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feast at breakfast in Easter on red or yellow eggs. The Druids had the egg in their ceremonies; and near Dieppe is a Druidical barrow, where a fête used to be held by the country people till the Revolution, where vast crowds of both sexes assembled from the neighbouring villages, and gave themselves up to a day of sports and rejoicing, in which eggs figured most singularly.

The Pace-Eggs seem now to have retired northward in England. In Yorkshire and Lancashire, and so northward, they may be found. They are boiled hard, and beautifully coloured with various colours, some by boiling them with different coloured ribbons bound round them; others by colouring them of one colour, and scraping it away in a variety of figures ; others by boiling them within the coating of an onion, which imparts to them the admired dye. Early in the morning of Easter-Monday, in the Lancashire towns and villages where wooden clogs are worn, you may hear a strange clatter on the pavement under your window. It is the children, who are running to and fro, begging their Pace-Eggs.

In Staffordshire, Shropshire, Lancashire, Cheshire, and Durham, they still retain the custom of heaving or lifting on Easter-Monday and Tuesday. In some of these counties on Monday, the men lift the women by taking hold of their arms and legs, which is repeated nine times; and on Tuesday the women use the like ceremony with the men. In other places, the men on one day go decorated with ribbons into every house into which they can get an entrance, force every woman to be seated in this vehicle, and lift her up three times with loud huzzas; and on the

next the women claim the same privilege. In some places the women sit out in the streets, and practise this odd ceremony on every male passenger that they can catch, giving him a salute round; afterwards laying him under contribution, and the sum thus derived they lay out in a tea-drinking.

Ball-play used to be practised on Easter-Sunday in the church, the clergy and dignitaries joining in it. Corporations with the mace, sword, and cap of maintenance carried before them, used to go out on Monday to play at ball, and dance with the ladies. They used to eat tansy-pudding and bacon as customary to the time. These, and many other, to us, ridiculous customs were all of ancient Pagan origin engrafted on Christianity, and had all a symbolical meaning, most probably unperceived by the multitude who used them. The lifting three times had reference to the resurrection after three days; the ball was a symbol of the world; tansy the bitter herbs of the passion, and bacon to express their abhorrence of Jews, the destroyers of the Saviour.

We now see how all these festivities were kept alive by the art and power of the church, and how soon they fell into mere pageants when the Reformation poured in a truer light.

That the Reformation did effect this change is most convincingly proved by the retention of the old Catholic religious plays still in Catholic countries. Mr. Hone, in his "Ancient Mysteries," brings together a variety of modern instances of such things on the continent; and our travellers can furnish us with more. Moore's mention of these plays in his "Fudge

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Family in Paris," in 1817, must be familiar to every body:

What folly

To say that the French are not pious, dear Dolly,
When here one beholds, so correctly and rightly,
The Testament turned into melo drames nightly;
And doubtless, so fond they 're of scriptural facts,
They will soon get the Pentateuch up in five acts.
Here Daniel, in pantomime, bids bold defiance
To Nebuchadnezzar and all his stuffed lions.

In a note, he adds, that in this "Daniel, ou la Fosse aux Lions," JEHOVAH himself is made to appear! In 1822, M. Michelot, the editor of the Mirour, was arraigned at the tribunal for having ridiculed the state religion, because he had published a description of a puppet-play just then witnessed at Dieppe, consisting of the birth of Christ, the passion, and the resurrection! and in which our Saviour, the Virgin, Judas, Herod, etc., were most revoltingly introduced. During Congress at Vienna in 1815, the Allied Monarchs used to attend a sacred comedy, of David, performed by the comedians of the National Theatre, in which Austrian soldiers fired off their muskets and artillery in the characters of Jews and Philistines! It is needless to say that nothing of the kind could be tolerated in this country.

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THIS is the only ancient religious festival that has become a popular one since the Reformation, through the addition of a modern circumstance. Clubs, or Friendly Societies have substituted for the old church ceremonies, a strong motive to assemble in the early days of this week as their anniversary: and the time of the year being so delightful, this holiday has, in fact, become more than any other, what May-day was to the people. Both men and women have their Friendly Societies, in which every member pays a certain weekly or monthly sum, and on occasions of sickness or misfortune, claims a weekly stipend, or a sum of money to bury their dead. These Societies

were very prudential things, especially before the institution of Savings' Banks, which are still better; and in the vicinity of towns have become most important resources for the working class, and especially servants. In the country, Friendly Societies still do, and will probably long remain, because Savings' Banks are not easily introduced there. In a Savings' Bank, whatever a person deposits he receives with interest. It is safe, and may be demanded any time. On the other hand, a man may contribute for years to a club, and not want a penny for himself on account of sickness, and at his death, with the exception of a fixed sum to bury him, and one for his widow, all his fund goes from his family; or, what is worse, he may pay for many years, and just when he wants help, he finds the box empty, through the great run upon it by the sickness or accidental disabling of his fellows; or the steward has proved dishonest, and has decamped; or he has failed. Many such cases have occurred, especially during the violent changes of the last twenty years. In some particular cases, the capital of a dozen Friendly Societies has, by some strange infatuation or artifice, been lodged in the hands of the same man, who has proved bankrupt, and ruined them all. These are the drawbacks on Friendly Societies; and yet with these, they were better than nothing for the poor, and some of them have, in many cases, been remedied by the members sharing their fund amongst them once every seven years. They were, and are, often, the poor man's sole resource and refuge against the horror of falling on the parish, and have helped him through his time of affliction without burthening his mind with a sense of shame and dependence.

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