Good Grandmother The Officer's Widow The Clergyman's Widow The Merchant's Widow. Miss Jane Taylor, of Ongar. Original Poems Miss Aikin, of London. Juvenile Correspondence Selection of Poetry Essays and Poems. Two volumes Female Speaker. Mrs. Hannah More, near Bristol. On Education Sacred Dramas Practical Piety Spirit of Prayer Tracts. Miss Harriet Martineau, of Norwich. Devotional Exercises Christmas Day; or, The Friends. 342 ITALIAN EXILE IN ENGLAND. Mrs. Elizabeth Hamilton, of Edinburgh. Letters on Education Memoirs of Agrippina The Cottagers of Glenburnie. Mrs. Marcet, of London. Conversations on Chemistry. Two volumes Conversations on Natural Philosophy. volumes Conversations on Political Economy. Mrs. Trimmer. Fabulous Histories Introduction to the Knowledge of Nature An Anonymous Lady. Memoirs of Lady Rachel Russell. Two A COUNTRY WAKE. Vulgar Superstitions-Whitsuntide-A Fine Day in England -Plum Pudding-Horse Racing and Betting. ALTHOUGH Catholicism has been renounced in England for three centuries, some customs, prejudices, and festivals, that the church of Rome or the friars introduced, are nevertheless not yet extirpated. In the same manner, many of the rites and ceremonies of Paganism still subsisted, even after the Christian religion had planted its standard on its ruins. To destroy a moral edifice, of whatever kind, ་ and however absurd it may be, is much more difficult than to annihilate works entirely constructed by the hand of man. The revolutions of empires, of governments, of religions, and of languages, supply illustrations of this position in abundance; but, without wandering too far, without ever quitting England, I need only proceed to say, that I have before me a book printed a century ago, by a clergyman of Newcastle, entitled "Antiquitates Vulgares," in which this good minister mentions all the ceremonies, superstitions, and popular prejudices, to be extinguished by means of the instruction of the lower orders. It appears that, at that time, the lower orders of English believed in apparitions that walked abroad in the night, in ghosts that haunted the churchyards, in hobgoblins, witches, and fairies, in the magic virtues of certain wells and fountains, in a devil with cloven feet, in haunted houses, in the evil augury of a hare's crossing the path, of a rook's cawing, of an owl's hooting, and a hundred other nonsenses of that sort, which the heroes of antiquity and the knights of the round table once believed in, and our nurses and children believe in still. There is not an English poet, from Shakspeare to Walter Scott, who has not availed himself of these popular prejudices, as a mythology or poetic machinery, to increase wonder and terror, the two passions they handle most sublimely. But what is beautiful in poetry, is often very different in practice. Hence the good curate, Bourne, of Newcastle, generously spurning the gain which some of his function exact from similar bug |