the Roman calendar and memorializes the Annunciation of the Virgin. It is the high festival of Catholicism, which, in consequence of the extreme honors it pays to the Virgin Mary, has been sometimes termed the Marian Church.

Ascension Day, called also Holy Thursday, is celebrated by the Church as the day on which our Saviour ascended into heaven, which happened the fortieth day after the resurrection.

APRIL, is derived from aperio, to open. The first of April was by the Romans consecrated to Venus, the goddess of beauty, as the earth begins at this time to be covered with beautiful flowers.

The Saxons called it oster, or easter month, it being the time when the feast of the Saxon goddess, Eastre, Easter or Eòstèr, was celebrated.

The month of April is one of alternating smiles and tears. By some writers it has been designated the sweetest of the series, because it ushers in the "delicate-footed May."

Sighing, storming, singing, smiling,
With her many moods beguiling,

April walks the wakening earth.
Wheresoe'er she looks and lingers,
Wheresoe'er she lays her fingers,

Some new charm starts into birth.
Fitful clouds about her sweeping,
Coming, going, frowning, weeping,
Melt in fertile blessings round.
Frequent rainbows that embrace her,
And with gorgeous girdles grace her,
Dropping flowers upon the ground.*

This month, it will be recollected, is introduced by the equivocal practice of imposing upon our credulity, under the style and title of April-fooling. Antiquarians have puzzled them

*J. C. Prince.

selves and their readers by their vain attempts to account for a custom, which still obtains even among some of the more sapient and refined. Without, therefore, following in their wake, and thus incur the risk of suspicion with the reader, that we mean to illustrate the practice at his expense-we shall content ourselves by simply citing the emphatic words of an old and respectable authority-Mr. Douce. "After all the conjectures," he says, "which have been formed touching its origin, it is certainly borrowed from the French, and may, I think, be deduced from this simple analogy. The French call their April fish (Poissons d'Avril,)-silly mackerel, or simpletons, which suffer themselves to be caught in this month. But, as with us,” he continues, "April is not the season of that fish, we have very properly substituted the word-fools.”

Be very circumspect on this day of attending to gratuitous advice, given in the street, respecting your costume or appear

ance. Do not heed any officious person who may insist upon

your picking up anything he may imagine you have dropped.

"Few persons are aware of the real derivation of many of the old customs which have been handed down almost from time immemorial. Thus, decking the house with evergreens at Christmas is the remains of a pagan superstition. In Great Britain the holly is used for this purpose, and the holly in the days of paganism was dedicated to Saturn, as the mistletoe was to Friga, the Scandinavian Venus. The yule log bears reference to the constant fire kept up by the priests of Baal, and the Maypole, with all its adjuncts, offers an imitation of the games formerly held in honor of the goddess Flora."

About the nineteenth day the sun enters Taurus—a constellation which includes one hundred and forty-one stars, the principal of which is Aldebaran, of the first magnitude: it also comprises two remarkable representations, viz.: the Pleiades, and the Hyades. Alcyone, the principal star in the Pleiades, is supposed by Prof. Madler to be the grand central sun in the universe.

Good Friday is designed to commemorate the crucifixion. It is religiously regarded by the Episcopacy as a solemn festival of the church and at St. Peter's at Rome, it is kept up in the service of the Tenebræ—a ceremonial representing the entombment of the Saviour. Cross-buns used on this day, are in imitation of the ecclesiastical eulogia, or consecrated loaves, formerly bestowed in the church as alms, or given to those, who, from any impediment could not receive the host. It will be remembered (speaking of Friday) that popular superstition has marked this day of the week as "unlucky." This vulgar notion arose doubtless from the fact of the crucifixion having been supposed to occur on that day, with all its solemn and ominous accessories of darkness and earthquake. Leigh Hunt records it against no less a name than Byron's, that he was the victim of this silly superstition; and-alas that it is so there are many still extant who confess to so ludicrous a weakness, especially among sailors and silly women. The conceit doubtless took its rise in heathen times-the monks endorsing the usage in their designating certain days of their calendar by the names dies atri and dies albi.

In order to put a stop to the superstition which attached to this unlucky day, a company of men once laid the timbers of a ship on Friday, launched her on Friday after some trouble they found a captain of the name of Friday, and with still more trouble procured men who were willing to sail in her on that day. She started on a Friday for her destination, and was never more heard of. This fact is accredited, being stoutly insisted upon by all sailors.

If Friday was ever ill-omened, its reputation is sufficiently redeemed, for it was on that day that Columbus discovered the American continent, that George Washington was born, and that the Pilgrim fathers reached the Plymouth rock.

Ancient calendars desiguate two days in each month as unfortunate, namely-of January, the first and seventh; February, the third and fourth; March, the first and fourth; April,

the tenth and eleventh; May, the third and seventh; June, the tenth and fifteenth; July, the tenth and thirteenth; Angust, the first and second; September, the third and tenth; October, the third and tenth; November, the third and ffth; December, the seventh and tenth. Each of these days was devoted to some peculiar fatality.

"The flowery May, who from her green lap throws
The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose.
Hail, bounteous May, that dost inspire

Mirth and youth, and warm desire;
Woods and groves are of thy dressing,
Hill and dale doth boast thy blessing.
Thus we salute thee with an early song,
And welcome thee, and wish thee long."

Thus sung the "blind old bard" of English verse, and a right fruitful theme has this "queen month" of the calendar been to the many worshippers of the muse from the days of old Chaucer down to our own.

May is the most instructive and religious, as well as the most delightful of all festival times. It seems to be the bridal season of heaven and earth, and the whole month the honey

moon.

"Buds are filling, leaves are swelling,

Flowers on field, and bloom on tree :
O'er the earth, and air, and ocean,
Nature holds her jubilee."

Wordsworth thus daintily pictures forth the harbingers of spring :

"Pansies, lilies, kingcups, daisies,
Let them live upon their praises;
Long as there's a sun that sets

Primroses will have their glory-
Long as there are violets

They will have a place in story."

The following lines of Tennyson seem to glow with the

beauty and bloom of spring :

"In the spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin's breast, In the spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest; In the spring a lovelier iris changes on the burnished dove,

In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love."

With many other pastoral customs of the olden time, that of the rural celebration of May-day is well-nigh passed into oblivion. Bourne tells us, that in his time, in the villages in the North of England, the youth of both sexes were wont to rise before dawn, and assemble in some neighboring wood, accompanied with music, and there they gathered branches from the trees, and wove garlands and bouquets of flowers, with which they returned to deck their homes.

The rustic festival of the May-pole, and the ceremony of crowning the pride of the village as May-queen, formed one of the most picturesque of the good old pastimes of our English ancestors and is also as ancient as any of which we have any record; it being doubtless identical with the festival of the Romans in honor of Flora, which they styled Floralia, and which occurred on the fourth of the kalends of May. Sometimes the May-pole was brought to the village-green in great pomp, being drawn by twenty yoke of oxen, each being garlanded with flowers, with which, as well as with branches, flags, and streamers, the pole itself was profusely wreathed and decked.

The rural festivities of the May-queen are no longer seen, but the denizens of New York, for the special benefit of the landlords, have substituted a custom instead, of a most moving and exciting character; we refer to their curious passion for changing their habitations on that day. On this eventful day, the entire community is in a transition state. Like a busy swarm of ants, people are hurrying to and fro, hither and thither, in the most amusing confusion; each eagerly in quest of his new abode. This singular fancy for change of habitation seems peculiar to this locomotive people; and so generally is the custom adopted by them, that all business for the time is suffered