CHAP. 10. 1. ANTIQUITIES, &c. 277 



St. Urban in effigy through the streets down 

 to the rivers, if their respective feasts happened 

 to occur in foul weather. 



Bourne observes that this Saint did certainly 

 labour hard to instruct "mankind, and he allows 

 him many virtues, but questions whether he 

 can claim the prerogative of being a standing 

 Almanack to indicate the coming weather.* 



The extent and antiquity of the notion re- 

 specting the prognosticks deducible from the 

 weather of this Feast of St. Paul, would induce 

 us to allow that, for some physical reasons as 

 yet unknown, this particular time of year was 

 found to be critical. We know at present 

 almost nothing of the particular laws of that 

 apparent remote relation subsisting between 

 many natural phaenomena, which we com- 

 monly ascribe to coincidence, and the mass of 

 fables and absurd stories, connected with many 

 physical truths, certainly tend to render the 

 subject still more obscure. In modern times, 



* Bourne's Antiquities, c. 18. 



writer of odes to Walkingsticks and satyres on Umbrellas, 

 who condemns ancient tales as vulgar, merely because they 

 were the legends of Monks, is styled by Brand in his Anti- 

 quities, an elegant modernizer of ancient verses. 



