MAREH.

AMONG the Romans, March, from Mars, was the first month, and marriages made in this month were accounted unhappy. The Saxons called March lent-monat, or length-moneth, because the days did first begin, in length, to exceed the nights.'

Remarkable Days

In MARCH 1818.

SAINT David was the great ornament and pattern of his age. He spoke with much force and energy, but his example was more powerful than his eloquence; and he has in all succeeding ages been the glory of the British church. He continued in the see of St. David's many years; and having founded several monasteries, and been the spiritual father of many saints, both British and Irish, he died about the year 544, at a very advanced age.

The leek worn on this day by Welshmen is said to be in memory of a great victory obtained by them over the Saxons; they, during the battle, having leeks in their hats, to distinguish themselves, by order of St. David. Another account adds, that they were fighting under their King Cadwallo, near a field that was filled with that vegetable.

1.-MIDLENT SUNDAY.

The middle or fourth Sunday in Lent was formerly called the Sunday of the Five Loaves, the Sunday of Bread, and the Sunday of Refreshment, in allusion to the gospel appointed for this day. It was also named Rose-Sunday, from the Pope's carrying a golden rose in his hand, which he exhibited to the people in the streets as he went to celebrate the eucharist, and at his return. Mothering Sunday is another name attached to this day, from the practice, in Roman E

Catholic times, of people visiting their mother-church on Midlent Sunday. Hence, perhaps, the custom now existing in some parts of England, of children visiting their parents, and presenting them with money, trinkets, or some other trifle. Furmety is commonly a rural repast on this day. It is made of whole grains of wheat first parboiled, and then put into and boiled in milk, sweetened and seasoned with spices.

*1. 1802.-NEW STOCK-EXCHANGE OPENED.

This spacious building, situated in Capel Court, Bartholomew Lane, is well adapted for the purpose. The Stock-Exchange is the market-place for buying and selling the national pledges, bearing interest by way of annuity, and called by the general term STOCKS.' A stock-broker is one who buys or sells stock by commission for another. The brokerage is half-a-crown on every hundred pounds of stock bought or sold. A stock-jobber is one who, having property of his own in the funds, sells it out, and buys it in again at a profit or loss, as the price of the market rises or falls. A gambler in the funds is one who, possessing little or perhaps no property in the stocks, enters into speculative bargains to sell or buy at future periods certain portions of stock, at a stated present price; his loss or gain is therefore confined to the differences of the prices. This species of stock-jobbing being, like other gambling transactions, expressly prohibited by law, no action for the recovery of the loss can be maintained in any court of justice.

An unfortunate dealer in this market who becomes a bankrupt is designated by the term lame duck, and his retreat is called waddling out of the alley. Formerly the place of rendezvous for persons transacting business in the funds was Jonathan's coffee-house in 'Change-Alley, Cornhill. From this circumstance the word Alley' is to this day familiarly used as a cant phrase for the Stock-Exchange; and a petty speculator in the funds is styled, a dab

bler in the Alley.'—(See Butler's Chronological Exercises, p. 66.)

2.-SAINT CHAD.

St. Ceadda or Chad was educated in the monastery of Lindisfarne, under St. Aidan; was afterwards Bishop of Lichfield, and died in the great pestilence of 673. Bede assures us that he zealously devoted himself to all the laborious functions of his charge, visiting his diocess on foot, preaching the gospel, and seeking out the poorest and most abandoned persons to instruct and comfort, in the meanest cottages and in the fields. See further particulars of this Bishop in T. T. for 1815, p. 76.

*5. 1707.-BISHOP BEVEridge died. This excellent man was styled, the great reviver and restorer of primitive piety.' He was much celebrated also for his learning, which he wholly applied to promote the interest of his great Master. He was well skilled in the oriental languages and Jewish learning. Even so early as eighteen, he wrote a Treatise on the Excellency and Use of the Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriac, Arabic, and Samaritan tongues; with a Syriac Grammar. He was so highly esteemed among all learned and good men, that, when he was dying, one of the chief of his order deservedly said of him, There goes one of the greatest and one of the best men that ever England bred.'

*6. 1710.-CHIEF JUSTICE HOLT DIED.

He was in great repute for steadiness, integrity, and a thorough knowledge of his profession. In the reign of James II, he was Recorder of London; but lost his place for refusing to expound the law suitably to the King's designs. He continued chief justice for 22 years. Upon great occasions he asserted the law with intrepidity, though he thereby ventured to incur, by turns, the indignation of both houses of Parliament. It is well when it can be said of judges, as it was of Paterculus a Roman, that a man might

as soon put the sun out of his course, as move him to pervert justice.

When the son of Henry IV was committed to prison for striking the judge on the bench, the King no sooner heard of it, than he cried out in a transport of joy, Happy is the king who has a magistrate possessed of courage to execute the laws, and still more happy in having a son who will submit to such chastisement.'

Perpetua, a noble lady of Carthage, only 22 years of age, suffered martyrdom in 203, by order of Minutius Firmianus, under the persecution of the Emperor Severus. In the amphitheatre, Perpetua was exposed to the attacks of a wild cow, and, after being much gored by this animal, she languished for some time under the wounds given her by a young and unskilful gladiator.

*7. 1804.-BRITISH AND FOREIGN BIBLE SOCIETY INSTITUTED.

The wide circulation of the Bible, and the munificent patronage which this Society has met with, lead us to contrast the present opportunities afforded for reading the scriptures, with the almost total ignorance of them about the commencement of the sixteenth century. Numbers could not read; most only muttered mass in an unknown tongue, and read a legend on festivals; and the very best seldom saw the Bible! It was held by many that the doctrines of religion were so properly expressed by schoolmen, that there was no need to read scripture. One of eminence was asked, What were the Ten Commandments, and he replied, There was no such book in the library! Many doctors of the Sorbonne declared and confirmed it by an oath, that, though they were above 50 years of age, yet they had never known what a New Testament was. Luther never saw a Bible till after he was 21 years of age, and had taken a degree of arts. Carolstadt had been a

doctor of divinity eight years before he read the Scriptures; and yet, when he stood for a degree in the university of Wirtemberg, he obtained an honour, and it was entered in the university records, that he was sufficientissimus. Pellican could not procure one Greek Testament in all Germany: the first he got was from Italy. Bishop Stillingfleet mentions that there was scarcely another copy of the Greek Testament in all Germany, except that in the possession of Erasmus; that his utmost diligence to procure a complete copy from which to make his translation was unavailing; and that, when his translation appeared, it was seriously accused by many ecclesiastics with being a forgery intended to ruin their order. I thank God, said a bishop who lived before the Reformation, that I have lived well these many years, and never knew the Old or New Testament.'-(Buck's Expositor, p. 64.)

*7. 1755.-BISHOP WILSON died, Æt. 93.

Bishop Horne, then only Dean of Canterbury and President of Magdalen College, Oxford, on the publication of Bishop Wilson's Works, gave the following character of them, in a letter to the Bishop's son: I am charmed with the view the books afford me of the good man your father, in his diocese and in his closet. The Life, the Sacra Privata, the Maxims, the Parochialia, &c. exhibit altogether a complete and lovely portrait of a Christian Bishop going through all his functions with consummate prudence, fortitude and piety-the pastor and father of a happy island for near threescore years! The case is really an unique in ecclesiastical history. The Sermons are the affectionate addresses of a parent to his children, descending to the minutest particulars, and adapted to all their wants. In a delicate and fastidious age, they may perhaps be slighted for their plainness and simplicity; but they were just what they should be for the place and people. To use an illustration of his own, he is the best physician who cures the most patients: and at the last