mischiefs attributed to the agency of witches, and the effects of the "evil eye," are plainly declared. "It may please your grace to understand, that witches and sorcerers within these last four years are marvellously increased within this your grace's realm. Your grace's subjects pine away, even unto the death; their colour fadeth, their flesh rotteth, their speech is benumbed, their senses are bereft. I pray God, they may never practise farther than upon the subject." The climax of this must surely have been extremely startling, and have Moved the stout heart of England's queen, Though Pope and Spaniard could not trou ble it. Bishop Hall speaks of a village in Lancashire, where the number of witches was larger than that of the houses. The learned Joseph Glanvil, on the occasion of an invisible drum beating every night at the house of a Mr. Mompesson, in Wiltshire, turned his thoughts to the subject, and, in 1666, published his "Sadducism refuted, or Philosophical Considerations touching the being of Witches and Witchcraft;" though the story of his mysterious drummer, if the plot could have been traced, would, no doubt, have been found as foolish a one as that of the CockLane ghost. Even the rich gold of Sir Thomas Browne's master-mind had the same species of alloy : "For my part," says he, "I have ever believed, and now do believe, that there are witches. They that doubt of these, do not only deny them, but spirits, and are obliquely, and upon consequence, a sort not of infidels, but atheists." To these instances, taken from the professions of divinity and medicine, we may add those of certain high and legal persons, with imaginations equally warped. Lord Coke gravely draws a difference between a conjurer, a witch, and an enchanter. And the | great and good Chief-Justice Hale, so late as the year 1664, in presiding as judge on the trial of two reputed witches at Bury St. Edmund's, betrayed such a want of firmness in his mode of leaving the matter to the jury, that the poor women were found guilty upon thirteen several iudictments, and executed, declaring their innocence to the last. Follies of the same kind, however, are found recorded even in our parish registers, as will be proved by the following entry, which we extract literally from the regis ter of burials of a city parish, St. Olave's, Hart Street, the residence, during the reigns of Elizabeth and some of her successors, of several noble and distinguished families :"1579. 16 MAYE.-Was buried Agnes Piersonn, Sv'ant, to Mr. Paule Banninge, aged 30 years; BEWITCHED." It was imperative on the parish officers, at that time, to note down the complaint of which the party had died; for a few months before the occurrence of Agnes Piersonn's name, this is inserted as a fresh order: "November 1578.-A new com'andment from the Quene and her counsill, to endite the names, the christian names, the age, and the disease of every person dyeing within the parish." To these authorities, if so they may be called, must be added that of James the First, whose silly work entitled Dæmonoligie, reprinted in London in 1603, having first seen the light in Edinburgh, and coming, as it did, from a royal pen, found crowds of admirers, and made witchcraft fashionable. In his reign a new and severe statute was passed against witches, describing the crime in various particulars, and enacting that offenders, duly and lawfully convicted, should suffer death. The old laws passed in England and Scotland against conjuration and witchcraft, which made the crime THE anxiety of a gipsy parent to preserve the purity of the morals of a daughter is strongly portrayed in the following fact. The author wished to engage, as a servant, the daughter of a gipsy, who was desirous of quitting her vagrant life; but her mother strongly objected for some time; and when pressed for the reason of such objection, she named the danger she would be exposed to in a town, far from a mother's eye. After having promised that the morals of the child should be watched over, she was confided to his care. It is worthy of remark, that all the better sort of gipsies teach their children the Lord's Prayer. The trades they follow are generally chair-mending, knife-grinding, tinkering, and basket-making, the wood for which they mostly steal; but in general, neither old nor young among them do much that can be called labour; and it is lamentable that the greatest part of the little they do earn is laid by to spend at their festivals; for like many tribes of uncivilized Indians, they mostly make their women support their families, who generally do it by swindling and fortune-telling. Their baskets introduce them to the servants of families, of whom they beg victuals, to whom they sell trifling wares, and tell their fortunes, which indeed is their principal aim, as it is their greatest source of gain. rise to much antiquarian discussion. They are said to have been originally planted either to protect the church from storms, or to furnish the parishioners with bows. The statute of 35 Edw. I., which settles the property of trees in churchyards, recites, that they were often planted to defend the church from high winds, and the clergy were requested to cut them down for the repairs of the chancel of the church whenever required. Several ancient laws were enacted for the encouragement of archery, which regulate many particulars relative to bows, but it does not appear that any statute directed to the cultvation of the yew. Although the scarcity of bow staves is a frequent subject of complaint in our ancient laws, yet, instead of ordering the yew tree to be cultivated at home, foreign merchants were obliged, under heavy penalties, to import the material from abroad. In the 12th of Edw. IV. it was enacted, that every merchant stran. ger should bring four bow staves for every ton of merchandise, imported from Venice or other places, from whence they had heretofore been procured. In the reign of Elizabeth, the complaint of the dearness and scarcity of bow staves was renewed, and the statute 6 Edw. IV was put in force. From the above particulars it clearly appears that we depended upon foreign wood for our bows, which would not have occurred if our churchyards could have furnished a sufficient quantity for the public service. The truth is, that though our archers were the glory of the 'nation and the terror of its enemies, yet the English yew was of inferior quality, and our brave countrymen were obliged to have recourse to THE original design of planting foreign materials. This accounts these trees in churchyards has given | for the silence of our ancient legis YEW TREES IN CHURCHYARDS. lators with respect to the culture | have no light for the time of her baptism." of the English yew, which appears never to have been an object of national concern. Sir Thomas Browne, in his "Urnburial," thinks it may admit of conjecture whether the planting of yews in churches had not its origin from ancient funeral rites, or as an emblem of the resurrection, from its perpetual verdure. The yew tree has been considered as an emblem of mourning from the earliest times. The Greeks adopted the idea from the Egyptians, the Romans from the Greeks, and the Britons from the Romans. From long habits of association, the yew acquired a sacred character, and therefore was considered as the best and most appropriate ornament of consecrated ground. The custom of placing them singly is equally ancient. Statius, in his Thebaid, calls it the solitary yew. And it was at one time as common in the churchyards of Italy as it is now in North and South Wales. In many villages of those two provinces, the yew tree and the church are coeval with each other.-FAULKNER'S His`tory of Kensington. PARISH REGISTERS. THESE very useful chronicles of private life are by no means of such high antiquity as the generality of persons suppose. In a letter written by Mr. Brockesby to Mr. Hearne, (both learned antiquarians, dated Dec. 12, 1701,) the writer, speaking of long-lived persons, tells us there was a woman whom he had conversed with in Yorkshire, who gave out that she was six score, and afterwards seven score, and hence had many visitants, from whom she got money. He then adds, "She was born before Registers were kept in country parishes. Hence I could Probably many of our readers would be surprised on reading this. The fact, however, seems to be that the introduction of Parochial Registers in England was in consequence of the injunctions of Thomas, Lord Cromwell, which were set forth in 1538, the thirtieth year of Henry VIII.; but they were not much attended to till the reign of Queen Elizabeth, who issued injunctions concerning them in the 1st, 7th, and 39th years of her reign. It appears that in Spain they had been in use several years before, and are said to have been instituted by Cardinal Ximenes, in the year 1497, in order to remedy the disorders arising from the frequency of divorces in that country. Till late years, they were kept very negligently in many parts of England; and being in the custody of churchwardens who changed from year to year, old registers were frequently lost or destroyed. In Northamptonshire, a piece of an old parish register, on parchment, was found on the pillow of a lace-maker, with the pattern of her work pricked upon it. It was formerly the practice in many places to record in the registers any extraordinary event which took place in the neighbourhood. This might still be done on the cover or the margin, and be the means of preserving much interesting matter, which would otherwise be forgotten. Since the year 1813, the registers are uniform throughout the kingdom, and are kept, with perhaps few exceptions, with very great care. T. ANCIENT SUPERSTITIONS. THE Celtic tribes, by whom, under various denominations, Europe seems to have been originally peopled, pos sessed, in common with other savages, a natural tendency to the worship of the evil principle. They did not, perhaps, adore Arimanes under one sole name, or consider the malignant divinities as sufficiently powerful to undertake a direct struggle with the more benevolent gods, yet they thought it worth while to propitiate them by various expiatory rites and prayers, that they, and the elementary tempests, which they conceived to be under their direct command, might be merciful to suppliants who had acknowledged their power, and deprecated their vengeance. being; in fact, that it was the por tion of the arch fiend himself, whom our ancestors distinguished by a name, which, while it was generally understood, could not, it was supposed, be offensive to the stern inhabitant of the region of despair. This was so general a custom, that the church published an ordinance against it as an impious and blasphemous usage. This singular custom sunk before the efforts of the clergy in the seventeenth century; but there must still be many alive, who in childhood have been taught to look with wonder on knolls and patches of ground left uncultivated, because, whenever a ploughshare entered the soil, the elementary spirits were supposed to testify their displeasure by storm and thunder. Within our memory, many such places, sanctified to barrenness by some favourite popular superstition, existed, both in Wales and Ireland, as well as in Scotland; but the high price of agricultural produce during the late Remains of these superstitions might be traced till past the middle of the last century, though fast becoming obsolete, or passing into mere popular customs of the country, which the peasantry observe, with out thinking of their origin. About 1769, when Mr. Pennant made his tour, the ceremony of the Baaltein, Beltine, or First of May, though varying in different districts of the Highlands, was yet in strict observ-war renders it doubtful if a venera, ance; and the cake, which was then baked with scrupulous attention to certain rites and forms, was divided into fragments, which were formally dedicated to birds or beasts of prey, that they, or rather the being whose agents they were, might spare the flocks and herds.* Another custom of similar origin lingered late amongst us. In many parishes of Scotland, there was suffered to exist a certain portion of land, called the gudeman's croft, which was never ploughed or cultivated, but suffered to remain waste, like the Temenos of a Pagan temple. Though it was not expressly avowed, no one doubted that the gudeman's croft was set apart for some evil *The traveller mentions that some festival of the same kind was, in his time, ob served in Gloucestershire. tion for grey-bearded superstition has suffered any one of them to remain undesecrated. For the same reason, the mounts called Sith Bhrnaith were respected, and it was deemed unlawful and dangerous to cut wood, dig earth and stones, or otherwise disturb them.-Demonology and Withcraft, by Sir WALTER SCOTT. BARROWS; ANCIENT MODES AMONG all nations with which we earth, a cairn, or heap of stones, raised over the remains of the dead. Of such monuments, mention is made in the book of Joshua, and in the poems of Homer, Virgil, and Horace; and instances of these occur in every part of this kingdom. These earthen monuments of mortality have received various names, according to their form. In recording the funeral obsequies of Patroclus, ordered by Achilles, the poet says, The Greeks obey; where yet the embers glow, With tears, collected in the golden vase. руге: High in the midst they heap the swelling bed Of rising earth, memorial of the dead. Silbury Hill is the largest mound of the kind in England; it is about a mile south of Abury, in Wiltshire; the next in size is Marlborough Mount, in the garden of an inn at Marlborough. "No history gives us any account of this hill; the tradition only is, that king Sil, or Zel, as the country-folk pronounce it, was buried here on horseback, and that the hill was raised while a posset of milk was seething." Its name, however, seems to have signified the great hill. The diameter of Silbury Hill at top is 105 feet, at bottom it is somewhat more than 500 feet; it stands upon as much ground as Stonehenge, and is carried up to the perpendicular height of 170 feet, its solid contents amounting to 13,558,809 cubic feet. It covers a surface equal to five acres and thirty-four perches. It is impossible, at this remote period, to ascertain by whom, or for what precise purpose, this enormous mound of earth was raised; but from its proximity to the celebrated druidical temple at Abury, it is supposed to have had some reference to the idolatrous worship of the Druids, and, perhaps, to contain the bones of some celebrated character. According to Sir Richard Colt Hoare, who has investigated this subject with great skill and care, we may divide tombs of this description into, first, the long barrow, which is the largest of all, and generally of a long oval form; the circular barrow, shaped like an inverted bell, a bowl, &c.; and the Druid barrow, which is large and circular, seldom of any great elevation, and surrounded by a ditch and embankment. Within the area of this embankment are generally found small conical heaps of earth, which in some instances have contained small articles, such as cups, lance-heads, amber, jet, and glass beads. Although these have had the name of Druid barrows imposed on them, Sir Richard Hoare is inclined to believe that they were not formed by the Druids, but that they were intended as burial-places for the female portion of the British tribes. Sometimes two of these barrows were enclosed in one circle; they are then supposed to have been the tombs of two friends, or near relations. The manner in which the ancient Britons buried their dead varied at different periods. The author we have already noticed, says, "I am of opinion that the method of burying the body entire, with the legs gathered up, was the most ancient; that the custom of burning the dead succeeded, and continued along with the former; and that the mode of burying the body entire, and extended at full length, was of the latest adoption.” The most primitive method of |