The carnival, therefore, was in our countries kept in the true sense of the word, as a leave-taking to flesh-meat; and was observed chiefly in laying into the stomach such a quantum of the creature comforts as would go near to suffice for the whole of the following forty days. In the Oxford almanacks, the Saturday before Shrove Tuesday is called the Fest Ovorum, or the egg feast; which " Saturday," Brand, by a strange bull, says, "corresponds with our Collop Monday:" in what the correspondence between Saturday and Monday consisted, this deponent saith not: but the Monday before Shrove Tuesday was, "in Papal times," honoured with a due ingurgitation of collops and eggs, as a precautionary means of staying men's stomachs till Easter Sunday should arrive, to set that enslaved and benighted organ once more free. It would, we imagine, rather startle our unlearned readers if we quoted all the learning that has been set down touching the etymology of" collops." One derives it from the Greek, another from the Belgic, and a third from the Welsh. For our part (and we think the fact quite enough for our purpose) it is clear to us that the collops came from the butcher's shop; and were probably the last purchase made there before Ash Wednesday. These were, without doubt, esteemed by our ancestors as good substantial fare; but the summing up of their friandise, the second-course delicacy, was reserved for Shrove Tuesday itself, on which day the pancake was a source of high fun, not only in the consumption of the article, but in the ceremony of tossing it in the pan, about which "there is usually a good deal of pleasantry in the kitchen." It is worth remarking that a sort of pancake feast, preceding Lent, is observed in the Greek church; and Hakluyt tells us that "the Russians begin their Lent eight weeks before Easter; the first week eating eggs, milk, cheese, and butter, and making great cheer with pancakes and such other things."

That Shrovetide in England was observed with out-of-door pastimes, as a sort of carnival, we cannot doubt. At Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the great bell of St. Nicholas church is (or very recently was) tolled at twelve o'clock at noon on Shrove Tuesday, and "the shops are immediately shut, offices closed, and all kind of business ceases for the remainder of the day." This is analogous to the opening of the carnival at Rome by the firing of cannon. Whether the good people of Newcastle also celebrated this occasion by an execution, as the Romans, not long ago, did, does not appear; although (an execution being a truly English amusement) the fact is not so very improbable. But, however this may have been, Shrovetide was in these countries long infamous for the barbarous massacre of cocks, which, at that season, were fastened to a stake, and thrown at with cudgels till their limbs were broken in detail (as, of old, those of the felon were on the wheel), and their bodies "reduced to a jelly." This custom has given origin to a term sacred in the school-boy jargon of old England, where every object set up as a mark for a stone is pueriliter vocatus a cock-shy." It is not, perhaps, impossible that from this ancient usage was derived the custom of calling together the Parliament sometime about Shrovetide, on which occasion his majesty's minister for the time being is set up to be flung at by his majesty's opposition usque ad delicias VOTORUM; and thus, the said minister, though seldom entitled to be considered as a shy cock, is made a cock-shy to all the malcontents in the kingdom. Feb.-VOL. XLIX. NO. CXCIV.

66

The custom itself of throwing at a cock was in all probability derived from that of cock-fighting; and was adopted perhaps as a cheap substitute for that once popular amusement. In the reign of Henry II., William Fitz Stephen mentions cocking as the sport of schoolboys on Shrove Tuesday, when it was universally practised, the school being the cockpit, and the master the arbiter elegantiarum of the fight. This usage was retained in many Scotch schools even until the last century, and the schoolmasters claimed the runaway cocks as their perquisite. At present, we believe, the practice is very much confined to the children of the larger growth; and a very animating sport it is, albeit (like most other "manly sports"), somewhat of the cruellest. Accordingly, that which is said to "beat cock-fighting," is universally regarded and taken as super-excellent in its kind. The cock has been a favourite source of amusement to the people of these realms from the first "syllable of recorded time." The animal was found in the island by Julius Cæsar at his first friendly visit to this country; a fact which clearly proves that the aboriginal Celts must have been Phoenicians, who, in their love of a fresh egg with their morning tea, probably imported the bird, along with themselves, from the east. The royal cockpit at Westminster was built by Henry VIII. to gratify his amiable subjects' taste for blood, whenever they happened to be satiated with his queen-killing spectacles. James I., that brave king, loved the sport, and often pursued it in this edifice and it is probably to flatter the national taste, that king's speeches have usually been rehearsed in the same place.

There is a plate of Strutt's which represents a cock dancing on stilts; and this may, in all likelihood, have been another Shrovetide amusement with our ancestors, though I am not aware that it is anywhere “so set down.”

* We say "tea" advisedly; the Phoenicians came from the east, and so does tea: and it was quite as easy for them to go to China as to Mexico.-See the Reviews and Authors on Palanque.

† Apropos to cocks. In our days at Cambridge there was a pleasant story current in that university relative to Coxe, the celebrated tourist, which, being in the vein," we may as well set down here. Coxe was a fellow of King's College, and an occasional resident. On some celebration of Pot Fair, there happened to be a puppet-show, which attracted what the London managers call "overflowing and rapturous houses." All the world went to see Punch, or wished to go;-among the rest, Coxe and some of his companions. But a scruple arose as to the compro mise of dignity attending on a master of arts' appearance at so trifling an amusement; and, after a long discussion of the point, it was agreed that numerus defendit, and that, though it would be silly for one master to show himself there, a batch of masters might visit the booth together, without any breach of decorum. Giving effect to this decision, a strong party was made for the occasion; and the master of the show, delighted with the distinction paid to his dramatic talents, did all hu could to honour his guests, by occasional allusions introduced into the scene. Among others, the following dialogue was improvised between Punch and his compère, Mr. Merriman :

Punch. Well, Mr. Merriman, what do you think? I'm going to travel.
Merriman. Travel, Mr. Punch! What the deuce takes you abroad?

1

P. Why, to see sights, spend money, talk statescraft, and tell lies, as other gentlemen travellers have done before me.

M. And where do you mean to travel, Mr. Punch?

P. The grand tour, to be sure.

M. The grand tour! Diable! Then you must have a travelling tutor.

P. A travelling tutor, you spooney! to be sure I must. I have engaged ona already.

The neglect of festivals, civil as well as religious, is one among the most striking characteristics of the times in which we live. Some persons may regard this as part and parcel of the imputed "irreligion and jacobinism" of the age. But, in the first place, ours is not a profane, but rather an emphatically religious age; and the English people are as much a "prayer-loving" people as they were in the times of good Queen Elizabeth, who first so designated them. The reason, as it seems to us," of this effect defective," is that, while one part of the nation makes a feast of every day of the year, the other has not the means of feasting on any one day: so that between those who won't, and those who cannot, honour a festival with any extra gluttony, the usage has fallen into unintentional decay. Other days, other manners. The pancakes, as we have already insinuated, have been replaced by beignets de pommes; and the cockfighting part of the story finds its substitute in the gladiatorial amusements of Exeter Hall, in the tilting courses of Lords Lyndhurst and Brougham, the familiar epistles of Daniel O'Connell, and the leaders of the "Standard" and "Times" in reply. Controversy, polemical and political, has superseded cockfighting, even in the House of Commons; and if the Speaker, like the Scotch schoolmasters, were to have forced upon him all the shy cocks between whom he interposes his mace, and whom he binds over to keep the peace from the chair, he would be rather puzzled to know what to do with his perquisites.

While we were upon this subject it was our intention to have said a word or two upon Cockspur-street, and the improvements in its neighbourhood, to have related the history of the Cock-lane ghost, with a supplementary volume of Johnsonian anecdotes; to have appended some passages which occurred at the Cock at Eton; and to have disserted on the state of the funds, and the bulls and bears assembled at the Cock behind the Exchange; to have given a receipt for cocky-leeky soup; and an essay on spatch-cock, alias broiled fowl and mushrooms; together with a most satisfactory essay on those obscure proverbial expressions, cock of wax, waxing cockish, and le pays de cocagne; and also on the nature of the connexion between the cock and bottle; with many other cockish particulars too tedious to mention: but time is not eternity; and the pages of the "New Monthly" are not universal space: so, as the cross-lining, frank-filling, newspaper correspondents are wont to say, "the rest in our next."

M. And who have you engaged, Mr. Punch?

P. Coxe, of King's.

μ.

Twenty times a day had Yorick's ghost the consolation of hearing “ Coxe, of King's, squeaked out in Punch's most mellifluous accents from the corners of lanes and alleys. Whenever poor Coxe put his head out of the college gates, it greeted him; and he could not pass Trumpington-street without being thus saluted, even by the bed-makers' boys; so that he was at length fairly driven to leave Cambridge, till the storm should blow over, and the anecdote be forgotten.

A NAME.

THEY named him-ah! yet
Do I start at that name;
Have I still to forget?

Is my heart still the same
Long hours have passed on
Since that name was too dear;
Now its music is gone,

It is death to my ear!

It tells of a false one,
Ah! falsest to me;
My heart's life begun,
It has ended, with thee!
I loved, as those love

Who but one image know
In the blue sky above,

On the fair earth below.

I had not a thought

In which thou had'st no part;

In the wide world I sought

But a place in thy heart.

To win it I gave

All that had been my pride;
Like a child or a slave
Subdued at thy side.
All homage was sweet
I for thee could resign;.
Others knelt at my feet,
But I knelt at thine.

I was happy, I dreamed

I could trust to thy word;

My soul's faith it seemed
In my idol-and lord!
And yet thou could'st change-
And, did we meet now,
The voice would be strange,

And altered thy brow.

I thought I had schooled

My heart from regret―

It will not be ruled,

Tis so hard to forget.

I live in a crowd,

And I seem like the rest,

But my spirit is bowed
By a grief unconfess'd.

From my pillow at night

"Tis so wretched-sleep flics, And morning brings light

And the tears to my eyes;

They speak, and I ask what
It is they would say,

For the thoughts that I name not
Are with thee, far away.

'Twas a light word and careless That named thee again;

May morning light fall o'er thee
When I am far away;
Let hope's sweet light restore thee
All we have dreamed to-day.
I would not have thee keep me
In mind by tears alone;

I would not have thee weep me,
Sweet love, when I am gone.

No, as the brook is flowing
With sunshine at its side;
While fair wild flowers are growing,
All lovely o'er the tide,
So, linked with many a treasure
Of nature and of spring,
With all that gives thee pleasure,
My heart to thine shall cling.

The rose shall be enchanted
To breathe of love to thee;
All fair things shall be haunted
With vows of faith for me.
The west wind shall secure thee
My tidings from the main,

But most of all assure thee
How soon we meet again.

L. E. L.