their leaves and seeds into the stream. Some bushy hazels grew at intervals along the lines of the wall; and a few ashtrees, as the winds had sown them. To the east and west some fields adjoined it, in that state of half cultivation which gives a human character to solitude. To the south, on the other side of the brook, the common, with its limestone rocks peering everywhere above ground, extended to the foot of Ingleborough. A craggy hill, feathered with birch, sheltered it from the north. "The turf was as soft and fine as that of the adjoining hills; it was seldom broken, so scanty was the population to which it was appropriated; scarcely a thistle or a nettle deformed it, and the few tombstones which had been placed there were now themselves half buried. The sheep came over the wall when they listed, and sometimes took shelter in the porch from the storm. Their voices, and the cry of the kite wheeling above, were the only sounds which were heard there, except when the single bell, which hung in its niche over the entrance, tinkled for service on the Sabbath-day, or, with a slower tongue, gave notice that one of the children of the soil was returning to the earth from which he sprung. "The home of the Doves was to the east of the church, under the same hill, and with the same brook in front; and the intervening field belonged to the family. It was a low house, having before it a little garden of that size and character which showed that the inhabitants could afford to bestow a thought upon something more than mere bodily wants. "You entered between two yews, clipt to the fashion of two fawns. There were hollyhocks and sunflowers displaying themselves above the walls; roses and sweet peas under the windows, and the everlasting pea climbing the porch. The rest of the garden lay behind the house, and partly on the slope of the hill. It had a hedge of gooseberry-bushes, a few apple-trees, pot-herbs in abundance, onions, cabbages, turnips, and carrots; potatoes had hardly found their way into these remote parts; and in a sheltered spot under the crag, open to the south, were six bee-hives, which made the family perfectly independent of West India produce. Tea was in those days as little known as potatoes, and, for all other things, honey supplied the place of sugar. "The house consisted of seven rooms, the dairy and cellar included, which were both upon the ground floor. As you entered it, there was on the right one of those open chimneys which afford more comfort in a winter's evening than the finest register stove. In front of the chimney stood a wooden beehive chair, and on each side was a long oak seat with a back to it, the seats serving as chests, in which the oaten bread was kept. They were of the darkest brown, and well polished by constant use. On the back of each were the same initials as those over the door, with the date, 1610. The great oak table, and the chest which held the household linen, bore the same date. The chimney was well hung with bacon; the rack which covered half the ceiling, bore equal marks of plenty. Mutton hams were suspended from other parts of the ceiling, and there was an odour of cheese from the adjoining dairy, which the turf fire, though perpetual as that of the Magi, or of the Vestal Virgins, did not overpower. A few pewter dishes were ranged above the trenchers opposite the door on a conspicuous shelf. The other treasures of the family were in an open triangular cupboard, fixed in one of the corners of the best kitchen, half way from the floor and touching the ceiling. They consisted of a silver saucepan, a silver goblet, and four apostle spoons. Here also King Charles's Golden Rules' were pasted against the wall, and a large print of Daniel in the lion's den. The lions were bedaubed with yellow, and the prophet was bedaubed with blue, with a red patch upon each of his cheeks; and if he had been like his picture, he might have frightened the lions; but happily there were no 'judges' in the family, and it had been bought for its name's sake. Six black chairs were ranged along the wall, where they were seldom disturbed from their array. They had been purchased by Daniel, the grandfather, upon his marriage, and were the most costly purchase that had ever been made in the family, for the goblet was a legacy. The backs were higher than the tallest man, when seated; the seats, flat and shallow, set in a round frame, unaccommodating in their material, more unaccommodating in shape; the backs also were of wood, rising straight up, and ornamented with balls, and lozenges, and embossments; and the legs and cross-bars were adorned in the same taste. Over the chimney were two peacocks' feathers, some of the dry silky pods of the honesty-flower, and one of those large sinuous shells' so finely described by Landor: 6 666 "Of pearly hue Within, and they that lustre have imbibed And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there!' "The three apartments above served equally for store-rooms and bed-chambers. William Dove, the brother, slept in one, and Agatha, the maid, or, Haggy, as she was called, in another." UNLUCKY FRIDAY. Here is one of the Doctor's chapters, with little abridgment, its Shandean head being retained :— "THE AUTHOR DISPLAYS A LITTLE MORE OF SUCH READING AS IS SELDOM READ, AND SHOWS THAT LORD BYRON AND AN ESSEX WIDOW DIFFERED IN OPINION CONCERNING FRIDAY. "There is no superstition, however harmless it may appear, and may, indeed, long continue to be, but has in it some latent evil. Much has arisen from the distinction of unlucky days, which may very innocently and naturally have originated, though it was afterwards dexterously applied by astrologers, and by the priests of false religions, to their own purposes. No one would willingly commence an important undertaking on the anniversary of a day which had brought to him some great and irreparable calamity. It would be indecent to fix upon St. Bartholemew's for a day of public rejoicing in France; or in Portugal on that day on which Lisbon was laid in ruins by the great earthquake. On the other hand, an English general and an English army, would feel something more than their wonted hope and expectation of victory, if they gave an enemy battle on the anniversaries of Waterloo or Blenheim, Cressy, Poictiers, or Agincourt. God be thanked, neither our fleets nor armies have ever yet caused a day to be noted with black in the English calendar. "But many a good ship has lost that tide which might have led to fortune, because the captain and the crew thought it unlucky to begin their voyage on a Friday. You were in no danger of being left behind by the packets sailing on that day, however favourable the wind, if it were possible for the captain to devise any excuse for remaining till the morrow in harbour. Lord Byron partook of this superstition; and if anything of the slightest importance, in which he was concerned, were commenced on a Friday, he was seriously disconcerted. "Such, however, are the effects of superstitious animosity; that (as the Puritans in the next generation made Christmas day a fast by an ordinance of parliament), in James the First's reign, Friday was kept as a sort of holiday. The biographer of a Spanish lady who came to England for the purpose of secretly serving the Roman Catholic cause, says that among other griefs she had that of hearing the wheel go round, by which they roasted whole quarters of beef, on every Friday, delighting to profane with forbidden food that day on which the Catholics, by fasting and other works of penitence, manifested their sense, every week throughout the year, of the sufferings of our Lord and Saviour. "In all English homes," she says, "both private and public (to which latter great part of the people went for their meals), all kinds of meat, roasted and boiled, are seen on Fridays, Good Friday not excepted, as if it were a land of Jews or Turks. The nobles, in particular, reserve their feasts and entertainments of all kinds of meats and delicacies for Fridays. It is the sport of the great and their sort of piety, to testify by these sacrileges their hatred to the Roman Church.'" "There is probably some exaggeration in this statement; and if the biographer was conversant with the history of his own country, he must have known that there was a time when his own countrymen made it a point of duty to eat pork on Saturdays, for the sake of despiting the Jews. But the practice cannot have been so common as he represents it, for if it had, Friday would not have retained its inauspicious character to the present time. Yet even this, which is in common opinion the most unlucky of all the days, may, from particular circumstances, deserve, it appears, to be marked with a white stone. Upon a trial brought at the Chelmsford Assizes, by a disconsolate widow against a faithless suitor, for breach of promise, a letter of the defendant was produced, containing this passage: 'Mrs. Martha Harris, -You say I have used you ill; but I do not think I have at all; for I told you not to count too much, lest something should happen to disappoint. You say the day was mine; but respecting that, I said, "If before harvest, it must be very soon, or it would be in harvest," and you said, “Fix any time soon." But you said you should like to marry on a Friday, for you thought that a good day; for on a Friday your husband died, and on a Friday I first came to see you, and Friday was market-day.' "Old opinions, however groundless, are not often so easily overcome. The farmer has let precious days pass by without profiting by favourable weather because he was warned against them by the almanack, or by tradition; and for the same reason, measures which might have relieved and saved a patient, have been totally procrastinated. There were about thirty days in the Christian year to which such malignant influences were respected, that the recovery of every person who fell ill upon them was thought to be almost impɔssible : in any serious disease how greatly must this persuasion have increased the danger! "More than half the days in the year were unlucky in Malagascar; and the Ombiasses, as the sort of bastard Mahomedan jugglers in that great island are called, have made the deluded people believe that any child born on one of these days will, if it be allowed to grow up, prove a parricide, be addicted to every kind of wickedness, and, moreover, be miserable throughout the whole course of its life. The infant is always exposed in consequence; and unless some humaner parent employ a slave or relative to preserve it, and remove it for ever from their knowledge, it is left for beasts, birds, and reptiles to devour. "The unfortunate days in Christendom, according to the received superstition in different countries, were either a little more or less that thirty-about a twelfth part of the year; the fortunate were not quite so many; and the rest are left, if the astrologers had so pleased, in their natural uncertainity. "The fixed days for good and evil were said to have been disclosed by an angel to Job. I know not whether it comes from the Rabbinical mint of fables that Moses determined upon Saturday for the Israelites' Sabbath, because that day is governed by Saturn; and Saturn being a malignant planet, all manner of work that might be undertaken on the Saturday might not be expected to prosper. The Sabbatarians might have found here an astrological argument for keeping their Sabbath on the same day as the Jews. The Jews say |