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out of the North concerning Bishop Lake's Declaration, &c., wherein the author says they have for a long time at York had a custom-which now challenges the privilege of a prescription that all the apprentices, journeymen, and other servants of the town, had the liberty to go into the cathedral, and ring the PancakeBell, as we call it in the country, on Shrove Tuesday: and that being a time that a great many came out of the country to see the city (if not their friends) and church, to oblige the ordinary people the minster used to be left open that day to let them go up to see the lanthorn and bells, which were sure to be pretty well exercised, and was thought a more innocent divertisement than being at the ale-house. But Doctor Lake when he came first to reside there, was very much scandalized at this custom, and was resolved he would break it at first dash, although all his brethren of the clergy did dissuade him from it. He was resolved to make the experiment, for which he had like to have paid very dear, for I'le assure you it was very near costing him his life. However he did make such a combustion and mutiny, that I dare say York never remembered, nor saw the like, as many yet living can testify."

Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, puts an end for a time to these wild doings, substituting as absurd a fast, in imitation of our Saviour's miraculous abstinence for forty days. Originally the fast commenced on that which is now the first Sunday in Lent, and ended on Easter Day, but as this left only thirty-six days when the Sundays were deducted (upon the principle that no Sunday can ever be a fast-day,) Pope Gregory added four days from the previous week, beginning with Ash Wednesday. The name of Ash Wednesday was derived from the ancient ceremony of blessing ashes at this season, with which the priest signed the

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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 name and beginning of Lent," he says, "the word 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.*

ashes.

"Alexander the Great was very fond of eggs roasted in hot 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.

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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. Ægypti 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." t

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