common people only, but it is the custom of the generality of other nations; particularly of the Italians, where Polydore Virgil tells us the youth of both sexes were accustomed to go into the fields on the calends of May, and bring thence the branches of trees, singing all the way as they came, and so place them on the doors of their houses.This is the relic of an ancient custom among the heathen, who observed the four last days of April, and the first of May, in honour of the goddess Flora, who was imagined the deity presiding over the fruit and flowers."

The solemnities of the May-pole are thus described by Browne in his Britannia's Pastorals:

"As I have seen the Lady of the May

Set in an arbour

Built by the May-pole, where the jocund swains
Dance with the maidens to the bagpipe's strains-
When envious Night commands them to be gone,
Call for the merry youngsters one by one,
And for their well performance soon disposes,
To this, a garland interwove with roses;
To that, a carved hook, or well-wrought scrip;
Gracing another with a cherry lip:

To one her garter; to another then

A handkerchief cast o'er and o'er agen;
Add none returneth empty that hath spent
His pains to fill their rural merriment."

The Puritans waged war with the May-poles, and indeed with all those indications of a full-hearted simplicity which were the echo of the universal harmony of Nature. The May-poles never held up their heads after the civil wars. The "strait-laced"

exulted in their fall, but we believe the people were neither wiser nor happier for their removal :

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Happy the age, and harmless were the days,
For then true love and amity were found,
When every village did a May-pole raise,
And Whitsun ales and May-games did abound;
And all the lusty younkers in a rout,
With merry lasses danced the rod about;
Then Friendship to the banquet bid the guests,
And poor men fared the better for their feasts.
Alas, poor May-poles! what should be the cause
That you were almost banish'd from the earth,
Who never were rebellious to the laws?

Your greatest crime was honest, harmless mirth."

But the sports of May were not confined to the villages. Even the gorgeous pomp of the old Courts did not disdain to borrow a fragrance and freshness from the joys of the people. Hall, the historian, gives us an account of "Henry the Eighth's riding a Maying from Greenwich to the high ground of Shooter's-hill, with Queen Katharine his wife, accompanied with many lords and ladies.” The good people of London in those days were not ashamed to let in a little of the light of creation upon their mercantile pursuits. Stow tells us, "In the month of May, the citizens of London (of all estates), lightly in every parish, or sometimes two or three parishes joining together, had their several Mayings, and did fetch in May-poles with divers warlike shows, with good archers, morrice-dancers, and other devices for pastime all the day long; and towards the evening they had stage-plaies, and

bone-fires in the streets."-"The gratulation of the spring-season" has no more a place amongst us; the leaves and the flowers come without "C Hail!" from the court, the city, or the village.

There came another season-a cold wet timeand I was out of humour with May. I wrote disparagingly of the often echoed tones of that innocent flock who frisk about in the sunshine of our northeast blights, and resolve to be Arcadian with a temperature of 60°. I will do penance for my heresies by showing how inconsistent one may be under "skyey influences :"

In despite of our friends Shakspere and Fletcher, and of him who did more than all of them to make May poetical, Herrick, I am constrained to assert, that never yet was May-day celebrated in such a pure spirit of pastoral innocence as might be advantageously revived in these degenerate times. I fear that during the last three hundred years it was never the good fortune of any gallant to go a Maying before daybreak with any young ladies of very scrupulous virtue ;—and I am not quite sure that Jack in the Green was ever enacted by any higher description of persons than the ragged boys of the village, whose enthusiasm for an eleemosynary penny was somewhat greater than their love of "green fields" and "blue skies." I am afraid there has never been any great deal of practical poetry in England;-and I grieve to think that May-day was

not often distinguished by a more refined spirit than the promiscuous gaiety of Greenwich fair; and that the homage to nature which the lads and lasses of ancient times got up for the occasion was not quite so amusing to the world at large, and certainly not more edifying, than that of the chimney

sweepers.

To carry my prosaic belief no farther back than the romantic days of the Sydneys and Raleighs, let me picture a dance round the May-pole, at which Elizabeth was present. The scene Windsor. Her most gracious Majesty is busily employed in brushing up her Latin and her Castle at the same time-doing Horace's Art of Poetry' into execrable rhymes, and building private staircases for the Earl of Leicester. Her employment and the season make her aspire to be poetical. She resolves to see the May-day sports; and, sallying forth from the Castle, takes a short cut, with few attendants, through the lawn which lay before the South Gate, to the fields near the entrance of Windsor town. The May-pole stands close by the spot where now commences the Long Walk. The crowd make obsequious way for their glorious Queen, and the sports, at her command, go uninterruptedly forward. The group is indeed a most motley one. The luxuries of a white cotton gown were then unknown, and even her Majesty's experience of knitted hose was very limited. The girls frisk away, therefore, in their grey kirtles of linseywoolsey, and their yellow stockings of coarse broad

cloth; the lads are somewhat fuddled and rather greasy, and a whole garment is a considerable distinction. The Queen of the May is commanded to approach. She has a tolerable garland of violets and primroses, but a most unprepossessing visage, pimpled with exercise or ale. "And so, my dainty maiden," says her Majesty, "you are in love with Zephyr, and hawthorn bushes, and morning dew, and wendest to the fields ere Phoebus gilds the drifted clouds." "Please your Majesty," says the innocent, "I'm in love with Tom Larkin, the handsome fleshmonger, and a pretty dressing my mother will give me for ganging a Maying in the gray of the morning. There's queer work for lasses amongst these rakehellies, please your Majesty." Elizabeth suddenly turns with a frown to her lord in waiting, and hurries back as if she had pricked her finger with a May-bush.