KEY TO THE CALENDAR. 



evening, under the name of the Candlemas Blaze, 

 the resemblance of the name Blaise to blaze 

 having apparently suggested the practice. 



Shrove Tuesday. According to the plan already 

 laid down, we place Shrove Tuesday upon this day 

 of the month of February. As the day before the 

 commencement of Lent, it has been from an early 

 age celebrated throughout Christian Europe by 

 feasting and merry-making of the most extravagant 

 nature. The name is derived from the ancient 

 custom of being shrived or shrove, i.e., obtaining 

 absolution, on this day. It is the concluding 

 day of the time of Carnival, which in various 

 Catholic countries is of greater or less extent, 

 but celebrated with most distinction at Venice 

 and Rome. Carnival is obviously a term from caro 

 and v ale, as meaning a farewell to flesh, this article 

 of food being unused during the whole of Lent 

 In these two Italian cities, and partially in many 

 others, the Carnival is distinguished by shows, 

 masquerades, races, and a variety of other exhibi- 

 tions and amusements. The people may be said 

 to live for several days in public. The wealthier 

 classes parade about in their carriages, from 

 which they pelt each other with sweetmeats. 

 Whim and folly are tolerated in their utmost 

 extent, so that only there be nothing said or done 

 to burlesque ecclesiastical dignitaries. 



The main distinction of Shrove Tuesday, in the 

 early times of our own history, was the eating of 

 pancakes made with eggs and spice. The people 

 indulged in games at football, at which there was 

 generally much license ; also in the barbarous sport 

 of throwing at cocks. In the latter case, the animal 

 being tied by a short string to a peg, men threw 

 sticks at it in succession, till an end was put to 

 its miseries and its life at once. Cock-fights were 

 also common on this day, not only amongst the 

 rustics, but at the public schools, the masters con- 

 descending to receive the defeated and slain cocks 

 as a perquisite. 



4. Ash Wednesday, the first day in Lent, a 

 holiday of the Church of England, observed by 

 the closing of all the public offices, excepting the 

 Stamps, Excise, and Customs. The palms or 

 substitute branches, consecrated and used on 

 Palm Sunday of one year, were kept till the 

 present season of another, when they were burnt, 

 and their ashes blessed by the priest and sprinkled 

 on the heads of the people : hence the name 

 given to the day. This sprinkling of ashes was 

 performed with many ceremonies and great devo- 

 tion. On this day also persons convicted of 

 notorious sin were put to open penance. In 

 England it is still a season for the saying of the 

 ' commination ' in the Prayer-book, by which the 

 doers of certain kinds of wickedness are cursed. 



8. First Sunday in Lent. The Wednesday, 

 Friday, and Saturday after this Sunday are called 

 Ember Days, and the week in which they occur 

 Ember Week. On Ember Days our forefathers 

 ate no bread but what was baked in a simple 

 and primitive fashion under hot ashes : hence the 

 name. The other Ember Days of the year are 

 the Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays after 

 the Feast of Pentecost, Holy-rood Day (Sept. 14), 

 and St Lucia's Day (Dec. 15). 



14. St Valentine's Day. St Valentine was a 

 priest of Rome, martyred in the third century, but 

 he seems to have had no connection with the 

 notions and practices to which his day has since 



been given up. This, it is scarcely necessary to 

 say, is a day thought to be especially devoted to 

 the business of Cupid and Hymen. Possibly its 

 being about the season when the birds choose 

 their mates may be the origin of this belief. 

 Antiquaries have also pointed out that the Luper- 

 calia feasts of ancient Rome in honour of Pan 

 and Juno were held at this time, and that 

 amongst the ceremonies was a game in which 

 young persons of the opposite sexes chose each 

 other jocularly by lot. 



St Valentine's Day is now almost everywhere 

 a degenerated festival, the only observance of any 

 note consisting in the sending of anonymous 

 letters containing pictorial squibs, or billets-doux, 

 accompanied by tags of wretched verse, expressive 

 of the sentiment of the sender. These are paltry 

 frivolities compared with the observances of St 

 Valentine's Day at no remote period. The true 

 and proper ceremony, then, was the drawing of 

 a kind of lottery, followed by ceremonies not 

 much unlike what is generally called the game of 

 forfeits. Misson, a learned traveller of the early 

 part of the last century, gives apparently a correct 

 account of the principal ceremonial of the day. 

 ' On the eve of St Valentine's Day,' he says, ' the 

 young folks in England and Scotland, by a very 

 ancient custom, celebrate a little festival. An 

 equal number of maids and bachelors get to- 

 gether ; each writes his or her true or some 

 feigned name upon separate billets, which they 

 roll up, and draw by way of lots, the maids taking 

 the men's billets, and the men the maids' ; so that 

 each of the young men lights upon a girl that he 

 calls his valentine, and each of the girls upon a 

 young man whom she calls hers. By this means 

 each has two valentines ; but the man sticks 

 faster to the valentine that is fallen to him than 

 to the valentine to whom he is fallen. Fortune 

 having thus divided the company into so many 

 couples, the valentines give balls and treats to 

 their mistresses, wear their billets several days 

 upon their bosoms or sleeves, and this little sport 

 often ends in love.' 



The common people seem to have imagined 

 that an influence was inherent in the day, which 

 rendered in some degree binding the lot or chance 

 by which any youth or maid was now led to fix 

 attention on a person of the opposite sex. It was 

 supposed, for instance, that the first unmarried 

 person of the other sex whom one met on St 

 Valentine's morning in walking abroad, was a 

 destined wife or husband. 



1 5. Second Sunday in Lent. 



22. Third Sunday in Lent. 



24. St Matthias the Apostle. A festival of the 

 Church of England. St Matthias was chosen by 

 lot after the Crucifixion, in place of the tra'itor 

 Judas (Acts i. 23). 



Natural History. The popular voice allots a 

 course of snow, rain, and their hybrid sleet, to 

 this month, and considers it necessary that such 

 should be its features, in order that all the powers 

 of humidity may be exhausted before the com- 

 mencement of March, when an opposite kind of 

 weather is looked for. It is indeed true that frost, 

 followed by regular thaw, and that succeeded by 

 the sharp drying winds of March, bring the ground 

 into the most favourable state for ploughing and 

 seed-sowing. The general average of the ther- 

 mometer is 39 degrees ; that of different years 



