formerly the custom mutually to present; but now it is customary only for the gentleman."

:

Again the same authority says:

Why Valentine's a day to choose
A mistress, and our freedom lose?
May I my reason interpose,
The question with an answer close?
To imitate we have a mind,

And couple like the winged kind,

Grose explains Valentine to mean the first woman seen by a man, or man seen by a woman on this day.

Mr. Douce gives a very probable conjecture that the custom of Valentines is a relic of Paganism. He says: "It was the practice of ancient Rome, during a great part of the month of February, to celebrate the Lupercalia, which were feasts in honour of Pan and Juno, whence the latter deity was named Februata, Februalis, and Februella. On this occasion, amidst a variety of ceremonies, the names of every young woman were put into a box, from which they were drawn by the men as chance directed. The pastors of the early Christian church, who, by every possible means, endeavoured to eradicate the vestiges of Pagan superstitions, and chiefly by some commutation of their forms, substituted, in the present instance, the names of particular Saints, instead of those of the woman; and, as the festival of the Lupercalia commenced about the middle of February, they appear to have chosen St. Valentine's Day for celebrating the new feast, because it occurred nearly at the same time. This is in part Butler's opinion in his Lives of the Saints. It should seem, however, that it was utterly impossible to extirpate altogether any ceremony to which the common people had been much accustomed; a fact

which it were easier to prove, in tracing the origin of various other popular superstitions; and, accordingly, the outline of the ancient ceremonies was preserved, but modified by some adaptation to the Christian system. It is reasonable to suppose that the above practice of choosing mates would gradually become reciprocal in the sexes; and that all persons so chosen, would be called Valentines, from the day on which the ceremony took place*."

The modes of ascertaining the Valentine for the year, were nearly the same formerly as at present; they consisted either in drawing lots on Valentine's Eve, or in considering the person whom you met early in the following morning as the destined object. In the former case, the names of a certain number of the fair sex were, by an equal number of the other, put into a vase, which, for the time, was termed their Valentine, and was considered as predictive of their future fortune in marriage; in the second there was usually some little contrivance adopted, in order that the favourite object, when such existed, might be first seen. To this custom Shakspeare refers, when he represents Ophelia, in her distraction, singing

Good morrow, 'tis Saint Valentine's day,

All in the morning betime,

And I a maid at your window,

To be your Valentine.

In the Connoisseur is a curious species of divination, as practised on Valentine's Day, or Eve: it is supposed to be a communication from a young lady to the author:

* Douce's Illustrations of Shakspeare.

"Last Friday was Valentine's Day, and the night before I got five bay leaves, and pinned four of them to the four corners of my pillow, and the fifth to the middle; and then, if I dreamed of my sweetheart, Betty said we should be married before the year was out. But to make it more sure, I boiled an egg hard, and took out the yolk and filled it with salt; and when I went to bed, ate it, shell and all, without speaking or drinking after it. We also wrote our lover's names upon bits of paper, and rolled them up in clay, and put them into water, and the first that rose up was to be our Valentine—would you think it! Mr. Blossom was my man! I lay a-bed, and shut my eyes all the morning, till he came to our house, for I would not have seen any other man before him for all the world."

The practice of sitting cross-legged, and sending presents to the person chosen, has been continued to modern times: and we may add a trait, not now observed perhaps, on the authority of an old English ballad, in which the lasses are directed to pray cross-legged to St. Valentine for good luck.

Although not exactly devoted to St. Valentine, yet, as this is a day inscribed to lovers, we may be excused for introducing, through the medium of our Telescope, so lovely an object as

THE EGYPTIAN MAIDEN.*
Sunset had thrown its latest smile
On the blue waters of the Nile,

* The oldest of historians record a very beautiful custom common among the damsels of Egypt. They would go out at night-fall to the damp banks of the Nile to watch their little floating lamps as they glided upon the bosom of its waters, at the same time chaunting hymns of love to the appropriate

And when the evening star appear'd,
Woman's low, trembling voice was heard;
Then came a dark-eyed maid to prove,
With beating heart, the lore of love!

She came to try a powerful spell,
The strength of plighted vows can tell;
Her burning lamp, with odours fill'd,
And extracts, from fair flowers distill'd,
Slow, to the eddying stream she gave,
Then sung to her who rules the wave,-

"Float on, float on, my token light,
Nor heed the cold, damp dews of night;
Float on, float on, with conscious flame,
Trace every letter of my name,

That he may know, to whom you glide,
Who placed you on the fickle tide;
Hear, Goddess, hear, behold my tears,
Thou knowest all a maiden's fears.

66

Keep the storm-spirit from its path,
Too weak to meet the tempests' wrath;
O! guard it from the wild birds' wing,
Too weak to meet the breath of spring;
Hope lingers till that feeble ray
Fades from my aching sight away,
Then, Goddess, hear, behold my tears,
Thou knowest all a maiden's fears."

goddess of the ceremony. If the light was extinguished they departed in tears, to indulge the lonely sorrow of Jephtha's daughter, when she called on the virgins of Mizpeh to lament, that her footsteps should be no longer seen upon the mountains, nor her voice be heard among the stately maids of Judah. If it passed down the tide glimmering fainter and fainter till lost in the distance, they returned with songs and gladness, for they then knew that their lovers were faithful in their absence to their early vows.

S. S. B.

The distant torch seem'd sinking now,

She dash'd the green wreath from her brow;
It gleam'd again-then came the flush
That mantled in young love's first blush,
And ever as it rose or fell,

Answer'd her throbbing bosom's swell.

Slowly it pass'd beyond her ken,
She stood in speechless rapture then,
Her only voice-the sigh of bliss,
Brought to her cheek her lover's kiss,
And there they knelt-love's records tell,
And bless'd the Goddess, and the spell.

15. SHROVE TUESDAY.

S. S. Boyd.

Let glad Shrove Tuesday bring the pancake thin,
Or fritter rich, with apples stored within.

Oxford Sausage. Shrove Tuesday, or, as it is more commonly termed, Pancake-day, from the custom of eating pancakes on this day, is still observed in many families. Shrove Tide means the time of confessing sins, the Saxon word Shrive, or Shrift, meaning confession. Hence Shrove Tuesday means Confession Tuesday; on which day all the people in every parish throughout the kingdom, in Catholic times, were obliged to confess their sins, one by one, to their parish priests, in their own parish churches; and that this might be done the more regularly, the great bell in every parish was rung at ten o'clock, or perhaps sooner, that it might be heard by all.

From the practice of piety which it was the intention of the early church to encourage, this day degenerated into one of riot and disorder, distinguished for its idle sports, cock-fighting, bull-baiting, and similar barbarous amusements.