known to need any description. Birds are said to choose their mates about this time of year, whence probably came the custom of young persons selecting valentines, and of sending some amatory or flattering effusion to the object of their preference. This is the commonly-received opinions but Brand, in his Popular Antiquities, seems inclined to suppose that the observance originated in an ancient Romish superstition of choosing patrons on this day for the ensuing year, a custom which gallantry took up when superstition at the Reformation had been compelled to let it fall. It is a ceremony, says Bourne, never omitted among the vulgar, to draw lots, which they term valentines, on the eve before Valentine Day. The names of a select number of one sex are by an equal number of the other put into some vessel; and after that every one draws a name, which for the present is called their valentine, and is looked upon as a good omen of their being man and wife afterward. This sport appears to have been practised in the houses of the English gentry as early as the year 1476. Among the same class it was deemed obsolete in 1645. In the "Forest of Varieties," of that date, Lord North, its author, says, "The custome and charge of valentines is not ill left, with many other such costly and idle customs, which by a tacit generall consent wee lay downe as obsolete." The amusements of the common people, however, hardly ever wear out; in confirmation of which we may state, that at the present time two hundred thousand letters beyond the usual daily average annually pass through the twopenny postoffice in London on St. Valentine's Day. SHROVE TUESDAY, or Shrove-tide, was set apart by the Romish church for shriving or confessing sins and receiving the sacrament, that people might be better prepared for the following season of Lent. This custom was abandoned at the Reformation, no confession to the spiritual guide being allowed, except when the conscience cannot otherwise be quieted; in which case the grief is to be revealed to him in private for the benefit of his prayers and counsel. It was a season of great feasting and intemperance, as if it were to eat and drink to excess, in order to prepare for necessary the coming fast; a mode of celebrating the day derived doubtless from the Romish Carni-vale, or farewell to flesh, the meat being anciently prepared at this season to last during the winter by salting, drying, and being hung up.' Shrove Tuesday, being the last day of the carnival, was more especially devoted to feasting, foolery, and riot of all sorts; but whence originated the custom of eating pancakes, which extended to other countries besides England, and was of very ancient observance, does not seem to be decided; though Mr. Fosbrooke is of opinion that it was taken from the heathen Fornacalia, celebrated on the 18th of February, in memory of making bread before ovens were invented by the goddess Fornax. Among the sports of the day cock-fighting and throwing at cocks appear almost every where to have prevailed, and at a very early period. The nature of these sports indeed, both of them ruthless and savage, the latter adding unmanly cowardice to the most revolting cruelty, points to a barbarous era for their first introduction. Strange that Christians, even in a dark age, should have found pleasure in such inhuman pastime ! stranger still that in the present enlightened era men can be found brutal enough to continue the atrocity! Its first meaning and intention, for such it probably had, since the custom is peculiar to the day, remains buried in obscurity. The writer of a pamphlet published in 1761, after stigmatizing this cruel diversion as a horrible abuse of time" an abuse so much the more shocking as it is shown in tormenting the very creature which seems by nature intended for our remembrancer to improve it: the creature whose voice like a trumpet summoneth man forth to his labour in the morning, and admonisheth him of the flight of his most precious hours throughout the day"-has the following observation; "Whence it had its rise among us I could never yet learn to my satisfaction; but the common account of it is, that the crowing of a cock prevented our Saxon ancestors from massacring their conquerors the Danes, on the morning of a Shrove Tuesday, while asleep in their beds." Hearne tells us, in the preface to the edition of Thomas Otterbourne, that this custom must be traced to the time of King Henry V., and our victories then gained over the French, whose name in Latin is synonymous with that of a cock; our countrymen meaning to intimate that they could at any time overthrow the Gallic armies as easily as they could knock down the cocks on Shrove Tuesday. The knightly amusement of tilting at a Saracen's head, a' practice which had its rise in the holy wars, might by analogy afford some support to Hearne's explanation of throwing at cocks; but unfortunately the latter barbarity appears to have been also practised in France long before the time of Henry V., and our neighbours can hardly have found pleasure in pelting and knocking down themselves, even typically. Another writer conjectures that the whipping of tops, the tossing of pancakes in the fryingpan, and the battering of cocks with missiles bear allusion to the sufferings and torments of some of the martyrs. Erasmus could discover no other intelligible motive for the prevalence of the latter detestable custom than insanity, produced by surfeiting upon pancakes! "The English," says he, "eat a certain cake on Shrove Tuesday, upon which they immediately run mad, and kill their poor cocks." As this day formerly wound up the Christmas festivities-for thus far might they be said to have continued-it may not be misplaced to remark, that no religious ceremonies are so long maintained and so punctually observed by the vulgar as those that have reference to their sensual enjoyments. Although a supper of eggs and fat bacon may not prove them to be good Christians, it will at least show that they are no Jewswherefore has the gammon been always reverenced as an orthodox dainty. They like no odour of sanctity so well as that which fumes up to them from the kitchen; they have a wonderfully tenacious memory for all eating and drinking anniversaries, and never fail to observe with a becoming zeal all those religious rites and ceremonies which are celebrated in the stomach. ASH WEDNESDAY, which is the first day of Lent, is so called from the ancient ceremony of blessing ashes on that day, wherewith the priest signed the people on the forehead in the form of a cross, pronouncing at the same time this wholesome admonition-"Remember, man, thou art dust, and shalt return to dust." Platina, a priest, and librarian to the Vatican, relates, that Prochetus, archbishop of Geneva, being at Rome on Ash Wednesday, he fell at the feet of Pope Boniface VIII., who blessed and gave out the ashes on that day, in order to be signed with the blessed ashes as others had been. Thinking him to be his enemy. instead of uttering the usual form, the pope parodied it, and said, "Remember thou art a Ghibelline, and with the Ghi bellines thou shalt return to ashes," and then his holiness threw the ashes in the archbishop's eyes.* In a convo cation held in the time of Henry VIII., this practice was preserved with some other rites and ceremonies which survived the shock that almost overthrew the whole pile of Catholic superstitions. In our present church we supply the ancient discipline of sackcloth and ashes by reading publicly on this day the curses denounced against impenitent sinners, when the people are directed to repeat an amen at the end of each malediction. Many conscientious persons abstain from participating in this form, under the impression that the commination of our prayer-book is hardly consistent with the mild character of Christianity and its injunctions of brotherly love and kindness. Lent 'was reckoned to begin on that which is now the first Sunday in Lent, and to end on Easter-eve, thus including fortytwo days, from which if the six Sundays are deducted on which it was counted not lawful at any time of the year to fast, there will only remain thirty-six days. In order that the number of days which Christ fasted might be perfected, Pope Gregory added to Lent four days, viz. that which we now call Ash Wednesday and the three following days; "so that we see the first observation of Lent began from a superstitious, unwarrantable, and indeed profane conceit of imitating our Saviour's miraculous abstinence."+ ST. DAVID'S DAY, 1st March.-"In consequence of the romances of the middle ages," says Owen in his Cambrian Biography, p. 86, "which created the Seven Champions of Christendom, St. David has been dignified with the title of the Patron Saint of Wales; but this rank, however, is hardly known among the people of the principality, being a title diffused among them from England in modern times." For the custom of wearing the leek on this day various reasons have been assigned; but the majority of inquirers into this subject conjecture it to have arisen from the great victory gained by the British king Cadwallader over the Saxons at Hethfield Chase in Yorkshire, A. D. 633, when St. David directed the Britons to distinguish themselves * Hone's Every-day Book, art. Ash Wednesday. from their enemies by wearing the leek; a regulation which, in conjunction with his prayers, enabled them to defeat the foe. Coarse and ignorant ridicule of national peculiarities has always been a characteristic of the English populace, who bestowed their taunts as freely upon their fellow-subjects as upon foreigners a failing which, though it may be softened in modern times, is by no means extinct. Formerly it was the custom with the London populace, on St. David's Day, to insult the Welsh by dressing up a man of straw to represent a Cambrian hero, which was carried in procession, and then hung in some conspicuous place; a provocation which probably did not always pass unavenged by the choleric sons of the principality. St. David's Day in London is now only celebrated by the society of Ancient Britons, who dine together to promote subscriptions for the Welsh Charity-school in Gray's-inn-road-a pleasant and laudable substitution for the old Catholic observances and the later fooleries of the mob, by which the anniversary has been celebrated, or rather disgraced. ST. PATRICK'S DAY, 17th March.-The following reason is assigned for wearing the shamrock on this day when the saint preached the gospel to the Pagan Irish, he illustrated the doctrine of the Trinity by showing them a trefoil, or three-leaved grass with one stalk, which operating to their conviction, the shamrock, which is a bundle of this grass, was ever afterward worn upon the saint's anniversary to commemorate the event. The natives of the sister island who reside in London now confer honour upon themselves and upon the day by dining together, and promoting donations for the cause of charity and the education of their poorer fellow-countrymen. LADY DAY, 25th March.-The Roman Catholic feast of the Annunciation is commonly thus called in England. It is the high festival of Catholicism, which, in consequence of the extreme honours it pays to the Virgin Mary, has been sometimes termed the "Marian religion." At Rome it is celebrated with every possible magnificence and solemnity. In England it is only remembered as the first quarter-day in the year, and is therefore only kept by landlords and tenants. PALM SUNDAY.-The Sabbath before Easter is thus L |