

“The company being all seated in a circle, the person who is to conduct
the game proposes to the party to repeat, in turns, the speech he is
about to make; and it is agreed that those who commit any mistake, or
substitute one word for another, shall pay a forfeit. The player then
commences by saying, distinctly, ‘I am just come from my aunt Deborah’s
garden. Bless me! what a fine garden is my aunt’s garden! In my aunt’s
garden there are four corners.’ The one seated to the player’s right is
to repeat this, word for word: if his memory fails he pays a forfeit,
and gives up his turn to his next right-hand neighbour, not being
permitted to correct his mistake. When this has gone all round, the
conductor repeats the first speech, and adds the following:

    ‘In the first corner stands a superb alaternus,
    Whose shade, in the dog-days, won’t let the sun burn us.’

“This couplet having been sent round as before, he then adds the
following:

    ‘In the second corner grows
    A bush which bears a yellow rose:
    Would I might my love disclose!’

“This passes round in like manner:

    ‘In the third corner Jane show’d me much London pride;
    Let your mouth to your next neighbour’s ear be applied,
    And quick to his keeping a secret confide.’

“At this period of the game every one must tell his right-hand neighbour
some secret.

“In the fourth round, after repeating the whole of the former, he
concludes thus:

    ‘In the fourth corner doth appear
      Of amaranths a crowd;
    Each secret whisper’d in the ear
      Must now be told aloud.’

“Those who are unacquainted with this game occasionally feel not a
little embarrassed at this conclusion, as the secrets revealed by their
neighbour may be such as they would not like to be published to the
whole party. Those who are aware of this finesse take care to make their
secrets witty, comic, or complimentary.”

WINTER.

    This is the eldest of the seasons: he
      Moves not like Spring with gradual step, nor grows
      From bud to beauty, but with all his snows
    Comes down at once in hoar antiquity.
    No rains nor loud proclaiming tempests flee
      Before him, nor unto his time belong
      The suns of summer, nor the charms of song,
    That with May’s gentle smiles so well agree.
    But he, made perfect in his birthday cloud,
      Starts into sudden life with scarce a sound,
      And with a tender footstep prints the ground,
    As tho’ to cheat man’s ear; yet while he stays
    He seems as ’twere to prompt our merriest lays,
    And bid the dance and joke be long and loud.

  _Literary Pocket Book, 1820._

~January 17.~

  _St. Anthony_, Patriarch of Monks. _Sts. Speusippus, Eleusippus, and
  Meleusippus_. _Sts. Sulpicius I. and II._, Abps. of Bourges. _St.
  Milgithe._ _St. Nennius, or Nennidhius._

_St. Anthony, Patriarch of Monks._

The memoirs of St. Anthony make a distinguished figure in the lives of
the saints by Alban Butler, who states the particulars to have been
extracted from “The Life of St. Anthony,” compiled by the great St.
Athanasius; “a work,” says Butler, “much commended by St. Gregory
Nazianzen, St. Jerom, St. Austin,” &c. This statement by Butler, whose
biographical labours are estimated by catholics as of the highest order,
and the extraordinary temptations which render the life of St. Anthony
eminently remarkable, require at least so much notice of him, as may
enable the general reader to determine upon the qualities attributed to
him, and the reputation his name has attained in consequence.

According to Butler, St. Anthony was born in 251, at Coma near Heraclea
in Egypt, and in that neighbourhood commenced the life of a hermit: he
was continually assailed by the devil. His only food was bread with a
little salt, he drank nothing but water, never ate before sunset,
sometimes only once in two or four days, and lay on a rush mat or on the
bare floor. For further solitude he left Coma, and hid himself in an old
sepulchre, till, in 285, he withdrew into the deserts of the mountains,
from whence, in 305, he descended and founded his first monastery. His
under garment was sackcloth, with a white sheepskin coat and girdle.
Butler says that he “was taught to apply himself to manual labour by an
angel, who appeared, platting mats of palm-tree leaves, then rising to
pray, and after some time sitting down again to work; and who at length
said to him, ‘Do this, and thou shalt be saved.’ The life, attributed by
Butler to St. Athanasius, informs us that our saint continued in some
degree to pray whilst he was at work; that he detested the Arians; that
he would not speak to a heretic unless to exhort him to the true faith;
and that he drove all such from his mountain, calling them venomous
serpents. He was very anxious that after his decease he should not be
embalmed, and being one hundred and five years old, died in 356, having
bequeathed one of his sheepskins, with the coat in which he lay, to St.
Athanasius.” So far Butler.

St. Athanasius, or rather the life of St. Anthony before alluded to,
which, notwithstanding Butler’s authorities, may be doubted as the
product of Athanasius; but, however that may be, that memoir of St.
Anthony is very particular in its account of St. Anthony’s warfare with
the infernal powers. It says that hostilities commenced when the saint
first determined on hermitizing; “in short, the devil raised a great
deal of dust in his thoughts, that by bemudding and disordering his
intellects he might make St. Anthony let go his design.” In his first
conflict with the devil he was victorious, although satan appeared to
him in an alluring shape. Next he came in the form of a black boy, and
was again defeated. After that Anthony got into a tomb and shut down the
top, but the devil found him out, and, with a great company of other
devils, so beat and bruised him, that in the morning he was discovered
by the person who brought his bread, lying like a dead man on the
ground; whereupon he took him up and carried him to the town church,
where many of his friends sat by him until midnight. Anthony then coming
to himself and seeing all asleep, caused the person who brought him
thither to carry him back privately, and again got into the tomb,
shutting down the tomb-top as before. Upon this, the devils being very
much exasperated, one night, made a noise so dreadful, that the walls
shook. “They transformed themselves into the shapes of all sorts of
beasts, lions, bears, leopards, bulls, serpents, asps, scorpions and
wolves; every one of which moved and acted agreeably to the creatures
which they represented; the lion roaring and seeming to make towards
him, the bull to butt, the serpent to creep, and the wolf to run at him,
and so in short all the rest; so that Anthony was tortured and mangled
by them so grievously that his bodily pain was greater than before.”
But, as it were laughingly, he taunted them, and the devils gnashed
their teeth. This continued till the roof of his cell opened, a beam of
light shot down, the devils became speechless, Anthony’s pain ceased,
and the roof closed again. At one time the devil laid the semblance of a
large piece of plate in his way, but Anthony, perceiving the devil in
the dish, chid it, and the plate disappeared. At another time he saw a
quantity of real gold on the ground, and to show the devil “that he did
not value money, he leaped over it as a man in a fright over a fire.”
Having secluded himself in an empty castle, some of his acquaintance
came often to see him, but in vain; he would not let them enter, and
they remained whole days and nights listening to a tumultuous rout of
devils bawling and wailing within. He lived in that state for twenty
years, never seeing or being seen by any one, till his friends broke
open the door, and “the spectators were in amazement to see his body
that had been so belaboured by devils, in the same shape in which it was
before his retirement.” By way of a caution to others he related the
practices of the devils, and how they appeared. He said that, “to scare
us, they will represent themselves so tall as to touch the ceiling,
and proportionably broad; they often pretend to sing psalms and cite the
scriptures, and sometimes while we are reading they echo what we read;
sometimes they stamp, sometimes they laugh, and sometimes they hiss: but
when one regards them not, then they weep and lament, as vanquished.
Once, when they came threatening and surrounding me like soldiers,
accoutred and horsed, and again when they filled the place with wild
beasts and creeping things, I sung Psalm xix. 8., and they were
presently routed. Another time, when they appeared with a light in the
dark, and said, ‘We are come, Anthony, to lend thee our light,’ I
prayed, shutting my eyes, because I disdained to behold their light, and
presently their light was put out. After this they came and hissed and
danced, but as I prayed, and lay along singing, they presently began to
wail and weep as though they were spent. Once there came a devil very
tall in appearance, that dared to say, ‘What wouldst thou have me bestow
upon thee?’ but I spat upon him and endeavoured to beat him, and, great
as he was, he disappeared with the rest of the devils. Once one of them
knocked at the door of my cell, and when I opened it I saw a tall
figure; and when I asked him, ‘Who art thou?’ he answered, ‘I am satan;
Why do the monks blame and curse me? I have no longer a place or a city,
and now the desert is filled with monks; let them not curse one to no
purpose.’ I said to him, ‘Thou art a liar,’ &c. and he disappeared.” A
deal more than this he is related to have said by his biographer, who
affirms that Anthony, “having been prevailed upon to go into a vessel
and pray with the monks, he, and he only, perceived a wretched and
terrible stink; the company said there was some salt fish in the vessel,
but he perceived another kind of scent, and while he was speaking, a
young man that had a devil, and who had entered before them and hid
himself, cried out, and the devil was rebuked by St Anthony and came out
of him, and then they all knew that it was the devil that
stunk.”--“Wonderful as these things are, there are stranger things yet;
for once, as he was going to pray, he was in a rapture, and (which is a
paradox) as soon as he stood up, he saw himself without himself, as it
were in the air, and some bitter and terrible beings standing by him in
the air too, but the angels, his guardians, withstood them,”--“He had
also another particular favour, for as he was sitting on the mount in a
praying posture, and perhaps gravelled with some doubt relating to
himself, in the night-time, one called to him, and said, ‘Anthony,
arise, go forth and look;’ so he went out and saw a certain terrible,
deformed personage standing, and reaching to the clouds, and winged
creatures, and him stretching out his hands; and some of them he saw
were stopped by him, and others were flying beyond him; whereupon the
tall one gnashed his teeth, and Anthony perceived that it was the enemy
of souls, who seizes on those who are accountable to him, but cannot
reach those who are not persuadable by him.” His biographer declares
that the devils fled at his word, as fast as from a whip.

It appears from lady Morgan, that at the confectioners’ in Rome, on
twelfth-day, “saints melt in the mouth, and the temptations of St.
Anthony are easily digested.”

Alban Butler says that there is an extant sermon of St. Anthony’s
wherein he extols the efficacy of the sign of the cross for chasing the
devil, and lays down rules for the discernment of spirits. There is
reason to believe that he could not read; St. Austin thinks that he did
not know the alphabet. He wore his habit to his dying day, neither
washing the dirt off his body, nor so much as his feet, unless they were
wet by chance when he waded through water on a journey. The jesuit
Ribadeneira affirms, that “all the world relented and bemoaned his death
for afterwards there fell no rain from heaven for three years.”

The _Engraving of_ ST. ANTHONY _conflicting with the_ DEVIL, in the
present sheet, is after Salvator Rosa.

Saints’ bodies appear, from the Romish writers, to have waited
undecomposed in their graves till their odour of sanctity rendered it
necessary that their remains should be sought out; and their bodies were
sure to be found, after a few centuries of burial, as fresh as if they
had been interred a few weeks. Hence it is, that though two centuries
elapsed before Anthony’s was looked for, yet his grave was not only
discovered, but his body was in the customary preservation. It was
brought to Europe through a miracle. One Joceline, who had neglected a
pilgrimage to Jerusalem, was, therefore, sorely wounded in battle, and
carried for dead into a chapel dedicated to St. Anthony. When he began
to revive, a multitude of devils appeared to drag him to hell and one
devil cast a halter about his neck to strangle him, wherefore St.
Anthony appeared; the devils flew from _him_ of course, and he commanded
Joceline to perform his pilgrimage, and to convey his body from the
east; whereupon Joceline obeyed, and carried it to France. When Patrick
wrote, the saint’s beard was shown at Cologne, with a part of his hand,
and another piece of him was shown at Tournay; two of his relics were
at Antwerp; a church dedicated to him at Rome was famous for his
sackcloth, and part of his palm coat; the other part of it was exhibited
at Vienna, and the rest of his body was so multiplied about, that there
were limb-bones enough for the remains of half a dozen uncanonized
persons. The Romish church has not made saints of late years.

BLESSING OF BEASTS.

On St. Anthony’s day, the beasts at Rome are blessed, and sprinkled with
holy water. Dr. Forster, in his “Perennial Calendar,” remarks, that “the
early Catholics regarded no beasts, birds, or fish, as hateful.” He
says, that “St. Anthony was particularly solicitous about animals, to
which a whimsical picture by Salvator Rosa represents him as preaching;”
and he suggests, that “from his practices, perhaps, arose the custom of
blessings passed on animals still practised at Rome; he regarded all
God’s creatures as worthy of protection”--except heretics, the doctor
might have added; unless, indeed, which seems to have been the case,
Anthony regarded _them_ as “creatures” of the devil, between whom, and
this saint, we have seen that the Rev. Alban Butler takes especial care
we should not be ignorant of the miraculous conflicts just related.

Lady Morgan says, that the annual benediction of the beasts at Rome, in
a church there dedicated to St. Anthony, lasts for some days: “for not
only every Roman from the pope to the peasant, who has a horse, a mule,
or an ass, sends his cattle to be blessed at St. Anthony’s shrine, but
all the English go with their job horses and favourite dogs; and for the
small offering of a couple of _paoli_, get them sprinkled, sanctified,
and placed under the protection of this saint. Coach after coach draws
up, strings of mules mix with carts and barouches, horses kick, mules
are restive, and dogs snarl, while the officiating priest comes forward
from his little chapel, dips a brush into a vase of holy water,
sprinkles and prays over the beasts, pockets the fee, and retires.”

Dr. Conyers Middleton says, that when he was at Rome, he had his own
horses blest for eighteen-pence, as well to satisfy his curiosity, as to
humour his coachman, who was persuaded that some mischance would befall
them in the year, if they had not the benefit of the benediction.

Lady Morgan describes a picture in the Borghese palace at Rome,
representing St. Anthony preaching to the fishes: “The salmon look at
the preacher with an edified face, and a cod, with his upturned eyes,
seems anxiously seeking for the new light. The saint’s sermon is to be
had in many of the shops at Rome. St. Anthony addresses the fish,
‘Dearly beloved fish;’ and the legend adds, that at the conclusion of
the discourse, ‘the fish bowed to him with profound humility, and a
grave and religious countenance.’ The saint then gave the fish his
blessing, who scudded away to make new conversions,--the missionaries of
the main.

“The church of St. Anthony at Rome is painted in curious old frescos,
with the temptations of the saint. In one picture he is drawn blessing
the devil, disguised in a cowl; probably at that time

    ‘When the devil was sick, and the devil a monk would be;’

“the next picture shows, that

    ‘When the devil was well, the devil a monk was he;’

“for St. Anthony, having laid down in his coffin to meditate the more
securely, a parcel of malicious little imps are peeping, with all sorts
of whimsical and terrific faces, over its edges, and parodying Hogarth’s
enraged musician. One abominable wretch blows a post-horn close to the
saint’s ear, and seems as much delighted with his own music as a boy
with a Jew’s-harp, or a solo-player with his first _ad libitum_.”

St. Anthony’s sermon to the fish is given in some of our angling books.
If this saint was not the preacher to the fish, but St. Anthony of
Padua, the latter has lost the credit of his miraculous exhortation,
from the stupendous reputation of his namesake and predecessor. Not to
risk the displeasure of him of Padua, by the possibility of mistake,
without an attempt to propitiate him if it be a mistake, let it be
recorded here, that St. Anthony of Padua’s protection of a Portuguese
regiment, which enlisted him into its ranks seven hundred years after
his death, procured him the honour of being promoted to the rank of
captain, by the king of Portugal, as will appear by reference to his
military certificate set forth at large in “Ancient Mysteries
described.”

ST. ANTHONY’S FIRE.

St. Anthony’s fire is an inflammatory disease which, in the eleventh
century, raged violently in various parts. According to the legend, the
intercession of St. Anthony was prayed for, when it miraculously ceased;
and therefore, from that time, the complaint has been called St.
Anthony’s fire.

ST. ANTHONY’S PIG.

Bishop Patrick, from the Salisbury missal and other Romish
service-books, cites the supplications to St. Anthony for relief from
this disease. Catholic writers affirm it to have been cured by the
saint’s relics dipped in wine, which proved a present remedy. “Neither,”
says Patrick, who quotes the Romish writers, “did this benefit by the
intercession of St. Anthony accrue only to men, but to cattle also; and
from hence we are told the custom arose of picturing this saint with a
hog at his feet, because, the same author (Aymerus) says, on this animal
God wrought miracles by his servant.” Patrick goes on to say, that in
honour of St. Anthony’s power of curing pigs, “they used in several
places to tie a bell about the neck of a pig, and maintain it at the
common charge of the parish,” from whence came our English proverb of
“_Tantony pig_,” or t’Antony, an abridgement of the Anthony pig.

“I remember,” says Stow, “that the officers charged with the oversight
of the markets in this city did divers times take from the market
people, pigs starved, or otherwise unwholesome for man’s sustenance;
these they did slit in the ear. One of the proctors for St. Anthony’s
(Hospital) tied a bell about the neck, (of one of them,) and let it feed
on the dunghills: no man would hurt or take it up; but if any gave to
them bread, or other feeding, such they (the pigs) would know, watch
for, and daily follow, whining till they had somewhat given them:
whereupon was raised a proverb, ‘_Such an one will follow such an one,
and whine as it were_ (like) _an Anthony pig_.’” If such a pig grew to
be fat, and came to good liking, (as oftentimes they did,) then the
proctor would take him up to the use of the hospital.

St. Anthony’s school in London, now gone to decay, was anciently
celebrated for the proficiency of its pupils. Stow relates, that, in his
youth, he annually saw, on the eve of St. Bartholomew, the scholars of
the different grammar-schools assembled in the churchyard of St.
Bartholomew, Smithfield, and then St. Anthony’s scholars commonly were
the best, and carried the prizes; and that when the boys of St. Paul’s
school met with those of St. Anthony’s, “they would call them St.
Anthony’s pigs, and they again would call the others pigeons of Paul’s;
because many pigeons were bred in Paul’s church, and St. Anthony was
always figured with a pig following him.”

The seal of St. Anthony’s Hospital in London was about the size of a
half-crown; it represented the saint preaching to a numerous
congregation, with his pig beneath him. The Rev. Mr. Orton, rector of
Raseby in Leicestershire, was supposed to have been its possessor by the
late Mr. S. Ayscough, who adds (in the Gent. Mag.) that the hospital of
St. Anthony had a grant of all the stray pigs which were not owned. He
presumes that, from thence, originated the emblem of the saint’s pig. In
this he seems to have been mistaken; it clearly did not originate in
England. Patrick’s solution of it is more probable, and very likely to
be correct.

St. Anthony is always represented by the old painters with a pig by his
side. He is so accompanied in the wood-cut to his life in the Golden
Legend. There are many prints of him, by early masters, in this way.
Rubens painted a fine picture of the Death of St. Anthony, with his pig,
or rather a large bacon hog, lying under the saint’s bed: there is a
good engraving from this picture by Clouwet.

In the British Museum there is a MS. with a remarkable anecdote that
would form an appendix to St. Anthony’s day. The names of the parties
are forgotten; but the particulars, recollected from accidental perusal,
are these:

A tailor was met out of doors by a person who requested to be measured
for a suit of clothes, to be ready on that spot by that day week; and
the stranger gave him a piece of cloth to make them with. From certain
circumstances, the tailor suspected his new customer to be the devil,
and communicated his conjectures to a clergyman, who advised him to
execute the order, but carefully to save every piece, even the minutest
shred he cut from the cloth, and put the whole into a wrapper with the
clothes; he further promised the tailor to go with him on the appointed
day to the place where they were delivered. When all was ready and the
day arrived, they both went thither, and the person waiting justified
the tailor’s suspicions; for he abused the tailor because he brought a
divine, and immediately vanished in their presence, leaving the clothes
and pieces of cloth in the possession of the tailor, who could not sell
the devil’s cloth to pay himself for the making, for fear of the
consequences:

    And here ends the history
    Of this wonderful mystery;

from which may be drawn, by way of moral, that a tailor ought not to
take an order from a stranger without a reference.

~January 18.~

  _St. Peter’s Chair at Rome._ _St. Paul and Thirty-six Companions in
  Egypt._ _St. Prisca._ _St. Deicolus._ _St. Ulfrid._

The _Feast_ of St. Peter’s chair is kept by the Romish church on this
day. Lady Morgan says that it is one of the very few functions as they
are called (funzioni) celebrated in the cathedral of St. Peter, at Rome.
She briefly describes this celebration, and says something respecting
St. Peter’s chair. “The splendidly dressed troops that line the nave of
the cathedral, the variety and richness of vestments which clothe the
various church and lay dignitaries, abbots, priests, canons, prelates,
cardinals, doctors, dragoons, senators, and grenadiers, which march in
procession, complete, as they proceed up the vast space of this wondrous
temple, a spectacle nowhere to be equalled within the pale of European
civilisation. In the midst of swords and crosiers, of halberds and
crucifixes, surrounded by banners, and bending under the glittering
tiara of threefold power, appears the aged, feeble, and worn-out pope,
borne aloft on men’s shoulders, in a chair of crimson and gold, and
environed by slaves, (for such they look,) who waft, from plumes of
ostrich feathers mounted on ivory wands, a cooling gale, to refresh his
exhausted frame, too frail for the weight of such honours. All fall
prostrate, as he passes up the church to a small choir and throne,
temporarily erected beneath the chair of St. Peter. A solemn service is
then performed, hosannas arise, and royal votarists and diplomatic
devotees parade the church, with guards of honour and running footmen,
while English gentlemen and ladies mob and scramble, and crowd and
bribe, and fight their way to the best place they can obtain.

“At the extremity of the great nave behind the altar, and mounted upon a
tribune designed or ornamented by Michael Angelo, stands a sort of
throne, composed of precious materials, and supported by four gigantic
figures. A glory of seraphim, with groups of angels, sheds a brilliant
light upon its splendours. This throne enshrines the real, plain,
worm-eaten, wooden chair, on which St. Peter, the prince of the
apostles, is said to have pontificated; more precious than all the
bronze, gold, and gems, with which it is hidden, not only from impious,
but from holy eyes, and which once only, in the flight of ages, was
profaned by mortal inspection.

“The sacrilegious curiosity of the French broke through all obstacles to
their seeing the chair of St. Peter. They actually removed its superb
casket, and discovered the relic. Upon its mouldering and dusty surface
were traced carvings, which bore the appearance of letters. The chair
was quickly brought into a better light, the dust and cobwebs removed,
and the inscription (for an inscription it was) faithfully copied. The
writing is in Arabic characters, and is the well-known confession of
Mahometan faith,--‘_There is but one_ GOD, _and_ MAHOMET _is his
prophet_!’ It is supposed that this chair had been, among the spoils of
the crusaders, offered to the church at a time when a taste for
antiquarian lore, and the deciphering of inscriptions, were not yet in