radicles were all directed to the interior of the apartment; he then glued others upon the outside of the squares, and they turned their radicles down upon the glass, thus directing themselves towards the dark interior.

"Misseltoe groweth chiefly upon crab-trees, apple-trees, sometimes upon hazles, and rarely upon oaks; the misseltoe whereof is counted very medicinal: it is ever green, winter and summer, and beareth a white glistening berry; and it is a plant utterly different from the plant upon which it groweth."-Bacon.

The fruit, which is covered with a viscid pulp, is made by the Italians, and even in Herefordshire, into a kind of birdlime; and, as it is a favourite food of the large or missel thrush, it is thought to have given rise to the proverb, "Turdus malus sibi cacat," applied to such as are authors of their own misfortunes. Mistletoe grows luxuriantly upon the apple or pear tribe of trees, and the oak; and Mr. Jesse describes it as flourishing upon some lime-trees in Datchet Mead, just as Shakspeare described it in his day.

The mystic uses of the mistletoe are traced to the pagan ages it has been identified with the golden branch referred to by Virgil, in infernis; and it is affirmed to have been used in the religious ceremonies of the Greeks and Romans. Sir James E. Smith thus points out the distinctness of the mistletoe of the ancients from our own:

Loranthus Europaus seems to be the original or most common mistletoe of the Greeks, which grows usually on some kind of fir-tree. But our viscum album is likewise found in Greece, though rarely, growing on the oak; and this has been preferred from the most remote antiquity. Hence, when the superstitions of the east travelled westward, our Druids adopted a notion of the mistletoe of the oak being more holy or efficacious, in conjurations or medicine, than what any other tree afforded; the Loranthus, or ordinary mistletoe, not being known there. This superstition actually remains; and a plant of viscum gathered from oak is preferred by those who rely on virtues which perhaps never existed in any mistletoe whatever."

The Druids and Celtic nations called it all-heal and guidhel. They had an extraordinary veneration for the number three, says Vallancey, and they chose the mistletoe, because not only its berries, but its leaves also, grow in clusters of three united to one stalk; but the leaves grow in pairs only. The Druids celebrated a grand festival on the annual cutting of the mistletoe, which was held on the sixth day of the moon nearest their new year. Many ceremonies were observed: the officiating Druid being clad in white, cut the plant with a golden sickle, and received it in a white cloth.

Stukeley, however, says, that the Druids "cut the mistletoe with their upright hatchets of brass, called celts, put upon the ends of their staffs; and they carried the mistletoe in

their hands, and laid it on their altars, as an emblem of the salutiferous advent of Messiah." He adds:

The custom is still preserved in the North, and was lately at York on the eve of Christmas-day: they carry mistletoe to the high altar of the cathedral, and proclaim a public and universal liberty, pardon, and freedom to all sorts of even inferior and wicked people at the gates of the city, towards the four quarters of heaven.

In the Scandinavian mythology, the mistletoe is dedicated to its Venus, Friga; and previous to the introduction of Christianity, the feast of Thor was celebrated by the Northmen at early the same period, a fact which accounts for the bacchanalian character of the Christian feast.

Again, "Geriothel, mistletoe, a magical shrub, appeared to be the forbidden tree in the middle of the trees of Eden; for in the Edda the mistletoe is said to be Balder's death, who yet perished through blindness and a young woman.

The Druids doubtless dispensed the plant at a high price; "as late as the seventeenth century peculiar efficacy was attached to it, and a piece hung round the neck was considered a safeguard against witches."-W. Sandys, F.S.A.

Kissing a fair one under the mistletoe, and wishing her a happy new year as you present her with one of the berries for luck, is the Christmas custom of our times; and in some places persons try lots for the bough with most berries by the crackling of leaves and berries in the fire.

But at what period came mistletoe to be recognised as a Christmas evergreen? We have Christmas carols in praise of holly and ivy of even earlier date than the fifteenth century; but allusion to mistletoe can scarcely be found for two centuries later, or before the time of Herrick :

"Down with the rosemary, and so;
Down with the baies and mistletoe;
Down with the holly, ivie, all,

Wherewith ye drest the Christmas hall."

Shakspeare describes :

"The trees, though summer, yet forlorn and lean,
O'ercome with moss and baleful mistletoe."

Tusser directs:

"Get ivye and hull (holly), woman, deck up thine house;"

And thus refers to the plant:

"If snowe do continue, sheepe hardly that fare

Crave mistle and ivie for them for to spare."

Coles, in his Knowledge of Plants, 1656, says of mistletoe: “it is carryed many miles to set up in houses about Christmas time, when it is adorned with a white glistening berry." In the tract, Round about our Coal Fire, or Christmas Entertain

ments, early in the last century, the rooms were embowered with holly, ivy, cypress, bays, laurel, and mistletoe, and a bouncing Christmas log in the chimney." Gay, in his Trivia, book ii. 437, thus refers to the decking of churches:

"When rosemary and bays, the poet's crown,

Are bawl'd in frequent cries through all the town;
Then judge the festival of Christmas near,—
Christmas, the joyous period of the year;
Now with bright holly all the temples strow,
With laurel green and sacred mistletoe."

Mr. Brand, however, thinks that mistletoe was never put up in churches, among evergreens, "but by mistake or ignorance of the sextons; for it was the heathenish or profane plant, as having been of such distinction in the pagan rites of Druidism, and it therefore had its place assigned it in kitchens, where it was hung in great state with its white berries. . . . I learned at Bath that it never came into the church there. An old sexton at Teddington, in Middlesex, informed me that some mistletoe was once put up in the church there, but was by the clergyman immediately ordered to be taken away."

...

Sir Thomas Browne (Vulgar Errors, book ii. chap. 6) discourses of the virtues of mistletoe in "epileptical intentions. Country practice hath added another, to provoke the afterbirth, and in that case the decoction is given unto cows. That the berries are poison, as some conceive, we are so far from averring, that we have safely given them inwardly, and can confirm the experiment of Brassavolus, that they have some purgative quality."

Sir John Colbach, in his dissertation concerning mistletoe, 1720, strongly recommends it as a medicine for epilepsy and all other convulsive disorders: adding, that this beautiful plant must have been designed by the Almighty "for further and more noble purposes than barely to feed thrushes, or to be hung up superstitiously in houses to drive away evil spirits." He refers the veneration in which the Druids were held to the cures they performed by means of the mistletoe of the oak, "this tree being sacred to them, but none so that had not the mistletoe upon them." But Sir John endeavours to show the mistletoe of the crab, the lime, the pear, or any other tree, to be of equal virtue. The seeds of mistletoe ripen late, between February and April. If the ripe berries are rubbed upon the branches of trees, between February and April, they may be readily cultivated; and mistletoe has thus been found to germinate on the oak, several of the pine tribe, cherry, common laurel, Portugal laurel, holly, lime, elm, hornbeam, birch, sycamore, ash, chestnut, hazel, and acacia, as well as the apple, pear, and white-thorn tribe; but on all except the apple and pear, the seeds soon sicken and die.

Laws and Customs.

ANTIQUITY OF JUDGES' CIRCUITS.

THIS is confirmed in the 1st of Samuel, c. vii. v. 16: "And he (Samuel) went from year to year in circuit to Bethel and Gilgal and Mizpeh, and judged Israel in all those places." The system of Judges going circuit was instituted in England by King Henry II. This monarch divided the kingdom into six circuits, and commissioned his newly-created Justices in eyre, in itinere, to administer justice and try writs of assize in the several counties.

CURSITOR-BARON OF THE EXCHEQUER.

The title of Baron-Cursitor was evidently adopted in imitation of the ancient Cursitors in Chancery, who, holding the second place under the chief clerks or masters of that court, were called in Latin Clerici de cursu, and prepared all origina writs and other writs of course. So also the Baron-Cursitor held a secondary rank to the Barons or Judges, and was solely employed, like the Chancery Cursitors, in executing the formal business, and the settled rules of the Exchequer. One of the most showy functions of the Cursitor-Baron is to make the public announcement of the Crown's approval of the election of the Sheriffs of London and Middlesex: a duty perhaps imposed upon him because the time of their inauguration (Sept. 29) occurs in the middle of the vacation, when the other Barons are absent. —E. Foss, F.S.A.; Archæologia, vol. lvi. pp. 29, 31.

ORIGIN OF SOLICITORS.

This branch of legal practitioners seems to have arisen in great part out of the suits in the Star-Chamber. "In our age," says Hudson, a barrister of Gray's Inn in the reign of Charles I., "here are stepped up a new sort of people called Solicitors, unknown to the records of the law, who, like the grasshoppers in Egypt, devour the whole land; and these, I dare say (being authorised by the opinion of the most reverend and learned Lord Chancellor that ever was before him), were express maintainers, and could not justify their maintenance upon any action brought; I mean not where a lord or gentleman employed a servant to solicit his cause, for he may justify his doing thereof; but I mean those which are common solicitors of causes, and set up a new profession, not being

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allowed in any court, or at least not in the court where they follow causes; and these are the retainers of causes, and devourers of men's estates by contention, and prolonging suits to make them without end.”—John Bruce, F.S.A., on the StarChamber; Archæologia, vol. xxv. pp. 343-393.

The erroneous impression that the name of "Solicitor" is a more honourable designation than that of "Attorney" has been thus corrected by Mr. Samuel Warren, in his Lectures. The late Lord Tenterden took some trouble several times in refuting such a notion, and stigmatised as absurd the conduct of those who called by the name of solicitors persons conducting proceedings in courts of law. The proper expressions are "Attorney-at-law" and "Solicitor-in-equity." There is no difference whatever between the two in respect of rank or status, -any more than there is between barristers practising respectively in courts of law, and equity. If there be any preference, I should have thought it would lean to the good old Saxon word attorney-indicating an office most honourable and ancient. The word "solicitor" is, comparatively speaking, of much more recent introduction-an off-shoot from the under-clerks of the now abolished Six Clerks in the Court of Chancery.* .... At all events, never use the word "solicitor" either in writing, or verbally, with reference to proceedings at law; or you will justly incur the censure expressed by Lord Tenterden.

These observations are not applicable to Scotland, where there is no such class of practitioners as attorneys. There "lawyer" or "solicitor" answers to our "attorney-at-law." The office of "attorney" in Scotland is merely private, and conferred by letter of attorney, regulating the nature and extent of the business therein delegated.

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Attorneys are said to be "Gentlemen by Act of Parliament." Why so is, however, not clear; for among the various acts relative to attorneys no such enactment is to be found. The idea may possibly have arisen from the term general attorney," or attornatum genālem, as expressed in a very early statute, that of Westminster 2, the 13th Edward I., st. i. c. 10, the words having possibly been converted into "Gentleman Attorney." However, the term thus applied to attorneys is no less invidious than dubious. Of itself, their profession, when honestly and rightly exercised, is clearly that of a gentleman without any peculiar distinction.

SERGEANT-AT-LAW; HIS COIF AND RINGS.

Sergeant-at-Law, in Latin Serviens ad legem, is the highest degree of the Common Law, and is equivalent to that of Doctor in the Civil Law. The Sergeantcy-at-Law, moreover, is

*A.D. 1842, by stat. 5 and 6 Vict. c. 103, s. 1. In the early history of the Court of Chancery, the Six Clerks and their under-clerks appear to have acted as the attorneys of the suitors. As business increased, these under-clerks became a distinct body, and were recognised by the court under the denomination of "sworn clerks," or "clerks in court." The advance of commerce, with its consequent accession of wealth, so multiplied the subjects requiring the judgment of a Court of Equity, that the limits of a public office were found wholly inadequate to supply a sufficient number of officers to conduct the business of the suitors. Hence originated the "Solicitors" of the Court of Chancery.--(See Smith's Chancery Practice, p. 62, 3d edit.)