ance of old legends,-the last relic of the ancient miracle-plays, which were generally suppressed in the reign of James I. After this, both lads and maids amused themselves with old Christmas games, such as hunting the slipper, and marriage lottery; the cushion-dance always ending the entertain

ment.

It would be well if merchants and factors in this our day would take example from these unsophisticated Westmoreland yeomen as regards the putting away of task-work on pious anniversaries. Mechanics and artisans are members of the Church equally with their masters and employers; and as such are entitled to enjoy the loosing of the bands of labour on every one of GOD's appointed feasts. It is to be feared that in too many instances, even on Christmas-day, cessation from toil is accorded to the working community rather because the world keeps carnival at Christmas, than because Christmas is the season wherein the Church solemnizes the Nativity of her dear LORD. Else, wherefore do we behold the crying evil of many a poor man being bowed beneath the ban of bondage even during

That ever dawn'd on sinful earth ?"1

Why is the presence of Ascension-day unnoted in crowded thoroughfare and busy mart? Is it meet that serving men and women should be continually debarred from observing the festivals of their Redeemer and the holy days of honoured Saints? Children are trained within the village school to attend daily services within the village church. Shall these baptized ones, when, in after years, they "earn their bread by the sweat of their brow,"

1 Rev. J. Keble.

'going forth to their work and to their labour until the evening"-when they are launched into the vortex of temptation-when most they need the every aid their Mother Church can give-be forced to turn a deaf ear to the bells of the Sanctuary, till the holy truth, imaged in each festal day, become shrouded in oblivion, and the voice of the inner life be stifled amid the tumultuous swellings of transgression ? Forbid it, Christians of the English Church!

101

CHAPTER VII.

WESTMORELAND was also noted for its schools. Edward VI. patronised the school at Kendal; and Queen Elizabeth founded schools at Appleby, Kirkby Stephen, and Kirkby Lonsdale. From these institutions many learned and valuable men were distributed over England, some of whom, having risen to high eminence in the literary world, established schools in their native villages, in order to confer on others those advantages whence their own prosperity had been derived; so that, before the conclusion of the seventeenth century, almost every parish possessed its seminary; and education for Holy Orders and for the learned professions became, among the Westmoreland yeomanry, a favourite method of bringing up younger sons. The discipline of these grammar schools must have been severe; the hours of attendance lasted from six in the morning till six in the evening, with the exception of an hour for breakfast between eight and nine, and two hours for dinner between twelve and two. Prayers were said every morning by the master, and all red-letter days were half-holidays. The roll was regularly called over, and the truant and the idler seldom escaped punishment. The vacations, which occurred at Christmas and at Pentecost, rarely lasted longer than a fortnight.

Perhaps some "brave, free-hearted, careless boy," tossing his noble head in all his "dread of books and love of fun," will protest against such lack of

holidays! His teeming fancy would prefer visions of long, sunny, afternoon rambles, of beech-wood trees to be climbed, of tufted hill-tops to be mounted, of breezy commons to be made the scene of many an adventurous feat. And truly it is an invigorating sight to see a troop of right merry boys, in all the wild exuberance of recent emancipation from the thraldom of Latin primers and intricate problems. Who shall say that then, even then, amid the riot of that shouted play, the spirit of poesy may not waft upon the sighing wind some breath of intellectual inspiration, so oft invoked in vain amid the formularies of classic hours?

""Tis strange how thoughts upon a child

Will, like a presence, sometimes press
And when his pulse is beating wild,
And life itself is in excess;

When foot and hand, and ear and eye,
Are all with ardour straining high,
How in his heart will spring
A feeling whose mysterious thrall
Is stronger, sweeter far than all,
And on its silent wing,

How with the clouds he'll float away,
As wandering and as lost as they."I

What is this mysterious presence? Is it the aspiration of genius, the thirst after excellence, the yearning for honourable fame? Must not such longings have haunted the raftered schoolroom, where studious lads were assisted in the ascent up the ladder of renown by the discipline which admitted so little relaxation, and where all the youths of a neighbourhood, rich and poor, were instructed together?-a system which kept alive a plain familiarity of intercourse between different classes, exalting the intellectual, and inspiring the lowly with independence of sentiment, whilst it repressed

1 N. P. Willis.

any display of undue consequence among those who could boast no higher distinction than wealth, and nurtured in the minds of the scholars feelings of humility and brotherly kindness befitting students, many of whom were destined to enter the Priesthood in that Church of GOD, which is "the home and sanctuary of His poor, where rich and poor meet together, not as rich and poor, but as one in the blessed equality of brotherhood in CHRIST."1 Were it not that the education of daughters seems to have been systematically neglected, one would almost wish to call back again those days of Westmoreland simplicity, when yeomen and shepherds used to "enliven their festivities with recitations from the bucolics of Virgil, the idyls of Theocritus, or the wars of Troy," ere the utilitarian stroke of commerce had warned the genii of the classics to flee the mountain moorlands. For, about the year 1760, a change came over the spirit of the period: merchandise was spoken of as the highway to wealth, gold seemed suddenly transfused into a magnet, and Greek and Latin reluctantly gave way to an education of mere reading, writing, and arithmetic. Hence began a silent revolution in the character of the schools, and in the manners of the county; a different standard of excellence gave rise to different training; intercourse with the world produced (as, alas! it still produces in many an unsophisticated heart) a desire after conformity with its fashions; roads were planned across the hitherto almost trackless moors; in 1774 a stage coach, called the Fly, commenced running from London, over Stainmoor, and by the then newlyformed road between Bowes and Brough, to Glasgow; and in 1786 the mail began to travel along the Kendal and Shap Road, over Eamont Bridge,

1 Bishop of Oxford.