look of triumph,-then setting down his mug-" And if you want to know that, you have only to walk into the churchyard in the morning, and there you'll find plenty of my verses, and cut with a pen of iron too, as Job wished his elegy to be." Here, however, lest I should not walk into the churchyard, he recited a whole host of epitaphs, many of which must have made epitaph-hunters stare, if they really were put on headstones.

"Well," I said, "you astonish me with your learning and wit. I certainly did not look for such a person in this village—but pray where have you travelled?"

"O! it's a long story-but this I can tell you-I have gone so near to the end of the world that I could not put sixpence between my head and the sky."

At this the whole company of disputants forgot their quicksets, lifted their heads and cried-"Well done Septimus Scallop! That's a good 'un. If the gentleman can swallow that, he can anything."

"O!" said I, "I don't doubt it."

"Don't doubt it!" they shouted all at once-" don't doubt it? Why, do you think any man ever could get to where the sky was so low as he couldn't get in sixpence between his head and it ?”

"Yes he could, and often has done-make yourself sure of that. If a man has not a sixpence he cannot put it between his head and the sky; and he is pretty near the world's end too, I think."

Here they all burst into a shout of laughter, in the midst of which open flew the door, and a tall figure rushed into the middle of the house, wrapped in a shaggy coat of many capes, dripping with wet, and holding up a huge horn lantern. A face of wonderful length and of a ghastly aspect glared from behind the lantern, and a voice of the most ludicrous lamentation bawled out-" For God's sake, lads, come and help me to find my wagon and horses! I've lost my wagon! I've lost my wagon!" Up jumped the whole knot of disputants, and demanded where he had lost it. The man said that while he went to deliver a parcel in the village, the wagon had gone on. That he heard it at a distance, and cried, "woa! woa!" but the harder he cried, and the farther he went, the faster it went too. At this intelligence away marched every one of the good-natured crew excepting the wit. "And why don't

you go?” I asked.-"Go! pugh! It's only that soft brother of mine, Tim Scallop, the Doncaster carrier. I'll be bound now that the wagon hasn't moved an inch from the spot he left it in. He has heard the wind roaring, and doesn't know it from his own wagon wheels. Here these poor simpletons will go running their hearts out for some miles, and then they will come back and find the horses where he left them. I could go and lay my hand on them in five minutes. But they are just as well employed as in griming Mrs. Tappit's hearthstone. Never mind;-I was telling you of what the hostler said to Ben Jonson when Ben was reeling home early one morning from a carouse, and Ben declared that he was never so pricked with a horsenail-stump in his life

BEN.-Thou silly groom

Take away thy broom,
And let Ben Jonson pass:

GROOM.-O! rare Ben!

Turn back again,

And take another glass!

Septimus Scallop laughed at the hostler's repartee, and I laughed too, but my amusement had a different source from his. There was something irresistibly ludicrous in the generous rushing forth of the whole company to the aid of the poor carrier, except the witty brother! But he was quite right: in about an hour, in came the good-natured men, streaming with rain like drowned rats, and declaring that after running three miles and finding no wagon, they bethought themselves of turning back to where the carrier said it was lost; and there they had nearly run their noses against it, standing exactly where he left it.

So much for the village inn. Every traveller must have seen in such a place many a similar piece of country life. A new class of alehouses has sprung up under the New Beer Act, which being generally kept by people without capital, often without character; their liquor supplied by the public brewers, and adulterated by themselves; have done more to demoralize the population of both town and country, than any other legislative measure within the last century. In these low, dirty, fuddling places, you may look

in vain for

The whitewashed wall, the nicely sanded floor,

The varnished clock that clicked behind the door.

In manufacturing towns, and agricultural districts, they alike multiply the temptations to the poor man, and by their low character are sure to deteriorate his own. Against the swarms of these, in many places, the quiet respectable old village inn has little chance. It must disappear, or be kept by a different and a worse class of people; and when it goes, it goes with Goldsmith's graphic lamentation-for very different are the shops that succeed it:

Vain transitory splendours! could not all
Reprieve the tottering mansion from its fall!
Obscure it sinks, nor shall it more impart
An hour's importance to the poor man's heart.
Thither no more the peasant shall repair,
To sweet oblivion of his daily care;
No more the farmer's news, the barber's tale,
No more the woodman's ballad shall prevail;
No more the smith his dusky brow shall clear,
Relax his ponderous strength, and lean to hear;
The host himself no longer shall be found,
Careful to see the mantling bliss go round;
Nor the coy maid, half willing to be prest,
Shall kiss the cup to pass it to the rest.

493

CHAPTER IX.

POPULAR PLACES OF RESORT.-WAKES, STATUTES, AND FAIRS.

BESIDES the remains of the ancient festivals, the country people find a great source of amusement in these gatherings. The WAKE is the parochial feast of the dedication of the church. It has now dwindled into a village holiday, shorn by the Reformation of all its ecclesiastical and sacred character. But it furnishes a certain point in every year, in every individual parish, to which the rural people can look forward as a point of rest and mutual rejoicing. It is a time which leads them to clean up their houses, to look forward and prepare for a renewal of their wardrobe; and which cheers the spirit of many an otherwise solitary and labouring person with the prospect of a short season of relaxation, a short pause in the otherwise ever-going machinery of servitude. The old people -parents, and grand-parents, say-when telling of their children out at service, in some distant place, or married and settled far off: "Well, well, we shall see them at the wake. They'll all be here, thank God, well and hearty, I hope." The children, as they groan at times under the tedium of perpetual labour, suddenly cheer up, and say,-" Well, but we shall go home at the wake;— a thing which is regularly stipulated for at hiring; and the vision of that joyful time, though but a moment in itself, puts out all the twilight of their weary waiting. The time comes. The merry

bells of the church are ringing on the anniversary of that church's completion, perhaps five or seven hundred years ago. Merrily they ring; and simple and glad creatures, young maidens, and youths, and comely pairs with a troop of children round them, hear them, as they come over hill and dale, approaching from all quarters the place of their nativity, and the place of their ancestors: the one place, however small and however obscure, tinged all over with the memories of childhood, and filled with the stories and legends that were interwoven with the very grain of their minds by their parents' recitals in early life-the one place, therefore, which seems the most important in the universe. They, like the Chinese, always place in the maps of their simple thoughts their native village in the centre of the earth. Over hill and dale they are coming, all in their holiday array; and in many a bright little cottage, basking in the sunshine of morning, are eager hearts looking out for them; wondering how Grace and Thomas will look; whether they are much altered; and whether the children of the married ones will be much grown. The beauty of these village feasts is, that they do not occur all at one time, so that the friends and acquaintance of the inhabitants of one place, come pouring in to see them, and are ready in their turn to receive them at their feast.

They are times of pleasant exchange of hospitalities and renewals of simple friendships. Out of doors there are stalls of toys and sweetmeats, and whirligigs for the children; within, there is, for once, plum-pudding and roast beef, and an infinity of such talk as best pleases their tastes. Old notes of by-gone years are compared. Many are recalled to remembrance who have not been thought of for a long time. The hearts of the old are warmed by retracing their early exploits, and early acquaintance, with all the pleasant exaggerations of memory; and the young listen, and think with wonder on those good old times.

In some old-fashioned places, these feasts are named from and mingled with the remains of other old church rites. At Ilkeston in Derbyshire, it is called the Cross-Dressing, and the cross in the village is dressed up with oaken boughs, with their leaves gilt and spangled. At Tissington, near Dovedale, the Well-Dressing or Well-Flowering, when they dress up a beautiful spring with