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11. FIRST PLANTING OF THE POTATO IN IRELAND Vignette Title

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XI. TOUTES PENSENT ÊTRE À LA FIN DU MONDE.

XII. FIRST PLANTING OF THE VINE IN GAUL

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XV. THE NIGHT BEFORE LARRY WAS STRETCHED.
XVI. DANS UN GRENIER QU'ON EST BIEN À VINGT ANS

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"At Covent Garden a sacred drama, on the story of

Jephtha, conveying solemn impressions, is PROHIBITED as a PROFANATION of the period of fasting and mortification ! There is no doubt where the odium should fix—on the Lord Chamberlain or on the BISHOP OF LONDON. Let some intelligent Member of Parliament bring the question before the HOUSE OF COMMONS."

Times, Feb. 20 and 21, 1834.

THE

RELIQUES

OF

FATHER PROUT.

FATHER PROUT'S APOLOGY FOR LENT: HIS DEATH, OBSEQUIES, AND AN ELEGY.

"Cependant, suivant la chronique,
Le Carême, depuis un mois,

Sur tout l'univers Catholique

Etendait ses sévères lois."-GRESSET.

"Lent sermons abound-fresh preachers are sent

At this season of fast and sorrow;

And the loan is complete-for the preacher is-Lent,
While his sermon he's apt to borrow."

MSS. of the late Tom Ingoldsby.

THERE has been this season in town a sad outcry against Lent. For the first week the metropolis was in a complete uproar at the suppression of the oratorio; and no act of authority since the fatal ordonnances of Charles X. bid fairer to revolutionise a capital than the message sent from Bishop Blomfield to Manager Bunn. That storm has happily blown over. The Cockneys, having fretted their idle hour, and vented their impotent ire through their "safety-valve," the press, have resumed their customary calm. The dramatic "murder of Jephtha" is forgotten. In truth, after all, there was something due to local reminiscences; and when the present tenants of the "Gar

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den" recollect that in by-gone days these "deep solitudes and awful cells were the abode of fasting and austerity, they will not grudge the once-hallowed premises to commemorate in sober stillness the Wednesdays and Fridays of Lent. But let that rest. An infringement on the freedom of theatricals, though in itself a grievance, will not, in all likelihood, be the immediate cause of a convulsion in these realms; and it will probably require some more palpable deprivation to arouse the sleeping energies of John Bull, and to awake his dormant anger.

It was characteristic of the degeneracy of the Romans, that while they crouched in prostrate servility to each imperial monster that swayed their destinies in succession, they never would allow their amusements to be invaded, nor tolerate a cessation of the sports of the amphitheatre; so that even the despot, while he rivetted their chains, would pause and shudder at the well-known ferocious cry of "Panem et Circenses!" Now, food and the drama stand relatively to each other in very different degrees of importance in England; and while provisions are plentiful, other matters have but a minor influence on the popular sensibilities. The time may come, when, by the bungling measures of a Whig administration, brought to their full maturity of mischief by the studied neglect of the agricultural and shipping interests, the general disorganisation of the state-machinery at home, and the natural results of their intermeddling abroad, a dearth of the primary articles of domestic consumption may bring to the Englishman's fireside the broad conviction of a misrule and mismanagement too long and too sluggishly endured. It may then be too late to apply remedial measures with efficacy; and the only resource left, may be, like Caleb Balderstone at Wolf's Crag, to proclaim a general fast.” When that emergency shall arise, the quaint and original, nay, sometimes luminous and philosophic, views of Father Prout on the fast of Lent, may afford much matter for speculation to the British public; or, as Childe Harold says,

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"Much that may give us pause, if pondered fittingly."

Before we bring forward Father Prout's lucubrations on

this grave subject, it may be allowable, by way of preliminary observation, to remark, that, as far as Lent is concerned, as well indeed as in all other matters, "they manage these things differently abroad." In foreign countries a carnival is the appropriate prelude to abstemiousness; and folks get such a surfeit of amusement during the saturnalian days which precede its observance, that they find a grateful repose in the sedate quietude that ensues. The custom is a point of national taste, which I leave to its own merits; but whoever has resided on the Continent must have observed that all this bacchanalian riot suddenly terminates on Shrove Tuesday; the fun and frolic expire with the "boeuf-gras ;" and the shouts of the revellers, so boisterous and incessant during the preceding week, on Ash Wednesday are heard no more. A singular ceremony in all the churches-that of sprinkling over the congregation on that Wednesday the_pulverised embers of the boughs of an evergreen (meant, I suppose, as an emblem and record of man's mortality)-appears to have the instantaneous effect of turning their thoughts into a different channel: the busy hum subsides at once; and learned commentators have found, in the fourth book of Virgil's Georgics, a prophetic allusion to this magic operation:

"Hi motus animorum atque hæc certamina tanta
Pulveris exigui jactu compressa quiescunt."

The non-consumption of butchers' meat, and the substitution of fish diet, is also a prominent feature in the continental form of observing Lent; and on this topic Father Prout has been remarkably discursive, as will be seen on perusal of the following pages. To explain how I became the depository of the reverend man's notions, and why he did not publish them in his lifetime (for, alas! he is no more-peace be to his ashes!) is a duty which I owe the reader, and from which I am far from shrinking. I admit that some apology is required for conveying the lucid and clarified ideas of a great and good divine through the opaque and profane medium that is now employed to bring them under the public eye; I account for it accordingly.

I am a younger son. I belong to an ancient, but poor and dilapidated house, of which the patrimonial estate was

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