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Cheshire they still eat Simnel cake on Mid-lent Sunday, that is, a particular saffron cake, called after Lambert Simnel, who was a baker, and is supposed to have been famous for it. They ride stang, that is, set a scolding wife on a lean old horse, with the face to the tail, and parade her through the village with a tremendous clamour of frying pans, and other noise. They hang bushes at each others' doors on May morning which are expressive of each others' characters. A sort of language des arbres established by antiquity, expressing either compliment or sincere criticism, as it may be. A branch of birch signifies a pretty girl; of alder or owler, as they call it, a scold; of oak, a good woman; of broom, a good housewife: but gorse, nettles, sawdust, or sycamore, cast the very worst imputations on a woman's character, and vary according as she be girl, wife or widow. These are, it is said, not seldom used by the malicious to blast the character of the innocent. The girls wear little bags of dragon's-blood upon their hearts to inspire their swains with love. They curtsey to the new moon and turn the money in their pockets, which ought to be doubled before the moon is old. They shut their eyes when they see a pie-ball horse, and wish a secret wish, taking care never to see the same horse again, or it would spoil the charm. With them the dogrose is unlucky; if you give one, you will quarrel with the person, however dear to you; if you form a design near one it will come to nought. A shooting star is falling love in their eyes; and in their opinion the foxglove is not like other flowers, it has knowledge; it knows when a spirit passes, and always bows the head. They have, therefore, a secret awe of it. They are careful to have money in their pockets when they hear the first note of the cuckoo, for they will be rich or poor through the year accordingly. believe also that whatever they chance to be doing when they first hear the cuckoo, they will do all the year. They have the firmest faith that no person can die on a bed in which are the feathers of pigeons or any wild birds. Such are some of the simple chains with which ancient superstition bound the minds of our ancestors, and which education has not yet quite worn asunder.

They

• A stang means a pole, and probably the old custom was to use a pole instead of a horse.

There is, however, one good custom which the present age has rapidly obliterated-that of leaving open the country churchyard. In towns, there is perhaps less attraction to a churchyard in the mass of strange corpses which are there congregated, and the wilderness of bare flags which cover them; and there may be more cause for the vigilant prevention of the violation of the sanctity and decorum of the spot. But why must the country churchyard be shut up? Why should that generally picturesque and quiet place be prohibited to the stranger or the mourner? Some of the churchyards in these kingdoms are amongst the most romantic and lovely spots within them. What ancient, quiet, delicious spots have I seen of this kind amongst our mountains, and upon our coasts! What prospects, landward and seaward, do some of them give! How sweetly lies the rustic parsonage often along their side; its shrubbery lawn scarcely separated from the sacred ground. Why should these be closed? "There have been depredations," say the authorities. Then let the beadle see to it; let the offenders be punished; let the parish school and the minister teach better manners; but let these haunts of the sad or the meditative, be open to our feet as they were to those of our fathers. I must confess that I strongly sympathise with my brother, Richard Howitt, in the feelings expressed in Tait's Magazine for June 1836. "The yew trees, which adorned, with a solemn gracefulness, the churchyard of my native place, are cut down; the footpaths across it are closed; the walls are raised; for stiles, there are gates locked, and topped with iron spikes. A wider barrier than death is interposed betwixt the living and the dead. I must confess that I like it not. Why should man destroy the sanctities of time and nature? Beautiful is the picture drawn by Crabbe:

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She placed a decent stone his grave above,
Neatly engraved - an offering of her love:
For that she wrought, for that forsook her bed,
Awake alike to duty and the dead.

Here will she come, and on the grave will sit,
Folding her arms in long abstracted fit;
But if observer pass will take her round,

And careless seem, for she would not be found.

"Where is now the free and uninterrupted admission for such mourners? Grief is a retiring creature, who would not be found,' and will not knock at the door of the constituted authorities for the keys: she will look lingeringly at the impassable barriers and retire. Easy of access were churchyards until lately, with their pleasant footpaths, lying, with the tranquillity of moonlight, in the bosom of towns and villages; old, simple, and venerable,trodden, it may be, too frequently by unthinking feet-but able at all times to impress a feeling of sacredness – fraught as they were with the solemnities of life and death-on bosoms not over religious; and now, to a fanciful view, they seem more the prisons than the resting-places of the dead."

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CHAPTER XVII.

EDUCATION OF THE RURAL POPULATION.

WE have said that we will look at what education and other causes are doing, and what they are leaving undone in the change of character which they are effecting in the rural population. It appears by the Reports of the Poor-Law and Charity Commissioners that education progresses more in the northern and manufacturing districts than in the southern and agricultural ones. This is, no doubt, very much the case; and what education is leaving undone in these districts is, that it acts too timidly, too much in the spirit of worldly wisdom. It is afraid of making the people too intellectual; of raising their tastes, lest it should spoil them as Gibeonites, hewers of wood and drawers of water. My own experience is, that this is a grand mistake; that you cannot give them too pure and lofty a standard of taste; and that especially, our best and noblest poets, as Milton, Shakspeare, Wordsworth, Cowper, Southey, Campbell, Burns, Bloomfield, etc. should be put into their hands, and particularly into those of the agricultural population. What can be so rational as to imbue the minds of those who are to spend their lives in the fields with all those associations which render the country doubly delightful? It is amazing what avidity they evince for such writers when they are once made familiar with them; and whoever has his mind well stored with the pure and noble sentiments of such writers will never condescend to debase his nature by theft, idleness, and low

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habits. The great alarm has always been that of lifting the poor by such knowledge above their occupations, and filling their heads with airy notions. I can only point again to the agricultural population of Scotland, where such knowledge abounds. If the labourers have not the genius of Burns, many of them have a great portion of the manly and happy feeling with which

He walked in glory and in joy,

Following his plough along the mountain side.

Where are there

There is every reason, so far as experiment goes, to suppose that the same effect would follow in England. men so sober and industrious as those artisans who are now the steadiest frequenters of Mechanics' Libraries? I have given, in the first chapter of the Nooks of the World, a striking instance of the effects of such reading on an agricultural labourer. Through my instigation several intelligent families have made themselves acquainted with this meritorious man, and speak with admiration of his manly and superior character. Let the experiment be repeated far and wide!

But education itself yet wants introducing to a vast extent into the agricultural districts. The commissioners give a deplorable picture of the neglect of the agricultural population in the counties bordering on the metropolis. In some parts of Essex, Sussex, Kent, Buckinghamshire, Berks, etc., schools of any description are unknown; in others not more than one in fifteen of the labourers are represented as able to read. In this county, Surrey, much the same state of things exists. I have been astounded at the very

few labourers that you meet with that can read; and I think I see some striking causes for this neglect of the labouring class in the peculiar state of society here-it has no middle link. A vast number of the aristocracy reside in the county from its proximity to town; and besides these, there are only the farmers and their labourers; the servants of the aristocratic establishments-a numerous and very peculiar class; and the few tradesmen who supply the great houses. The many gradations of rank and property which are found in more trading, manufacturing, and mixed districts do not here exist. It seems as if the Normans and the Saxons had here descended from age to age; two races, distinct in their

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