May 13.

THE TEARS OF OLD MAY DAY.

Led by the jocund train of vernal hours,

And vernal airs, uprose the gentle May; Blushing she rose, and blushing rose the flowers

That sprung spontaneous in her genial ray.

Her looks with heav'n's ambrosial dews were bright,

An dam'rous zephyrs flutter'd in her breast: With every shining gleam of morning light The colors shifted of her rainbow vest. Imperial ensigns grac'd her smiling form,

A golden key, and golden wand, she bore; This charms to peace each sullen eastern storm, And that unlocks the summer's copious store. Onward, in conscious majesty, she came,

The grateful honors of mankind to taste; To gather fairest wreaths of future fame, And blend fresh triumphs with her glories past.

Vain hope! No more in choral bands unite
Her virgin votaries, and at early dawn,
Sacred to May, and Love's mysterious rite,
Brush the light dewdrops from the span.
gled lawn.

To her no more Augusta'st wealthy pride
Pours the full tribute of Potosi's mine;
Nor fresh blown garlands village maids provide,
A purer off'ring at her rustic shrine.
No more the Maypole's verdant height around
To valour's games th' ambitious youth ad-
vance;

No merry bells, and tabors sprightlier sound
Wake the loud carol, and the sportive dance.
Ah me! for now a younger rival claims

My ravish'd honors, and to her belong
My choral dances, and victorious games,
To her my garlands and triumphal song.
O say, what yet untasted bounties flow,

What purer joys await her gentler reign? Do lilies fairer, vi'lets sweeter blow?

And warbles Philomel a sweeter strain? Do morning suns in ruddier glory rise?

Does ev'ning fan her with serener gales? Do clouds drop fatness from the wealthier skies,

Or wantons plenty in her happier vales? Ah! no; the blunted beams of morning light Skirt the pale orient with uncertain day; And Cynthia, riding on the ear of night, Through clouds embattled faintly wins her way.

Pale immature, the blighted verdure springs, Nor mountain juices feed the swelling flow'r, Mute all the groves, nor Philomela sings,

When silence listens at the midnight hour. Nor wonder man that nature's bashful face, And op'ning charms her rude embraces fear; Alluding to the custom of gathering May-dew. The plate Garlands of London,

Lucky and unlucky days are by many anxiously observed. That day of the week on which the fourteenth of May happens to fall, for instance, is deemed unlucky through all the remainder of the year; none marry or begin any serious business upon it.

None choose to marry in Januaryor May, or to have their banns proclaimed in the end of one quarter of the year and marry in the beginning of the next.

Some things are to be done before the full moon; others after.

In fevers, the illness is expected to be more severe on Sunday than on other days of the week; if easier on Sunday, a relapse is feared.

Immediately before the celebration of the marriage ceremony, every knot about the bride and bridegroom (garters, shoestrings, strings of petticoats, &c. &c.) is carefully loosened After leaving the church the company walk round it, keeping the church walls always upon the right hand. The bridegroom, however,

first retires one way with some young men, to tie the knots which were loosed about him; while the young married woman, in the same manner, retires elsewhere to adjust the disorder of her dress. When a child was baptised privately, it was not long since customary to put the child upon a clean basket, having a cloth previously spread over it, with bread and cheese put into the cloth; and thus to move the basket three times successively round the iron crook, which hangs over the fire from the roof of the house, for the purpose of supporting the pot when water is boiled, or victuals are prepared. This might anciently be intended to counteract the malignant arts which witches and evil spirits were imagined to practice against new born infants.

Such is the picture of the superstitions of Logierait, as drawn twenty-five years ago.*

In May, 1718, Sir Francis Page, a remarkable legal character, was created a baron of the Exchequer. He was the son of the vicar of Bloxham, in Oxfordshire, and bred to the law, but possessing, few requisites for the profession, he pushed his interest by writing political pamphlets, which were received with attention in the proper quarters, so that he was called to the coif, in 1704, and became king's serjeant in 1714-15. He was made a Justice of the Common Pleas in 1726; and in the following year a justice of the King's Bench. His language was mean and tautologus. In a charge to the grand jury at the assizes, he said-"Gentlemen of the jury, you ought to enquire after recusants in that kind, and such as do not frequent the church in that kind; but, above all, such as haunt ale-houses in that kind; drunkards and blasphemers in that kind, and all notorious offenders in that kind, are to be presented in that kind, and, as the laws in that kind direct, must be pro

Communicated by a juvenile correspondent, J. W., from Arlis's Pocket Magazine,

ceeded against in that kind." To the grand jury of Middlesex in May 1736, he began his charge: "I dare venture to affirm, Gentlemen, on my own knowledge, that England never was so happy both at home and abroad as it now is.' At a trial at Derby, about a small spot of ground, been a garden, an old woman, a witness for the defendant, deposed, there never had been a flower grown there since Adam was created. "Turn the witness away," said this arbiter of law and language. It was said of him, that "he was a judge without mercy and a gentleman without manners." He rendered his name odious by a dreadful severity. He endeavoured to convict, that he might have the luxury of condemning; and was called, in consequence, "the hanging judge." He indulged in making doggerel lines upon those he knew. In a cause at Dorchester, treating one King, a rhyming thatcher, with his usual rigor, the man retorted after the trial was over,

God, in his rage,

Made a Judge Page.

He was the judge who tried Savage, the poet, on a charge of murder, and was so anxious to convict him, that he was afterwards brought to confess that he had been particularly severe. When phthisicky and decrepid, as he passed along from court, a gentleman enquired particularly of the state of his health. "My dear Sir, you see I keep hanging on, hanging on." This disgrace to the bench outlived all his ermined brethren, and died, unlamented in December, 1741, at the age of

80.

Mr. Noble heard, when a boy, some very severe lines that had been placed upon his monument, which his relatives greatly resented.

May 17, 1823, as a country woman, with her market-basket on her arm, was admiring "a bit of finery," in a draper's window, at York, her partner in life came up without being noticed by her, and, perceiving her intense gaze at what she could not purchase, he secretly abstracted a handkerchief from her basket, and went his way in joyful anticipation of his wife's vexation upon her discovering its absence. Unluckily for the joker, a gentleman, to whom the parties were strangers, observed the trick, and directed a constable to secure the villain. The robber was seized on the pavement and instantly carried before a magistrate. In the mean time the unsuspecting woman was informed of her loss and hurried away to identify the luckless handkerchief.-She did so-it was her own-the very one which she had been deprived of, and, turning with honest indignation to look at the thief, she exclaimed with astonishment and fear, "Oh lawks !-gentlemen, its mah husband!" The arm of law was paralysed. The prisoner was the robber of his own property,—the magistrate laughed, the gentleman and the constable laughedand, the charge being laughingly dismissed, the liberated husband and his artless wife posted away to tell their village neighbours what awful things had happened to them at York.

Columbine (Aquilegia vulgaris) flowers in gardens there are other species which also flower. The true wild columbine has blue flowers, which are occasionally varied with white; but the garden sorts are dark puce, or purple, or lilac, and shew many varities.

May 18.

May 18, 1732, the Rev. John Lawrence M. A., prebendary of Salisbury, died at Bishops Wearmouth, Durham. He excelled in the art of gardening, and particularly in the cultivation of fruit-trees, and published a "new system of agriculture," and a "complete body of husbandry and gardening." His fine collection of trees, which is said to have yielded fruit not inferior to that from the orchards of Languedoc. Naturally hospitable and benevolent, he had great pleasure in presenting a rich dessert to his friends. "I do not know," says the Rev. Mark Noble, a more pleasing or healthful occupation, than agriculture and gardening-occupations so compatible with the life of a rural Mr. Lawrence wisely reclergyman. marks of gardening, that it is the most wholesome exercise, being ad ruborem non ad sudorem. It is such an exercise as studious men require; less violent than the sports of the field, and more so than fishing. It is, in fine, the happy medium." Millar, who superseded his labors, lived in days of greater experience, in the centre of general knowledge, and his sole occupation was horticulture: Mr. Lawrence was a plain country clergyman, who, from love of retirement and rural occupation, mainly contributed to raise gardening into estimation. Yet he did not give more time to his fields and gardens than he could properly spare from his public duties. He wrote several tracts to enforce the obligations and practice of religion and virtue.

The Rev. Edward Stokes, rector of Blaby, Leicestershire, for fifty years, was blind from nine years old, and died at the age of ninety-three. He was born at Bradgate, and lost his sight by the discharge of a pistol, on the 20th of May, 1798, carelessly left lying about, and which in play he had himself presented to the breast of a young lady but a few minutes before. It was not supposed to be charged; his elder brother had the pistol in his hand, when Edward playfully bid his brother "fire!" the whole charge instantly lodged in his face, where the shots continued till the end of life. His unhappy brother, the innocent cause of this misfortune, never got over his concern for it, and died a young man. Edward, thus rendered blind, was entered at Clarehall, Cambridge, and was presented by Lord Chancellor Hardwicke, in 1737, to the rectory of Wymondham; and, in 1748, on his father's death, to Blaby. Notwithstanding his infirmity, he performed the service of the church for many years with only the assistance of a person to read the lessons. He was of a disposition uncommonly cheerful, and his spirits never failed him. To the poor of his parish he was a most benevolent benefactor, on whom he expended nearly the whole of a handsome private fortune. About thirty years before his death, he put up a monument in his church, to the memory of his father, mother, brother, and sister, on which he also placed his own

name.

He had the perfect use of his limbs, and to the last he walked about his own premises unguarded, and with a facility which would not allow a stranger to imagine that he was either old or blind, and yet he was in his ninety-third year when he died.

This brief notice of a worthy parishpastor is derived from the Gentleman's Magazine, for 1798; to which account a contributor, also laboring under the infirmity of blindness, adds that,

"The Rev. Edward Stokes, of Blaby, used to hunt briskly; a person always accompanied him, and, when a leap was to be taken, rang a bell. A still more extraordinary man in this way [blind], that had been, I think, an officer in the army, figured as a bold rider in the Marquis of Granby's fox-hunt. He had no attendant; I have often been out with him; if any persons happened to be near him when a leap was to be taken, they would say, little farther, Sir-now a great leap ;" nor did I ever hear of his receiving any harm. Much the same was said, at that time, of Lord Robert Bertie, who is represented in Hogarth's View of a Cock-pit; and, if I mistake not, the present Lord Deerhurst, who lost his eye-sight by a fall in hunting, still pursues the game in the same man

ner.

"A

May 20, 1717, Sir John Trevor died at his house in Clements Lane, London, and was buried in the Rolls chapel. He was second son, and, in the sequel, heir to John Trevor, of Brynkinall, in Denbighshire, Esq., by an aunt of Lord Chancellor Jefferies. Like his cousin, he was bred to the law, and obtained great preferment. He was solicitor-general, twice speaker of the house of commons, twice master of the rolls, and a commissioner of the great seal. He cautioned James II. against his arbitrary conduct, and his cousin, Jefferies, against his violence. Sir John Trevor was able and yet corrupt. The mortification was imposed upon him of putting the question to the house of commons, as speaker, whether he himself ought to be expelled for bribery. The answer was in the affirmative. He loved money, and would at any time perform the meanest action to save a trifling expense. Dining one day by himself at the Rolls, a relation entered the room when he was drinking his wine; he immediately said to the servant who had introduced him, "You rascal, and have you

brought my cousin Roderic Lloyd, Esq., prothonotary of North Wales, Marshal to baron Price, and so forth,and so forth,up my back stairs. Take my cousin Roderic Lloyd, Esq., prothonotary of North Wales, marshal to Baron Price, and so forth, and so forth, take him instantly back, down my back-stairs, and bring him up my front stairs." To resist was vain. The prothonotary of North Wales, marshal, and so forth, was withdrawn by the servant down the back and brought up the front stairs, while the bottle and glass were carefully removed by his Honour" the master of the Rolls. Sir John had a frightful obliquity of vision; in allusion to which, and to his legal ability and notorious habits, the wags said that "Justice was blind, but law only squinted." The eyes of his cousin Lloyd, of the back stairs, were likewise like that of the Trevors, appears to have been defective. Roderic was near-sighted. Late one evening he was obstructed in the street; being choleric he drew his sword, and violently plunged it against his antagonist, who immediately fell. Terrified at the idea of murder and retributive justice, he fled, and concealed himself in the coal-hole of the master of the Rolls. A faithful valet was sent in the morning to learn who had fallen: the man arrived with the happy intelligence that an aged decayed pump, lay prostrate from the impetuosity of Lloyd's assault, and transfixed by his sword.

a bridegroom on a Sunday, and not frequenting the church, and for not receiving the holy sacrament."-" Eliz. Mills for scolding, and drying fish on the Lord's day." This legal cognizance of instrumental and vocal performance, is cited in Mr. Mackenzie's "History of Newcastle.”

The following circumstances is also stated in the before cited work :

In 1793, Mr. George Wilson, a mason, met with a toad, which he wantonly immured in a stone wall that he was then building. In the middle of the wall he made a close cell of lime and stone, just fit for the magnitude of its body, and seemingly so closely plastered as to prevent the admission of air. In 1809 (sixteen years afterwards) it was found necessary to open a gap in this wall, for a passage for carts, when the poor creature was found alive in its strong-hold. It seemed at first in a very torpid state, but it soon recovered animation and activity; and, as if sensible of the blessings of freedom, made its way to a collection of stones, and disappeared.

In the Gentleman's Magazine for May, 1799, mention is made of the death of James White, who, besides several translations, was author of some historical novels, entitled, "Richard Cœur de Lion," "Earl Strongbow," "John of Gaunt," and several poetic pieces. He was educated at the university of Dublin, and esteemed an admirable scholar, with brilliant talents. For four or five years before his decease, he was very distressed and eccentric. He had conceived an ardent affection for a young lady, who, he erroneously, supposed was as warmly attached to him. Some plot, he imagined, had been contrived to wean her regard, and he attributed failures of his application for patronage and employment from the great to secret machinations.

He,