people on the forehead in the form of a cross, affording them withal this wholesome admonition, "Memento, homo, quòd pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris," remember, O man, that thou art dust, and to dust shalt return.-The ashes thus used were made of the palms consecrated the Sunday twelvemonth before, and this ceremony, though in a modified form, survived the first shock of the Reformation, not being abandoned till about the year 1547-8, when, as Stow tells us, "the Wednesday following, commonly called Ash-Wednesday, the use of giving ashes in the church was also left throughout the whole citie of London." Prior to that time it had formed one of the ordinances of the Reformed Church.

At one period, after this solemn service the people used to renew some of their carneval fooleries, amongst which throwing at the Jack-a-Lent, as they had previously done at the Shrove-tide cock, was one of the principal. This Jack-a-Lent was a puppet, and was likely enough to have been a substitute for the older custom of pelting the Jews with stones, which had at one time prevailed to mark the popular abhorence of their share in the crucifixion. As to the practice itself, our old dramatists abound in allusions to it, but it stands in no need of explanation. The fast obtained its name of lent from the season of the year, in which it was celebrated, lent, or lenten, in the old Saxon signifying "spring," the time when the days began to lengthen-lengthen-tide-which word has been corrupted into lenten, and lent.

Using the poet's privilege of ending tragedy with a comic epilogue, I shall now conclude this account of February with Taylor's humorous derivation of the word Lent; it is in a style that must have delighted Dean Swift had it ever come under his notice. "Now for

"the word

the name and beginning of Lent," he says, Lent doth signify a thing borrowed, for except a thing be borrowed how is it lent? and being lent, it follows by consequence that it was borrowed. But from whom it was so free of the loan of this Lent, that would be known.

"First then you must conceive that the true etimology, or ancient name of this Lent is lantide, which being anagrammatized is Landit, for the chief provision that he is furnished withal being fish, and such sea-faring fare, that except he land it, there will be but cold takings in the fish-markets, for Jack-a-Lent hath no society, affinity, or propinquity with flesh and blood, and by reason of his leanness-as Nymshay, an ancient Utopian philosopher, declares in his treatise of the Antiquity of ginger-bread, (Lib. 7. Pag. 30,000) he should have been a footman."

This grave banter fully equals the Dean's derivation of Alexander the Great from all-eggs under the grate, for which, according to him, the world's conqueror had a singular predilection.

*“Alexander the Great was very fond of eggs roasted in hot ashes. As soon as his cooks heard he was come home to dinner or supper, they called aloud to their under-officers,—all eggs under the grate, which repeated every day at noon and evening, made strangers think it was his real name, and therefore gave him no other, and posterity has been ever since under the same delusion."Swift's Works, vol. xiv.

Nothing came amiss to Swift in the way of a joke, however coarse or foolish; but it must be owned that the etymologists are often quite as ridiculous in earnest, as he is here in jest.

72

BLOOD BATHS.

IN THE EARLY AND MIDDLE AGES.

A BELIEF in the cleansing and purifying virtues of human blood, but more especially in regard to lepers, appears to have existed in the remotest times. That it prevailed amongst the Egyptians we know from Pliny, and the idea was evidently borrowed from them by Moses, although it became modified in his code, the blood of animals being substituted for that of human beings. The passage in the Roman naturalist is not only conclusive on this point, but it contains some curious matters in regard to the leprosy, which may make it worth while recalling it to the reader's recollection:

"Diximus elephantiasin ante Pompeii Magni ætatem non accidisse in Italiam, et ipsam a facie sæpius incipientem in nare primum veluti lenticula; mox increscente per totum corpus, maculosa, variis coloribus, et inæquali cute, alibi crassâ, alibi tenui, durâ alibi, ceu scabie asperâ; ad postremum vero nigrescente, et ad ossa carnes opprimente, intumescentibus digitis in pedibus manibusque. Egypti peculiare hoc malum; et quum in reges incidisset, populis funebre. Quippe in balineis solia

temperebantur humano sanguine ad medicinam."* It is thus quaintly rendered by old Philemon Holland.

"As touching the white leprosie, called Elephantiasis, (according as I have before shewed) it was not seen in Italie before the time of Pompey the Great. This disease also began for the most part in the face; and namely it tooke the nose first, where it put forth a little specke or pimple no bigger than a small lentill; but soone after as it spread farther and ran over the whole bodie, a man should perceive the skin to be pointed and spotted with divers and sundrie colours, and the same uneven, bearing one higher in one place than another, thicke here but thin there, and hard everywhere, rough also like as if a scurfe or scab overran it, untill in the end it would grow to be blackish, bearing down the flesh flat to the bones, whiles the fingers of the handes and toes of the feet were puffed up and swelled againe. A peculiar malady is this and natural to the Egyptians; but looke when any of their kings fell into it, woe worth the subjects and poore people, for then were the tubs and bathing vessels, wherein they sate in the baine, (i.e. bath) filled with men's blood for their cure.'

But the remedial powers of human blood were not supposed to be confined to cases of leprosy alone; it was a medicine of universal application, a fancy which in all probability grew out of some vague notion that the vital principle resided in this fluid. "Sanguinis," says Pliny "ipsius hominis, ex quacumque emisso, efficacissime anginam illini tradunt Orpheus et Archelaus; item ora comitiali morbo lapsorum; exsurgere enim protinus. Quidam, si pollices pedum pungantur exque his guttæ referantur in faciem."†

66

Orpheus and Archelaus both doe affirme that if the squinansy (i.e. quinsy) be anointed with man or woman's * C. Plini Natur. Hist. Lib. xxviij. c. 5. + Id.Lib. xxviij. c. 10.

E

ease.

blood,--it skilleth not out of what veine or part of the bodie it issued-it is an excellent remedie for that disThe like effect it hath, if their mouths be rubbed with the said blood, who being overtaken with the epilepsie, are falne downe, for immediately thereupon they will rise and stand upon their feet. Some write that if the great toes be pricked untill they bleed againe, the drops that come forth worke the like effect in the falling sicknesse, so that the face of the patient be sprinkled or besmeared therewith."

But the most singular part of the story, as it seems to us, is the fact that while the Jewish lawgiver imparted a sacrificial virtue to the blood of animals, the Romans should have adopted a belief the very reverse. According to the Pagan theory, as handed down to us by Pliny, the blood of horses is venomous, and that of bulls is no better, except at Ægira, a city of Achaia, though why this spot should be an exception to the general rule he does not inform us. Goat's blood also he denounces, and adds that it is so strong nothing in the world will sharpen the edge of an iron tool sooner, or harden it when keen, and that it will polish steel better than any file.

If however this diversity of opinion be a legitimate cause for wonder, we have still greater reason to be surprised at finding that the Christians in the middle ages adopted the Pagan rather than the Jewish belief. The Emperor Constantine, it is true, was restrained from using this revolting remedy in consequence of a vision, and is said to have been cured by baptism, but the use of the blood-bath seems to have been by far too common both in ancient times and in the middle ages. Amidst a mass of fables the germs of truth are sufficiently evident, and in the time of the great leprosy this belief must have given occasion to numberless cruelties, more especially