It. one on horseback, with the Prince's armes upon a shield in pompe. It. one on horseback, with an oration from the prynce in pompe. It. j on horseback, with the bell dedicated to the princes. Armes upon it, in pompe, and to be carried on a septer, and before the bell, a wayte of trumpetts. It. j on horseback, with a cup for Saint George, caried upon a septer in pompe. It. j on horseback, with an oracyon for St. George, in pompe. It. St. George himselfe on horseback, in complete armour, with his flag and buckler in pompe, and before him a noyse of drums. It. one on horseback called Peace, with an oration in pompe. It. one on horseback called Plentye, with an oration in pompe. It. one on horseback called Envy, with an oration, whom Love will comfort, in pompe. It. one on horseback called Love, with an oration, to maintain all in pompe. It. The maior and his brethren, at the Pentis of this Cittye, with their best apparell, and in skarlet, and all the orations to be made before him, and seene at the high crosse, as they passe to the roodeye, whereby grent shall be runne for by their horses, for the ij bells on a double staffe, and the cuppe to be runne for by the rynge in the same place by gennt, and with a great mater of shewe by armes, and thatt, and with more than I can recyte, 'with a banket after in the Pentis to make welcome the gennt: and when all is done, then judge what you have seene, and soe speake on your mynd, as you fynde. The actor for the p'sent. ROBART AMORY. Amor is love and Amory is his name that did begin this pomp and princelye game, the charge is great to him that all begun,, let him be satisfyed now all is done. Notwithstanding Mr. Amory exerted himself and entertained the citizens so well in 1610, it was ordered in 1612, "that the sports and recreations used on St. George's day, should in future be done by the direction of the mayor and citizens, and not of any private person.*" No authority has occurred in my researches on this subject, for tracing the gradual alterations by which the bell and the bowl of these ancient races, have been * Corporation Records. converted to the ordinary prizes at similar meetings. They are now held the first entire week in May, which comes as near the original time (old St. George's day) as possible. They generally attract a vast assemblage of the fashionable world, and the city subscribes liberally to keep up the respectability of the races. I am, Sir, &c. A. OLD GUILDFORD CHURCH. To the Editor of the Every-Day Book. Mr. Editor,-In "A Tour through the whole Island of Great Britain," 4 vols. 12mo., there is the following notice of an accident on St. George's day, which you will oblige a constant reader by inserting J. H. in the Every-Day Book. On Wednesday the 23d of April, 1740, the upper church at Guildford, in Surrey, fell down. It was an ancient building, and not long before, seven hundred and fifty pounds were expended upon it in repairs. There was preaching in it on the Sunday before, and workmen were employed in taking down the bells, who, providentially, had quitted the spot about a quarter of an hour before the accident happened, so that not one person received any hurt, though numbers were spectators. Three bells had been taken down, and the other three fell with the steeple, which broke the body of the church to pieces, though the steeple received but little damage by the fall. 6. concern SPRING IN THE CITY, and JEMMY WHITTLE. At Laurie and Whittle's print-shop nearly opposite St. Dunstan's church, Fleet-street," or rather at Jemmy Whittle's, for he was the manager of the - I cannot help calling him Jemmy," for I knew him afterwards, in a passing way, when every body called him Jemmy; and after his recollection failed, and he dared no longer to flash his merriment at the "Cock," at Temple-bar, and the "Black Jack," in Portugal-street, but stood, like a sign of himself, at his own door, unable to remember the names of his old friends, poor Jemmy!"-I say, they called him " I remember at Jemmy Whittle's there was always a change of prints in springtime. Jemmy liked, as he said, to "give the public something alive, fresh and clever, classical and correct " One print, however, was never changed; this was "St. Dunstan and the Devil." To any who inquired why he always had "that old thing' " in the window, and thought it would be better out, Jemmy answered, "No, no, my boy! that's my sign-no change-church and state, you know!-no politics, you know!-I hate politics! there's the church, you know, pointing to St. Dunstan's,] and here am I, my boy !-it's my sign, you know! no change, my boy!" Alas, how changed: I desired to give a copy of the print on St. Dunstan's day in the first volume of the Every-Day Book, and it could not be found at "the old shop," nor at any printsellers I resorted to. Another print of Jemmy Whittle's was a favourite with me, as well as himself; for, through every mutation of " dressing out" his window it maintained its place with St. Dunstan, It was a mezzotinto, called I am now speaking of five and thirty years ago, when shop windows, especially printsellers', were set out according to the season. I remember that in spring-time "Jemmy Whittle," and "Carrington Bowles, in St. Paul's Church-yard," used to decorate their panes with twelve prints of flowers of the months," engraved "coloured after after Baptiste, and nature," -a show almost, at that time, "Solomon's Temple, in as gorgeous as all its glory, all over nothing but gold and jewels," which a man exhibited to my wondering eyes for a halfpenny. Spring arrives in London-and even east of Temple-bar-as early as in the country. For-though there are neither hawthorns to blossom, nor daisies to blow-there is scarcely a house" in the city," without a few flower pots inside or outside; and when "the seeds come up," the Londoner knows that the spring is "come to town." The almathat the sun nac, also, tells him, rises earlier every day, and he makes his apprentices rise earlier; and the shop begins to be watered and swept before breakfast; and perchance as the good man stands at his door to look up, and "wonder what sort of a day it will be," he sees a basket with primroses or cow slips, and from thence he hazards to assert, at "the house he uses" in the evening, that the spring is very forward; which is confirmed, to his credit, by some neighbour, who usually sleeps at Bow or Brompton, or Pentonville or Kennington, or some other adjacent part of "the country." To the east of Temple-bar, the flowergirl is "the herald of spring." She cries "cowslips! sweet cowslips!" till she screams bow-pots! sweet, and pretty bow-pots!" which is the sure and certain token of full spring in London. When I was a child, I got "a bow-pot" of as many wall-flowers and harebells as I could then hold in my hand, with a sprig of sweet briar at the back of the bunch, for a halfpenny-such a handful; but, now, "they can't make a ha'penny there's Dow-pot nothing under penny;" and the pennv bow-pot is not half so big as the ha'penny one, and somehow or other the flowers don't smell, to me, as they used to do.-— a It will not do however to run on thus, for something remains to be said concerning the patron of the day; and, to be plain with the reader, the recollections of forVOL. II.-70. mer times are not always the most chee ing to the writer. ST. GEORGE. There are some circumstances in the history of Russia which abate our pretengions to our celebrated saint. In that His figure country he is much revered. occurs in all the churches, represented as usual, riding on a horse, and piercing a dragon with his lance. This device also forms part of the arms of the Russian several of the sovereign, and is on coins. Certain English historians have Ivan Vassilievitch conjectured, that II., being presented with the garter by queen Elizabeth, assumed the George and the dragon for his arms, and ordered it to be stamped upon the current money. But it does not appear that the tzar was created a knight of the garter; and it is certain that the sovereigns of Moscow bore this device before they had the least connection with England. In Hackluyt, vol. i. p. 255, Chanceler, the first Englishman who discovered Russia, speaks of a despatch sent in 1554, from Ivan Vassilievitch to queen Mary:-"This letter was written in the Moscovian tongue, in letter much like to the Greeke letters, very faire written in paper, with a broade seale hanging at the same, sealed in paper upon waxe. was much like the broad seale of England, having on the one side the image of a man on horseback in complete harnesse fighting with a dragon.” This seale Russian coins of a very early date represent the figure of a horseman spearing a dragon; one particularly, of Michae Androvitz appears to have been struck in 1305, forty years before the institution of the order of the garter in England. From this period, numerous Russian coins are successively distinguished by the same emblem. Various notions have been put forth concerning the origin of the figure; but it seems probable that the Russians received the image of St. George and the dragon either from the Greeks or from the Tartars, by both of whom he was much revered; by the former as a christian saint and martyr, and by the latter as a prophet or a deity. We know from history, that in the fourth or fifth century he was much worshipped amongst the Greeks; and that afterwards the crusaders, dur ing their first expedition into the Holy Land, found many temples erected to his honour. The Russians, therefore, who were converted to christianity by the Greeks, certainly must have received at the same time a large catalogue of saints, which made an essential part of the Greek worship, and there can be no reason to imagine that St. George was omitted. a In a villa of prince Dolgorucki, near Moscow, is an old basso-relievo of St. George and the dragon, found in ruined church at Intermen, in the Crimea; it had a Greek inscription almost erased, but the words AIOO TEOPгOO, or St. George, and the date 1330, were still legible. As it appears from this bassorelievo that he was worshipped in the Crimea so near the court of Russia when the great dukes resided at Kiof, his introduction into that country is easily accounted for. Still, it is very likely that the Russians received from the Tartars the image of a horseman spearing a serpent, as represented upon their most ancient coins, and which formed a part of the great duke's arms, towards the beginning of the sixteenth century. The Russians had one before they were conquered by the Tartars; and soon after they were brought under the Tartar yoke, they struck money. The first Russian coins bear a Tartar inscription, afterwards, with Tartar letters on one side, and Russian characters on the other; and there is still preserved in the cabinet of St. Petersburgh, a piece of money, exhibiting a horseman piercing a dragon, with the name of the great duke in Russian, and on the reverse a Tartar inscription. The story of a saint or a deity spearing a dragon, was known all over the east; among the Mahometans, a person called Gergis or George, under a similar figure, was much revered as a prophet; and similar emblems have been discovered among many barbarous nations of the Whether these nations took it from the Greeks, or the latter from them, cannot be ascertained; for of the real existence of such a person as St. George, no positive proofs have ever been advanced. east. But whether the Russians derived St. George from the Greeks or the Tartars, it is certain that his figure was adopted as the arms of the grand dukes, and that the emblem of the saint and the dragon, has been uniformly represented on the reverse of the Russian coins. With respect to the arms, Herberstein, in his account of his embassy to Moscow in 1518, under Vassili Ivanovitch, has given a wooden print of that prince, at the bottom of which are engraved his arms, representing thus— April 24. ST. MARK'S EVE. To the Editor of the Every-Day Book. JOE BROWN-THE CHURCH WATCH. Sir,-As you solicit communications of local usages or customs, I send you some account of the "Watching the church" on St. Mark's E'en, in Yorkshire. According to the superstitions of some other counties, the eve of St. John's day is the privileged night for unquiet spirits to revisit the upper world, and fit over the scenes of their mortal existence. But, in Yorkshire, it was believed by the superstious and the peasantry within these twenty years, and is so still perhaps, that if a person have the hardihood to place himself within the porch of the church, or in a position which commands the church door, on the ghostly e'en of St. Mark, (it must be St. Mark, O. S.,) he will see the souls of those whose bodies are to be buried at that church the fol lowing year, approach the church in the dead waste and middle of the night. The doors are flung open by some invisible hand just at twelve o'clock, and the spirits enter in the rotation their mortal bodies are to die in. This hour is an epitome of the year; those who are to die soon, enter the first-and those who will almost survive the year, do not approach until nearly one o'clock, at which time the doors are carefully closed and secured as they were in the day. Another remarkable feature in the shadowy pageant is this; those that come to an untimely end, are represented by their ghostly proxies, in the very article of dissolution. If a person is to be hanged, or to hang himself, as Burns says in his "Tam O'Shanter," "Wi' his last gasp his gab will gape." If the person is to be drowned, his representative will come as if struggling and splashing in water, and so on in other cases of premature death. I must likewise mention, that the "church-watcher" pretends he is fixed in a state of impotence to his seat, during the ghostly hour, and only receives the use of his powers of locomotion when the clock strikes one. Another peculiarity attends this nocturnal scene: the souls of those who are to be seriously indisposed, likewise join the procession; they peep into the church, face about, and return to their wonted residences in their slumbering mortal habitations. But the souls of the condemned enter the church, and are not observed to return. When a boy at home, I recollect a man who was said to watch the church; his name was "Joe Brown." This man used to inspire my youthful fancy with great awe. I was not the only one who regarded him with fear he contrived by a certain mysterious behaviour, to impress weak and youthful minds with feelings which bordered upon terror. His person is vividly imprinted on my memory; his face was broad, his features coarse, and he had what is called a hare-lip, which caused him to speak through the nose, or to snaffle, as they term it in Yorkshire. He never would directly acknowledge that he watched the church; but a mysterious shrug or nod tended to convey the assertion. Two circumstances which took place in my remembrance, served to stamp his fame as a ghost-seer. At the fair-tide, he quarreled with a young man, who put him out of the room in which they were drinking; he told his antagonist that he would be under the sod before that day twelve months, which happened to be the case. The other circumstance was this; he reported a young man would be drowned, who lived in the same street in which my father's house was situated. I well recollect the report being current early in the year. On Easter Sunday, a fine young man, a bricklayer's apprentice went to bathe in the river Ouse, (which runs by C――d, my native town,) and was drowned; this fulfilled his prediction, and made him be regarded with wonder. Whether excited by the celebrity such casual forebodings acquired him, or whether a knavish propensity lurked at the bottom of his affected visionary abstractedness, this last of the "church-watchers" turned out an arrant rogue; the latter years of his execrable existence were marked with rapine and murder. For a time he assumed the mask of religion, but the discipline of the sect he joined was too strict to suit his dishonest views. He was expelled the society for mal-practices, quickly joined himself to another, and afterwards associated with a loose young man, who, if alive, is in New South Wales, whither he was transported for life. They commenced a system of petty plunder, which soon increased to more daring acts of robbery and burglary. They withdrew to a distance from C-d for a time; a warrant was out against them for a burglary, of which they were the suspected perpetrators. They went to a small town where they were not known, and assumed the disguise of fortune-tellers. "Old Joe" was the "wise man," and affected to be dumb, whilst his younger confederate, like a flamen of old, interpreted his mystic signs. They lodged at a house kept by two aged sisters, spinsters. They found that these females were possessed of a little money, and kept it in a box. One night they gave their hostesses sweetened ale, in which they had infused a quantity of laudanum. One of the poor women never woke again, but the other lived. These men were taken up and examined, but liberated for want of proof. They after wards were suspected of having shot the Leeds and Selby carrier in the night; at length they were taken for stealing some hams, and in consequence of their bad character, sentenced to transportation for life. The termination of Joe's life was remarkable; Sampson like, he drew destruction on his own head. When about to be embarked for Botany Bay, Joe, either touched by conscience, or through reluctance to leave England, made |