particular spot, which marked the latter part of the ceremonial. Not less curious is the perambulation performed in this parish during Rogation week. On arriving at Swinford Ferry, the procession goes across and lays hold of the twigs on the opposite shore, to mark that they claim the breadth of the river as within the bounds of the parish. The ferryman then delivers to the vicar a noble (68. 8d.), in a bowl of the river-water, along with a clean napkin. The vicar fishes out the money, wipes his fingers, and distributes the water among the people in commemoration of the custom. It seems a practice such as the Total Abstinence Society would approve of; but we are bound to narrate that the vicaragedues collected on the occasion, are for the most part diffused, in the form of ale, among the thirsty parishioners.* * Bibliotheca Topographica, iv. 23, 24. THE SEVERE CHRISTMAS OF 1860: INTENSE COLD AND ITS EFFECTS. The Christmas of 1860 is believed to have been the severest till then experienced in Britain. At nine o'clock in the morning of Christmas-day in that year, the thermometer, at the Royal Humane Society's Receiving House, in Hyde Park, London, marked 15° Fahrenheit, or 17° below the freezing point, but this was a mild temperature compared with what was prevalent in many parts of the country during the preceding night. Lowe, a celebrated meteorologist, writing on 25th December to the Times, from his observatory at Beeston, near Nottingham, says: This morning the temperature at four feet above the ground was 8° below zero, and on the grass 13.8° below zero, or 45.8° of frost. The maximum heat yesterday was only 20°, and from 7 P.M. till 11 A.M. the Mr E. J. temperature never rose as high as zero of Fahrenheit's thermometer. At the present time (12.30 P.M.), the temperature is 7° above zero at four feet, and 2.5° above zero on the grass. Other observations recorded throughout England correspond with this account of the intensity of the cold, by which, at a nearly uniform rate, the three days from the 24th to the 26th December were characterised. The severity of that time must still be fresh in the memory of our readers. In the letter of Mr Lowe, above quoted, he speaks of having 'just seen a horse pass with icicles at his nose three inches in length, and as thick as three fingers.' Those who then wore mustaches must remember how that appendage to the upper-lip became, through the congelation of the vapour of the breath, almost instantaneously stiff and matted together, as soon as the wearer put his head out of doors. What made this severity of cold the more remarkable, was the circumstance that for many years previously the inhabitants of the British Islands had experienced a succession of generally mild winters, and the present generation had almost come to regard as legendary the accounts which their fathers related to them of the hard frosts and terrible winters of former times. Here, therefore, was an instance of a reduction of temperature unparalleled, not only in the recollection of the oldest person living, but likewise in any trustworthy record of the past. INTENSE COLD AND ITS EFFECTS. while one large walnut-tree, half a century old, not only had its young last year's shoots killed, but lost some of its largest branches. Beyond the limits of the garden referred to, the effects of this frost were no less remarkable. Élmtrees were great sufferers; they, along with the very oaks, had many of their outer twigs killed; and a magnificent, perhaps unique, avenue of cedars of Lebanon, which must have been among the oldest of their kind in the kingdom (they were only introduced in Charles II.'s reign) was almost entirely ruined. over. over. Notwithstanding this unexampled descent of temperature, the nadir, as it may be termed, of cold till then experienced in Britain, the period during which it continued to prevail was of such short duration that there was no time for it to effect those wonderful results which we read of in former times as occasioned by a severe and unusually protracted frost. In a former part of this work (vol. i. p. 108), we have given an account of several remarkably hard frosts, which are recorded to have taken place in England. From a periodical work we extract the following notice of similar instances which occurred chiefly on the continent of Europe in past ages. In the year 401, the Black Sea was entirely frozen over. In 462, the Danube was frozen, so that Theodomer marched on the ice to Swabia, to avenge his brother's death. In 763, the cold was so intense that the Strait of During the three days referred to, the damage Dardanelles and the Black Sea were entirely frozen inflicted on vegetation of all kinds was enormous. The snow, in some places, drifted to the The following account of the effects of the frost in depth of fifty feet, and the ice was heaped in such a single garden, in a well-wooded part of the county quantities on the cities as to cause the walls to fall of Suffolk, may serve as a specimen of the general down. In 860, the Adriatic was entirely frozen damage occasioned throughout England. The In 891 and 893, the vines were killed by garden referred to is bounded on the west by a frost, and cattle died in their stalls. In 991, the box-hedge, and on the south by a low wall, within winter lasted very long and was extremely severe. which was a strip of shrubbery consisting of Everything was frozen over, and famine and pestilaurels, Portugal laurels, laurustinus, red cedar, lence closed the year. In 1067, the cold was so arbor vitæ, phillyrea, &c. Besides these, there intense that most of the travellers in Germany stood in the garden some evergreen oaks, five were frozen to death on the roads. In 1133, it healthy trees of some forty years' growth, two was excessively cold in Italy; the Po was frozen yews (which were of unknown age, but had been from Cremona to the sea, while the heaps of snow large trees beyond the memory of man), and a few rendered the roads impassable; wine-casks burst younger ones between thirty and forty years old. and trees split by frost with an immense noise. All these, with the exception of the young yew-In 1234, a pine-forest was killed by frost at trees, the red cedars, the box, some of the arbor vitæ, and some little evergreen oaks, were either killed outright, or else so injured that it became necessary to cut them down. Nor was this done hastily without waiting to see whether they would recover themselves; ample time was given for discovering whether it was only a temporary check from which the trees and shrubs were suffering, or whether it was an utter destruction of that part of them which was above ground. In some cases, it was found that the root was still alive, and this afterwards sent forth fresh shoots, but in other cases it turned out to be a destruction literally root and branch. Some of the trees, indeed, after having been cut down level with the ground, made a desperate attempt to revive, and sent up apparently healthy shoots; but the attempt was unsuccessful, and the shoots withered. Nor was the damage confined to the evergreens: fruit-trees suffered also; for instance, apple-trees put forth leaves and flowers, which looked well enough for a time, but, before the summer was over, these withered, as if they had been burned; Ravenna. In 1269, the frost was intense in Scotland, and the Cattegat was frozen between Norway and Jutland. In 1281, the houses in Austria were covered with snow. In 1292, the Rhine was frozen; and in Germany 600 peasants were employed to clear the way for the Austrian army. In 1344, all the rivers in Italy were frozen. In 1468, the winter was so severe in Flanders that the wine was cut with hatchets to be distributed to the soldiery. In 1594, the winter was so severe that the Rhine and Scheldt were frozen, and even the sea at Venice. In 1670, the frost was very intense in England and Denmark; both the Little and Great Belt were frozen over. In 1684, many forest-trees and oaks in England were split with the frost. In 1691, the cold was so intense, that the starved wolves entered Vienna. The cold of 1740 was scarcely inferior to that of 1709. In 1776 there was very keen cold.' In the winter of 1848-1849, the public journals * Since 1860, the winters of 1870-71, 1878-79, 1879-80, and 1880-81 have been very severe. recorded that the mercury, on one occasion, froze in the thermometers at Aggershuus, in Sweden. Now, as mercury freezes at 39° below zero, marked scientifically as -39°, that is, 71° below the freezing-point, we know that the temperature must have been at least as low as this-perhaps several degrees lower. And yet, as we shall afterwards shew, lower degrees of temperature even than this have been experienced by the Arctic voyagers. As might be expected, it is from the latter voyagers that we obtain some of the most interesting information concerning low temperatures. In the long and gloomy winter of the polar regions, the cold assumes an intensity of which we can form little conception. Mercurial thermometers often become useless; for when the mercury solidifies, it can sink no further in the tube, and ceases to be a correct indicator. As a more available instrument, a spirit-thermometer is then used, in which the place of mercury is supplied by rectified spirit of wine. With such thermometers, our Arctic explorers have recorded degrees of cold far below the freezing-point of mercury. Dr Kane, the American Arctic explorer, in his narrative of the Grinnell Expedition in search of Franklin, records having experienced -42° on the 7th February 1851; that is, 74° of frost, or 3° below the freezing-point of mercury. Let us conceive what it must have been to act a play, in a temperature only a few degrees above this! A week after the date last mentioned, the crew of the ship engaged in the expedition referred to, performed a farce called The Mysteries and Miseries of New York! The outside temperature on that evening was 36°; in the theatre' it was -25° behind the scenes, and -20° in the audience department. One of the sailors had to enact the part of a damsel with bare arms; and when a cold flat-iron, part of the 'properties' of the theatre, touched his skin, the sensation was like that of burning with a hot-iron. But this was not the most arduous of their dramatic exploits. On Washington's birthday, February 22, the crew had another performance. The ship's thermometer outside was at 46°; inside, the audience and actors, by aid of lungs, lamps, and hangings, got as high as -30°, only 62° below the freezingpoint-perhaps the lowest atmospheric record of a theatrical representation. It was a strange thing altogether. The condensation was so excessive, that we could barely see the performers; they walked in a cloud of vapour. Any extra vehemency of delivery was accompanied by volumes of smoke. Their hands steamed, When an excited Thespian took off his coat, it smoked like a dish of potatoes.' Dr Kane records having experienced as low a temperature as -53°, or 85° below the freezingpoint but even this is surpassed in a register furnished by Sir Edward Belcher, who, in January 1854, with instruments of unquestioned accuracy, endured for eighty-four consecutive hours, a temperature never once higher than -50°. One night it sank to -591; and on another occasion the degree of cold reached was -624°, or 94 below the freezing-point! INTENSE COLD AND ITS EFFECTS, Dr E. D. Clarke, the celebrated traveller, told Dr Whiting that he was once nearly frozen to death-not in any remote polar region, but in the very matter-of-fact county of Cambridge. After performing divine service at a church near Cambridge, one cold Sunday afternoon in 1818, he mounted his horse to return home. Sleepiness came upon him, and he dismounted, walking by the head of his horse; the torpor increased, the reins dropped from his hand, and he was just about sinking--probably never again to rise-when a passing traveller rescued him. This torpor is one of the most perilous accompaniments of extreme cold, and is well illustrated in the anecdote related of Dr Solander in a previous article.* Sir Edward Parry remarks, in reference to extremely low temperatures: 'Our bodies appeared to adapt themselves so readily to the climate, that the scale of our feelings, if I may so express it, was soon reduced to a lower standard than ordinary; so that after being for some days in a temperature of -15° or -20°, it felt quite mild and comfortable when the thermometer rose to zero '—that is, when it was 32" below the freezing-point. On one occasion, speaking of the cold having reached the degree of-55°, he says: 'Not the slightest inconvenience was suffered from exposure to the open air by a person well clothed, so long as the weather was perfectly calm; but in walking against a very light air of wind, a smarting sensation was experienced all over the face, accompanied by a pain in the middle of the forehead, which soon became rather severe.' As a general remark, Parry on another occasion said: "We find it necessary to use great caution in handling our sextants and other instruments, particularly the eye-pieces, of telescopes, which, if suffered to touch the face, occasioned an intense burning pain.' Sir Leopold M'Clintock, while sledging over the ice in March 1859, trudged with his men eight hours at a stretch, over rough hummocks of ice, without food or rest, at a temperature of -48°, or eighty degrees below the freezing-point, with a wind blowing too at the time. In one of the expeditions a sailor incautiously did some of his outdoor work without mittens; his hands froze; one of them was plunged into a basin of water in the cabin, and the intense cold of the hand instantly froze the water, instead of the water thawing the hand! Poor fellow: his hand required to be chopped off. Dr Kane, who experienced more even than the usual share of sufferings attending these expeditions, narrates many anecdotes relating to the cold. One of his crew put an icicle at-28° into his mouth, to crack it; one fragment stuck to his tongue, and two to his lips, each taking off a bit of skinburning it off, if this term might be used in an inverse sense. At-25°, 'the beard, eyebrows, eyelashes, and the downy pubescence of the ears, acquire a delicate, white, and perfectly enveloping cover of venerable hoar-frost. The moustache and under-lip form pendulous beads of dangling ice. Put out your tongue, and it instantly freezes to this icy crusting, and a rapid effort, and some hand-aid will be required to liberate it. Your chin has a trick of freezing to your upper-jaw by the luting aid of your beard; my eyes have often been so glued, as to shew that even a wink may be unsafe. In *See vol. i. p. 642. reference to the torpor produced by extreme cold, Dr Kane further remarks: 'Sleepiness is not the sensation. Have you ever received the shocks of a magneto-electric machine, and had the peculiar benumbing sensation of "Can't let go," extending up to your elbow-joints? Deprive this of its par oxysmal character; subdue, but diffuse it over every part of the system-and you have the so-called pleasurable feelings of incipient freezing. One day he walked himself into 'a comfortable perspiration,' with the thermometer seventy degrees below the freezing-point. A breeze sprang up, and instantly the sensation of cold was intense. His beard, coated before with icicles, seemed to bristle with increased stiffness; and an unfortunate hole in the back of his mitten 'stung like a burning coal.' On the next day, while walking, his beard and moustache became one solid mass of ice. 'I inadvertently put out my tongue, and it instantly froze fast to my lip. This being nothing new, costing only a smart pull and a bleeding afterwards, I put up my mittened hands to "blow hot," and thaw the unruly member from its imprisonment. Instead of succeeding, my mitten was itself a mass of ice in a moment; it fastened on the upper side of my tongue, and flattened it out like a batter-cake between the two disks of a hot gridle. It required all my care with the bare hands to release it, and then not without laceration.' The following remarkable instances of the disastrous results of extreme cold in Canada are related by Sir Francis Head:-'I one day inquired of a fine, ruddy, honest-looking man, who called upon me, and whose toes and insteps of each foot had been truncated, how the accident happened? He told me that the first winter he came from England, he lost his way in the forest, and that after walking for some hours, feeling pain in his feet, he took off his boots, and from the flesh immediately swelling, he was unable to put them on again. His stockings, which were very old ones, soon wore into holes, and as rising on his insteps he was hurriedly proceeding he knew not where, he saw with alarm, but without feeling the slightest pain, first one toe and then another break off, as if they had been pieces of brittle stick; and in this mutilated state he continued to advance till he reached a path which led him to an inhabited loghouse, where he remained suffering great pain till his cure was effected. On another occasion, while an Englishman was driving, one bright beautiful day, in a sleigh on the ice, his horse suddenly ran away, and fancying he could stop him better without his cumbersome fur-gloves than with them, he unfortunately took them off. As the infuriated animal at his utmost speed proceeded, the man, who was facing a keen north-west wind, felt himself gradually, as it were, turning into marble; and by the time he stopped, both his hands were so completely and so irrecoverably frozen, that he was obliged to have them amputated.' Englishmen, take them one with another, bear up against intense cold better than against intense heat, one principal reason being, that the air is in such circumstances less tainted with the seeds of disease. They are then more lively and cheerful, feel themselves necessitated to active and athletic exertion, and become, consequently, better able to combat the adverse influences of a low degree of temperature. ST STEPHEN'S DAY. DECEMBER 26. St Stephen, the first martyr. St Dionysius, pope and confessor, 269. St Iarlath, confessor, first bishop of Tuam, in Ireland, 6th century. St Stephen's Day. To St Stephen, the Proto-martyr, as he is generally styled, the honour has been accorded by the church of being placed in her calendar immediately after Christmas-day, in recognition of his having been the first to seal with his blood the testimony of fidelity to his Lord and Master. The year in which he was stoned to death, as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, is supposed to have been 33 A.D. The festival commemorative of him has been retained in the Anglican calendar. A curious superstition was formerly prevalent regarding St Stephen's Day-that horses should then, after being first well galloped, be copiously let blood, to insure them against disease in the course of the following year. In Barnaby Googe's translation of Naogeorgus, the following lines occur relative to this popular notion: "Then followeth Saint Stephen's Day, whereon doth every man His horses jaunt and course abrode, as swiftly as he can, Until they doe extreemely sweate, and then they let them blood, For this being done upon this day, they say doth do them good, And keepes them from all maladies and sicknesse through the yeare, As if that Steven any time tooke charge of horses heare.' The origin of this practice is difficult to be accounted for, but it appears to be very ancient, and Douce supposes that it was introduced into this country by the Danes. In one of the manuscripts of that interesting chronicler, John Aubrey, who lived in the latter half of the seventeenth century, occurs the following record: 'On St Stephen's Day, the farrier came constantly and blouded all our cart-horses.' Very possibly convenience and expediency combined on the occasion with superstition, for in Tusser Redivivus, a work published in the middle of the last century, we find this statement: "About Christmas is a very proper time to bleed horses in, for then they are commonly at house, then spring comes on, the sun being now coming back from the winter-solstice, and there are three or four days of rest, and if it be upon St Stephen's Day it is not the worse, seeing, there are with it three days of rest, or at least two.'" In the parish of Drayton Beauchamp, Bucks, there existed long an ancient custom, called Stephening, from the day on which it took place. On St Stephen's Day, all the inhabitants used to pay a visit to the rectory, and practically assert their right to partake of as much bread and cheese and ale as they chose at the rector's expense. On one of these occasions, according to local tradition, the then rector, being a penurious old bachelor, determined to put a stop, if possible, to this rather expensive and unceremonious visit from his parishioners. Accordingly, when St Stephen's Day arrived, he ordered his housekeeper not to open the window-shutters, or unlock the doors of the house, and to remain perfectly silent and motionless whenever any person was heard approaching. At the usual time the parishioners began to cluster about the house. They knocked first at one door, then at the other, then tried to open them, and on finding them fastened, they called aloud for admittance. No voice replied. No movement was heard within. Surely the rector and his housekeeper must both be dead!' exclaimed several voices at once, and a general awe pervaded the whole group. Eyes were then applied to the keyholes, and to every crevice in the window-shutters, when the rector was seen beckoning his old terrified housekeeper to sit still and silent. A simultaneous shout convinced him that his design was understood. Still he consoled himself with the hope that his larder and his cellar were secure, as the house could not be entered. But his hope was speedily dissipated. Ladders were reared against the roof, tiles were hastily thrown off, half-a-dozen sturdy young men entered, rushed down the stairs, and threw open both the outer-doors. In a trice, a hundred or more unwelcome visitors rushed into the house, and began unceremoniously to help themselves to such fare as the larder and cellar afforded ; for no special stores having been provided for the occasion, there was not half enough bread and cheese for such a multitude. To the rector and his housekeeper, that festival was converted into the most rigid fast-day they had ever observed. After this signal triumph, the parishioners of Drayton regularly exercised their privilege of Stephening till the incumbency of the Rev. Basil Woodd, who was presented to the living in 1808. Finding that the custom gave rise to much rioting and drunkenness, he discontinued it, and distributed instead an annual sum of money in proportion to the number of claimants. But as the population of the parish greatly increased, and as he did not consider himself bound to continue the practice, he was induced, about the year 1827, to withhold his annual payments; and so the custom became finally abolished. For some years, however, after its discontinuance, the people used to go to the rectory for the accustomed bounty, but were always refused. In the year 1834, 'the commissioners appointed to inquire concerning charities,' made an investigation into this custom, and several of the inhabitants of Drayton gave evidence on the occasion, but nothing was elicited to shew its origin or duration, nor was any legal proof advanced shewing that the rector was bound to comply with such a demand.* Many of the present inhabitants of the parish remember the custom, and some of them have heard their parents say, that it had been cbserved 'As long as the sun had shone, In London and other places, St Stephen's Day, or the 26th of December, is familiarly known as Boxing-day, from its being the occasion on which those annual guerdons known as Christmas-boxes are solicited and collected. For a notice of them, the reader is referred to the ensuing article. See the Report of the Charity Commissioners, vol. xxvii., p. 83, in the British Museum. CHRISTMAS-BOXES. CHRISTMAS-BOXES. The institution of Christmas-boxes is evidently akin to that of New-year's gifts, and, like it, has descended to us from the times of the ancient Romans, who, at the season of the Saturnalia, practised universally the custom of giving and receiving presents. The fathers of the church denounced, on the ground of its pagan origin, the observance of such a usage by the Christians; but their anathemas had little practical effect, and in process of time, the custom of Christmas-boxes and New-year's gifts, like others adopted from the heathen, attained the position of a universally recognised institution. The church herself has even got the credit of originating the practice of Christmas-boxes, as will appear from the following curious extract from The Athenian Oracle of John Dunton; a sort of primitive Notes and Queries, as it is styled by a contributor to the periodical of that name. Q. From whence comes the custom of gathering of Christmas-box money? And how long since? A. It is as ancient as the word mass, which the Romish priests invented from the Latin word mitto, to send, by putting the people in mind to send gifts, offerings, oblations; to have masses said for everything almost, that no ship goes out to the Indies, but the priests have a box in that ship, under the protection of some saint. And for masses, as they cant, to be said for them to that saint, &c., the poor people must put in something into the priest's box, which is not to be opened till the ship return. Thus the mass at that time was Christ's-mass, and the box Christ's-mass-box, or money gathered against that time, that masses might be made by the priests to the saints, to forgive the people the debaucheries of that time; and from this, servants had liberty to get box-money, because they might be enabled to pay the priest for masses-because, No penny, no paternoster-for though the rich pay ten times more than they can expect, yet a priest will not say a mass or anything to the poor for nothing; so charitable they generally are.' His The charity thus ironically ascribed by Dunton to the Roman Catholic clergy, can scarcely, so far as the above extract is concerned, be warrantably claimed by the whimsical author himself. statement regarding the origin of the custom under notice may be regarded as an ingenious conjecture, but cannot be deemed a satisfactory explanation of the question. As we have already seen, a much greater antiquity and diversity of origin must be asserted. This custom of Christmas-boxes, or the bestowing of certain expected gratuities at the Christmas season, was formerly, and even yet to a certain The extent continues to be, a great nuisance. journeymen and apprentices of trades-people were wont to levy regular contributions from their masters' customers, who, in addition, were mulcted by the trades-people in the form of augmented charges in the bills, to recompense the latter for gratuities expected from them by the customers' servants. This most objectionable usage is now greatly diminished, but certainly cannot yet be said to be extinct. Christmas-boxes are still regularly expected by the postman, the lamplighter, |