stance of the same kind. There was a lake near the Temple of Venus, at Aphara, where rejected offerings floated even though they were made of the heaviest metals, such as gold or silver. The year before the fall of their city, all the offerings of the Palmyreans sank as usual, but strange to tell, the following festival, they all rose to the surface again, which prodigy was considered an indubitable warning of its downfall.*

Primualdus, in his "consilia in causis gravissimis," gives a recipe for discovering a thief, in use in Italy. A maid is to come to a phial of holy water, with a sanctified taper in her hand, saying Angelo bianco, Angelo sancto, per la tua sanctita, et per la mia virginita, mostra mi che ha tolto tal cosa;' a diminutive image of the thief then appears in the phial. I have known holy water seriously employed in Ireland to detect theft, but in a different manner, the names of suspected persons being written on slips of paper and thrown into it. The Italian method of thief-taking is more like our Irish method of discovering a lover, in use on Holy-eve; an ordinary mirror being employed instead of the phial of holy water; a girl goes to the mirror with the end of a lighted taper in her hand, and repeats a pater noster, when her future husband is to appear faintly reflected in the mirror. This experiment ought to be tried, however, at midnight, and, of course, never succeeds unless the imagination of the person trying it is wrought to the highest degree of nervous excitement. It would not be very difficult to trace almost every trick practised on Holyeve to some heathen custom, which was once regarded with all the solemn veneration of a religious ceremony. Indeed the passion for diving into futurity must have been very strong, to induce the querists to undergo the disagreeable operations by which their responses were generally obtained, such as lying for a day under the spray of a waterfall, sleeping amid the suffocating stench of a swamp, dressing the prophet in the reeking skins of the victims sacrificed, &c. Bewfordt tells us of one such ceremony in use formerly in Ireland, called the "ob," which is curious, because it corresponds so precisely

Dryden's Trans. In this "takes his ease" is an unfortunate expression for the translator to have selected; having his "ears deafed" beside a pestiferous pool, "quæ sævam exhalat mephitim," does not well accord with the idea of the querist's "taking his ease."

Most of the Scotch superstitions resemble the Irish. The Tagharim, described by Scott, is of the same nature as the "ob," except that a water-fall is cairn, where, after sacrificing a bull— the bed of the prophet instead of a

+ Cons. 414, t. iv. p. 254. Coll. de reb. Hib. t. iii.

De Myster. iii. c. 3.
Joa. op, t. iii.

it was usual for invalids to seek divine dreams in the temple of Esculapius. Apropos of prophecies, it is worth remarking that the Irish seem to have been in high repute in ancient times for their powers in this way. Before the murder of James First of Scotland, A.D. 1436, a woman of Yreland" foretold his death. The circumstances are described in an old chronicle, quoted by Pinkerton,* " Jn the middys of the way there arose a woman of Yrelande that clepid herself as a suthsayer, the which anone, as she saw the kyng, cried with a loud voice, saying thus, My Lord Kyng and ye passe this water ye shall never turne agane or lyve the Kyng herying this was astonyed of her wordis, and therewithal the King, as he rode clepid to him oone of his kynghtis and gave him in commandment to turne agane to speke with that woman and ask of here what she'd wold, and what thyng she'd ment with her lowde crying, and she began and told him as ye hafe heard of the Kyng of Scottes iff he passed that water."

RINGS.

There is no subject on which the ingenuity of the fanciful has been more exercised than in endeavouring to discover the origin and emblematic meanings of the wedding ring. Such pretty little theories are generally regarded as ebullitions of gallantry, and are intended as compliments to the fair sex; but, in fact, the gay authors of these polite sentimentalities have unwittingly repeated the grave hypotheses of learned philosophers.

The reasons most commonly assigned for using a gold ring is, that its circularity is significant of the perpetuity, as the metal of which it is made, is of the purity of the marriage contract; and that it is worn on the left hand, the hand nearest the heart, as emblematic of affection. This fanciful explanation of the matter may be found in a very grave writer of the last century. According to Swinburne, marriage rings were anciently made of iron, to " 'signify the perpetuity and endurance of the contract," and the usual ornament of them was an adamant. "Howbeit," he adds, "it skilleth not at this day what metal the ring be of, the form being round and

Hist. of Scot. v.. i. p. 462. app. 13. Lib. x. c. 10. S Lib. vii. c. 13. 1 Decret. pars. 2, c. xxx.

without end, doth import that their love should circulate and flow continually. The finger on which the ring is worn, is the finger of the left hand, next unto the little finger, because there was supposed a vein of blood to pass from thence into the heart."+

The circumstance of the vein is mentioned by two classical authors, Aulus Gellius, and his copyist, Macrobius; and, notwithstanding its anatomical absurdity, is recognised in the canon law as the reason for selecting the fourth finger for the wedding ring. In Gratian's Decretals we find, "quarto annulus digito inseritur quia in eo vena quædam ut fertur sanguinis ad cor usque per veniat."¶

Another fanciful conjecture of the meaning of the wedding ring is, that it is significant of the submission which a wife owes her husband, and that when she vows to love, honor, and obey, he confines her finger in a ring as the emblem of connubial restraint. If the canon law has adopted the gallant notions of Aulus Gellius, its sister, the civil law, seems rather to countenance this coercive theory, for by it it appears a man was allowed, in case of disobedience, "to beat his wife severely with sticks or staves."-Flagellis et fustibus acriter verberare uxorem. By the old English law,** a man might give his wife "moderate correction," the vulgar acceptation of which "moderate correction" was, that the stick employed in the operation should be no thicker than the fourth finger, the one on which the ring is placed.

Others say, that the signification of the ring is, that the wife ought, benceforth, to confine herself to her domestic concerns, and attend only to the duties to which her new state of life introduces her. This little allegory of the wedding ring is as old as Pliny. He tells us that even those who used gold rings as a mark of distinction, when appointed to public offices, wore them only in public, and when at home used only iron rings; "for which reason," he adds, even now an iron ring is sent as a present to a bride." Hi quoque qui ob legationem acceperunt annulos, in publico tantum utebantur his, intra domos vero ferreis: quo argumento etiam nunc sponsæ muneri, ferreus annulus mittitur.++

+ Swinburne's Matr. Cons. s. 15. Blackstone's Comment. v. 1. c. 15. tt Pliny, lib. xxxiii. c. 3.

As rings, however, are directed in our liturgy, to be used in the marriage ceremony, it is natural to expect some more sensible reasons than any of these, albeit they are venerable for their antiquity. The practice has been handed down to us from the earliest ages of the Christian church, and is said to have been originally borrowed from the Hebrews, and the scriptural authority quoted for it is the 28th chapter of Genesis, in which it is related that Judah gave to Tamar "his signet and his bracelets," &c. The signet was a ring, as appears from many passages in scripture, particularly the expression of Jeremiah,* though Coniah, the son of Jehoiakim, were the signet on my right hand." Rings are also mentioned as a female ornament, by Isaiah. But it is probable that their use, as a marriage token, was of far more modern date. Selden, in his Uxor Hebraica, expressly asserts, that though they are now universally employed in the marriage rite, it was not so formerly among the Hebrews. He does not think the 28th of Genesis proves the point at all. It agrees, indeed, much better with his own theory, viz. that the ancient custom was to give money and ornaments to the bride; and in process of time the ring came to be used as a pledge for all the rest. He admits the custom to have been borrowed by the Hebrews from their heathen neighbours. His authority for this is Leo Mutinensi's 66 Archisynagogus Venetus," who wrote a book on the subject. This more rational account of the matter, seems to be the view taken by the composers of our liturgy. The rubric of Edward VI. is something fuller in its directions than that in our present prayer book. "The man shall give unto the woman a ring and other tokens of spousage, as gold and silver, laying the same on the book, and the man, taught by the priest, shall say, with this ring I thee wed, this gold and silver I thee give, with all my worldly goods I, &c.'" In the same way a ring and staff, annulus et baculum, were used at the ordination of bishops as tokens of the temporalities of his see; though, perhaps, some allusion might be here intended to the scripture metaphor of being wedded to the church.

In former times it was absolutely necessary to the validity of the mar

riage contract, that a proper ring should be employed. In the constitutions of Richard Bishop of Salisbury, A. D. 1217, the use of rings made of rushes is forbidden, and the reason assigned is, that they had been employed to deceive innocent girls, who were weak enough to believe the marriage to be really valid. But, however precise our ancestors may have been, we may say, with Swinburne, it "skilleth not of what the ring is made." The handle of the church-key is a common substitute. I have known of such an eccentric marriage, celebrated in the ruins of St. Michael's church, in Waterford, when the key of the church-yard gate served for a ring, and the ruins of the church for the canonical place. If Horace Walpole is to be credited, the Duchess of Hamilton was married with the ring of a curtain. She was one of the celebrated Misses Gunning, and the Duke availing himself of the absence of her mother and sister, sent for a clergyman to marry them in a moment. There was no ring, so one was torn from the curtain of the bed, with which the ceremony was actually performed.

It appears that some of the ultra puritans in Scotland thought the use of a wedding ring a heathenish and superstitious custom. In the "perfect description of the people and country of Scotland." This is mentioned among their other departures from ecclesiastical propriety, "they christen," says the author, "without a cross, marry without a ring, receive the sacrament without reverence, and bury without divine service." This prejudice against wedding rings reminds one strongly of the commencement of Pliny's History of Rings, where he gravely declares his opinion that the man who first employed gold to make a ring, committed the

most infamous act that could disgrace a human life!" "pessimum vitæ scelus fecit qui aurum primum digitis induit:"|| and he further argues that the wicked inventor must have been conscience-stricken for what he had done, because rings were worn, not on the right hand where they would be seen, but on the left, where they would be concealed, from the less frequent use of that hand!

With us wedding rings have numerous virtues; among others, the application of one to a sty on the eye is an

+ Lib. ii. c. 14. Lib. xxxiii. c. 3.

infallible cure. Rings and triangles are universally found among magical paraphernalia, and it is strange that almost every nation has some tale of a wonderful ring peculiar to itself. Plato gives an account of Gyges, the Lydian, who had a ring that made him invisible when the gem was turned to the palm of his hand. Herodotust and Valerius Maximus‡ tell the tale of the ring of Polycrates, of Samos, that was so miraculously found by his cook after being swallowed by a fish. The Persians have the ring of Giamschid, the gem of which was so bright that it was called "schebgeray," or the torch of night, and gave rise to the proverb quoted by Lord Byron : in every glance

That darted from beneath that lid, Bright as the jewel of Giamschid."

Giaour.

The ring of Hannibal is famous for the strange use he made of it, to carry poison. Plutarch tells the same story of Demosthenes. Among the wonderful accounts of rings, we might class Livy's story of the three bushels of rings which Hannibal sent to Carthage after the victory of Canna; but the filling of the three bushels is not so extraordinary, if we believe Juvenal, that the Roman dandies could not use in summer the same rings they wore in winter, because they were so heavy, and even the light summer fashion was Ap. Cic. de Off. iii. c. 38.

so clumsy that the weight made the wearer perspire.

Ventilet aestivum digitis sudantibus aurum.
S. 1, 28.

The puppyism of the Romans in their use of rings, has been, indeed, a fertile subject for their satyrists. Martial ridicules a dandy who wore six rings on each of his fingers, and did not put them off even when going to bed, or to the bath, because he could not afford to buy a casket to keep them. "Senos Charinus omnibus digitis gerit

Nec nocte ponit annulos

Nec cum lavatur; causa quæ sit, quæritis?
Dactylothecam non habet.

Lib. xi. Ep. 60.

Six rings on every finger placed!
Charinus day and night will shew them,
You ask why thus he's always graced?

He has no box in which to stow them.

The extravagancies of fashion are always amusing, and materials for a little history might be found in the changes which rings, and the manner of wearing them, underwent at Rome. After all the variety of fashions it appears we have come back to the ancient method, for if we believe Pliny, the fourth finger was the one on which rings were first worn. Singulis primo digitis geri mos fuit quæ sunt minimis proximi."§

vi. c. 9.

CONTRARY to the reports in hourly circulation, of Mrs. Sinith's hopeless state, she was, in a few days, so far recovered, as to be able to sit up, and, also, to transact business with Mr. Browne, immediately on his arrival. Their first interview, which took place in the presence of Mr. Ravenscroft, was, of itself, quite sufficient to prove the fallacy of Mrs. Kilrummery's guest. His manner towards her was respectful to the most unhusband-like degree; while hers was merely that of a person glad to see an old acquaintance, after a long absence. Indeed, the nature of their connection was most unromantically explained very soon.

She men

tioned him as the friend-the very kind friend-who received her income, and managed her money concerns; and whose presence was necessary before she finally arranged her affairs—giving him, at the same time, a paper containing, as she said, the heads of her will, which she wished, if possible, to be ready for signatures on the following morning.

In accordance with her wishes, Mr. Browne sat up the greater part of the night, as Mr. Bright was rightly informed; and, long before the party had left Plantville, her will was properly signed, sealed and delivered, in the presence of Mr. Ravenscroft, Dr.

Weldon, and Robert Kinkaid, brought in, on Ansty's special recommendation, as the best writer in all Dunasker. When the two last gentlemen had taken leave, she handed the will to Mr. Ravenscroft, with a request that it might remain in his possession.

I shall also beg of you to read it, at your leisure," she added, "and give me your opinion as to the way in which I have disposed of my property."

"I can only recommend a strict regard to justice," he answered. "Your own conscience must be your guide in such a case."

"You will, however, be more competent to give your advice, when you hear my story. It is a trial of your patience, which, for the last few months, I have meditated; and which some circumstances of late occurrence make me most anxious to delay no longer."

My patience," he answered, "may be taxed to the uttermost. But, can you promise so much for your strength? Perhaps it would be advisable to wait a day or two, till your health is more established ?"

"It will not suffer," she replied. "The mere repetition of that which has occupied my thoughts for upwards of thirty years cannot materially affect me. My feelings may, for a moment, overpower me, but the effect will soon be over."

She leaned her forehead in her hand for a short time, and then commenced her relation :

"I was an only child-the idol of my father, a merchant in the North of Ireland, who had realized a considerable property in trade. My mother died soon after my birth; and for the next eight years I was left very much to the care of my nurse, who, I believe, I loved better even that my father, although she was the only person who ever controlled me, or seemed to remember that any restraint was necessary for a naturally self-willed child. She was a Methodist. From her I received my first religious impressions. She taught me, almost from the time I could articulate, to pray to God through his blessed Son. She impressed me with a reverence for the Bible, as his word; and stored my memory with a number of hymns, which then appeared to me beautiful, and which, some of them at least, have lost none of their interest with me to this day. My father, professedly, belonged to the Church of Scotland:

but the congregation to which he was united had long departed from the primitive faith of their pious ancestors, and were become Unitarian in doctrine. Whether their opinions tended to Arianism or Socinianism, I do not now remember-perhaps I never knew

but the prominent feature of their religion was the denial of the divinity of our Lord and Saviour.

"I had entered my ninth year before I knew that my father's belief was different from that of my nurse; for he often spoke to me of God, and of heaven as a happy place, to which all who lived a good life would go after death. I repeated for him a hymn, which I had just learned. It was addressed to Christ, as God; and, for the first time in my life, I was conscious of having incurred his displeasure, though ignorant of the cause. But his anger was chiefly directed against my nurse, who was threatened with instant dismissal unless she promised to avoid, in future, all allusion to the subject of religion. I remember that she would not promise, and yet was permitted to remain-I believe through apprehension, on my father's part, that the sudden separation from her might prey upon my health and spirits. That separation was, however, made in a few months, by no human intervention. She died recommending me, with her latest breath, to the good keeping of God, in the name and for the sake of Him who was lightly esteemed in my father's house. I was then first made acquainted with sorrow afterwards my constant, my only companion.

"I mention these particulars," she added, after a short pause, " as, though apparently trivial in themselves, they had an influence on my after life, and will, in some degree, account to you for the unusual, and, I now see, useless line of conduct which, many years afterwards, I marked out for myself.

"After my nurse's death, a governess was provided for me-an accomplished, agreeable woman, no longer young, latitudinarian in religion, and republican in politics. She had just escaped from France, then suffering under all the horrors of the revolution; and though objecting to some of its atrocities, acquiesced philosophically in the necessity of such a sacrifice of human life, and rejoiced in the prospect of the same scenes being acted over again in her native country. Her political principles were a strong recommenda