[Compare also Ben Jonson,

["But see, the Hobby-horse is forgot.
Fool, it must be your lot

To supply his want with faces,

And some other buffon graces."]

A scene in Beaumont and Fletcher's Women Pleased, act iv., best shows the sentiments of the Puritans on this occasion.

[The following lines occur in a poem on London, in MS. Harl. 3910:

"In Fleet strete then I heard a shoote:

I putt off my hatt, and I made no staye,
And when I came unto the rowte,
Good Lord! I heard a taber playe,

For so, God save mee! a Morrys-daunce :
Oh! ther was sport alone for mee,

To see the Hobby-horse how he did praunce
Among the gingling company.

I proffer'd them money for their coats,

But my conscience had remorse,

For my father had no oates,

And I must have had the Hobbie-horse."]

Whoever," says Douce, "happens to recollect the manner in which Bayes's troops, in the Rehearsal, are exhibited on the stage, will have a tolerably correct notion of a Morris Hobby-horse. Additional remains of the Pyrrhic, or sworddance, are preserved in the daggers stuck in the man's cheeks, which constituted one of the hocus-pocus or legerdemain tricks practised by this character, among which were the threading of a needle, and the transferring of an egg from one hand to the other, called by Ben Jonson, in his Every Man out of his Humour, the travels of the egg. To the horse's mouth was suspended a ladle, for the purpose of gathering money from the spectators. In later times the fool appears to have performed this office, as may be collected from Nashe's play of Summer's last Will and Testament, where this stagedirection occurs: Ver goes in and fetcheth out the Hobby

horse and the Morrice-daunce, who daunce about.' Ver then says: About, about, lively, put your horse to it, reyne him harder, jerke him with your wand, sit fast, sit fast, man: Foole, hold up your ladle there.' Will Summers is made to say, 'You friend with the Hobby-horse, goe not too fast, for fear of wearing out my lord's tyle-stones with your hobnayles.' Afterwards there enter three clowns and three maids, who dance the Morris, and at the same time sing the following song:

Lord Orford, in his Catalogue of English Engravers, under the article of Peter Stent, has described two paintings at Lord Fitzwilliam's, on Richmond Green, which came out of the old neighbouring palace. They were executed by Vinckenboom, about the end of the reign of James I., and exhibit views of the above palace: in one of these pictures a Morrisdance is introduced, consisting of seven figures, viz. “ a fool, a Hobby-horse, a piper, a Maid Marian, and three other dancers, the rest of the figures being spectators." Of these, the first four and one of the dancers, Douce has reduced in a plate from a tracing made by the late Captain Grose. The fool has an inflated bladder, or eel-skin, with a ladle at the end of it, and with this he is collecting money. The piper is pretty much in his original state; but the Hobby-horse wants the legerdemain apparatus, and Maid Marian is not remarkable for the elegance of her person.

A short time before the revolution in France, the Maygames and Morris-dance were celebrated in many parts of that country, accompanied by a fool and a Hobby-horse. The latter was termed un chevalet; and, if the authority of Minshew be not questionable, the Spaniards had the same character under the name of tarasca.1

[A great deal of the above is literally transcribed from Douce's Illustrations of Shakespeare.]

LOW SUNDAY.

[A CURIOUS Volume of sermons, printed in 1652, is entitled, The Christian Sodality, or Catholic Hive of Bees sucking the honey of the Church's prayers from the blossoms of the Word of God, blown out of the Epistles and Gospels of the divine service throughout the year. Collected by the puny bee of all the hive, not worthy to be named otherwise than by these elements of his name, F. P.' The author, in his sermon for White or Low Sunday, the first Sunday after Easter, thus writes:-" This day is called White or Low Sunday, because, in the primitive Church, those neophytes that on Easter-Eve were baptised and clad in white garments did to-day put them off, with this admonition, that they were to keep within them a perpetual candour of spirit, signified by the Agnus Deil hung about their necks, which, falling down upon their breasts, put them in mind what innocent lambs they must be, now that, of sinful, high, and haughty men, they were, by baptism, made low and little children of Almighty God, such as ought to retain in their manners and lives the Paschal feasts which they had accomplished." Other writers have supposed that it was called Low Sunday because it is the lowest or latest day that is allowed for satisfying of the Easter obligation, viz. the worthily receiving the blessed Eucharist. The former, however, appears the most probable reason for the designation of Low Sunday, and may be more correct and better founded than other speculations which were advanced. For certainly, in ancient Teutonic, lowe signifies a flame, and to lowe signifies to burst into flame or light. It may be, too, that in England the Sunday in question was never actually called White, but Low Sunday. The author, however, of the Christian Sodality, says, "it is called White Sunday, or Low Sunday." If so, the designation white, as Dominica in albis, was naturally traceable to the fact of the neophytes that day putting off the white garments which they received at their baptism on Holy Saturday; and

[Agnus Dei is the name given to wax cakes bearing the impression of a lamb carrying the standard of the cross, solemnly blessed by the Pope on the Low Sunday following his consecration, and every seven years after; to be distributed to the people.]

the epithet low, alluded to the newness of life, which neophytes were exhorted to cultivate: they had been proud and haughty now they must be low, little, humble, mortified, &c. Another name for the Sunday in question is Quasimodo Sunday, from the first word in Latin opening the introit of the mass- -“Like new-born infants," &c. The Greek church also designates it the new (xovn) Sunday, in allusion to the newness of life preached to the neophytes. These facts are noticed as tending to show that a prevailing thought, which may have been generative of the appellation of the Sunday, was the newness of life then preached. Hence Low Sunday. You were, neophytes, high and proud; you must now be low and humble.-Literary Gazette.]

ST. URBAN'S DAY.

MAY 25.

UNDER St. Paul's Day, I have shown that it is customary in many parts of Germany to drag the image of St. Urban to the river, if on the day of his feast it happens to be foul weather. Aubanus tells us, that " upon St. Urban's Day all the vintners and masters of vineyards set a table either in the market-steed, or in some other open and public place, and covering it with fine napery, and strewing upon it greene leaves and sweete flowers, do place upon the table the image of that holy bishop, and then if the day be cleare and faire, they crown the image with greate store of wine; but if the weather prove rugged and rainie, they cast filth, mire, and puddle-water upon it; persuading themselves that, if that day be faire and calm, their grapes, which then begin to flourish, will prove good that year; but if it be stormie and tempestuous, they shall have a bad vintage." (p. 282.) The same anecdote is related in the Regnum Papisticum of Naogeorgus.

ROYAL OAK DAY.

On the 29th of May, the anniversary of the Restoration of Charles II., it is still customary, especially in the North of England, for the common people to wear in their hats the leaves of the oak, which are sometimes covered on the occasion with leaf-gold. This is done, as everybody knows, in commemoration of the marvellous escape of that monarch from those that were in pursuit of him, who passed under the very oak-tree in which he had secreted himself after the decisive battle of Worcester.

"May the 29th," says the author of the Festa AngloRomana, "is celebrated upon a double account; first, in commemoration of the birth of our soveraign king Charles the Second, the princely son of his royal father Charles the First of happy memory, and Mary the daughter of Henry the Fourth, the French king, who was born the 29th day of May, 1630; and also, by Act of Parliament, 12 Car. II., by the passionate desires of the people, in memory of his most happy Restoration to his crown and dignity, after twelve years forced exile from his undoubted right, the crown of England, by barbarous rebels and regicides. And on the 8th of this month his Majesty was with universal joy and great acclamations proclaimed in London and Westminster, and after throughout all his dominions. The 16th he came to the Hague; the 23rd, with his two brothers, embarqued for England; and on the 25th he happily landed at Dover, being received by General Monk and some of the army; from whence he was, by several voluntary troops of the nobility and gentry, waited upon to Canterbury; and on the 29th, 1660, he made his magnificent entrance into that emporium of Europe, his stately and rich metropolis, the renowned City of London. On this very day also, 1662, the king came to Hampton Court with his queen Catherine, after his marriage at Portsmouth. This, as it is his birth-day, is one of his collar-days, without offering."

"It was the custom, some years back, to decorate the monument of Richard Penderell (in the church-yard of St. Giles in the Fields, London), on the 29th of May, with oakbranches; but, in proportion to the decay of popularity in