was also called Rogation flower, and was carried by maidens in the processions in Rogation week, in early times. The monks discovered its quality of producing milk in nursing women, and hence it was called milkwort. Indeed so extensive was the knowledge of botany, and of the medical power of herbs among the monks of old, that a few examples only can be adduced in a general essay, and indeed it appears that many rare species of exotics were known by them, and were inhabitants of their monastery gardens, which Beckmann in his Geshiete der Erfindungen,' and Dryander in the Hortus Kewensis,' have ascribed to more modern introducers. What is very remarkable is, that above three hundred species of medical plants were known to the monks and friars, and used by the religious orders in general for medicines, which are now to be found in some of our numerous waste lands near abbeys, and on dunghills, &c. Modern botanists, however, have ascribed its introduction to gipsies, although it has never been seen among that wandering people, nor used by them as a drug. I could adduce many other instances of the same sort. But vain indeed would be the endeavour to overshadow the fame of the religious orders in medical botany and the knowledge of plants; go into any garden and the common name of marygold, our lady's seal, our lady's bedstraw, holy oak, (corrupted into holyhock,) the virgin's thistle, St. Barnaby's thistle, herb Trinity, herb St. Christopher, herb St. Robert, herb St. Timothy, Jacob's ladder, star of Bethlehem, now called ornithogalum; star of Jerusalem, now made goatsbeard; passion flower, now passiflora; Lent lilly, now daffodil; Canterbury bells, (so called in honour of St. Augustine,) is now made into Campanula; cursed thistle, now carduus; besides archangel, apple of Jerusalem, St. Paul's betony, Basil, St Berbe, herb St. Barbara, bishopsweed, herba Christi, herba Benedict, herb St. Margaret, (erroneously converted into la belle Marguerite,) god's flower, flos Jovis, Job's tears, our lady's laces, our lady's mantle, our lady's slipper, monk's hood, friar's cowl, St. Deter's herb, and a hundred more such.-Go into any garden, I say, and these names will remind every one at once of the knowledge of plants possessed by the monks. Most of them have been named after the festivals and saints' days on which their natural time of blowing happened to occur; and others were so called, from the tendency of the minds of the religious orders of those days to convert every thing into a memento of sacred history, and the holy religion which they embraced." It will be perceived that CRITO is a Catholic. His floral enumeration is amusing and instructive; and as his bias is natural, so it ought to be inoffensive Liberality makes a large allowance for educational feelings and habitual mistake; but deceptive views, false reasonings, and perverted facts, cannot be used, by either Protestant or Catholic, with impunity to himself, or avail to the cause he espouses. Leo the XII. the present pope, on the 24th of May, 1824, put forth a bull from St. Peter's at Rome. "We have resolved," he says, "by virtue of the authority given o us by heaven fully to unlock the sacred treasure composed of the merits, sufferings, and virtues of Christ our Lord, and of his Virgin Mother, and of all the saints, which the author of human salvation has intrusted to our dispensation. Let the earth therefore hear the words of his mouth. We proclaim that the year of Atonement and Pardon, of Redemption and Grace, of Remission and Indulgence is arrived. We ordain and publish the most solemn Jubilee, to commence in this holy city from the first vespers of the nativity of our most holy saviour, Jesus Christ, next ensuing, and to continue during the whole year 1825, during which time we mercifully give and grant in the Lord a Plenary Indulgence, Remission, and Pardon of all their Sins to all the Faithful of Christ of both sexes, truly penitent and confessing their sins, and receiving the holy communion, who shall devoutly visit the churches of blessed Peter and Paul, as also of St. John Lateran and St. Mary Major of this city for thirty successive days, provided they be Romans or inhabitants of this city; but, if pilgrims or strangers, if they shall do the same for fifteen days, and shall pour forth their pious prayers to God for the exaltation of the holy church, the extirpation of heresies, concord of catholic princes, and the safety and tranquillity of christian people." The pope requires "all the earth" to "therefore ascend, with loins girt up, to holy Jerusalem, this priestly and royal city." He requires the clergy to explain "the power of Indulgences, what is their efficacy, not only in the remission of the canonical penance, but also of the temporal punishment," and to point out the succour afforded to those " now purifying in the fire of Purgatory." However, in February, 1825, one of the public journals contains an extract from the French Journal des Debats, which states that there was "a great falling off in the devotion of saints and pilgrims," and it proves this by an article from Rome, dated January 25, 1825, of which the following is a copy: "The number of pilgrims drawn to Jerusalem (Rome) by the Jubilee is remarkably small, compared with former Jubilees. Without adverting to those of 1300 and 1350, when they had at least a million of pilgrims; in 1750, they had 1,300 pilgrims presented on the 24th of December, at the opening of the holy gate. That number was increased to 8,400 before the ensuing New Year's day. This time (Christmas, 1824) they had no more than thirty-six pilgrims at the opening of the holy gate, and in the course of Christmas week, that number increased only to 440. This is explained by the strict measures adopted in the Italian states with respect to the passports of pilgrims. The police have taken into their heads, that a vast number of individuals from all parts of Europe wish to bring about some revolutionary plot. They believe that the Carbonari, or some other Italian patriots, assemble here in crowds to accomplish a dangerous object. The passports of simple labourers, and other inferior classes, are rejected at Milan, and the surrounding cities of Austrian Italy, when they have not a number of signatures, which these poor men consider quite unnecessary. They cannot enter the Sardinian states without great difficulty. These circumstances are deplorable in the eyes of religious men. We are all grieved at this place." On this, the Journal des Debuts remarks," Notwithstanding the excuse for so great a reduction of late years in the number of these devotees, it has evidently been produced by the diffusion of knowledge. Men, in 1825, are not so simple as to suppose they cannot be saved, without a long and painful journey to Jerusalem (Rome.)" FLORAL DIRECTORY. Peach. Amygdalus Persica. Dedicated to St. Walburg. February 26. St. Alexander. St. Porphyrius, Bishop of Gaza, A. D. 420. St. Victor, or Vittre, 7th Cent. St. Alexander. This is the patriarch of Alexandria so famous in ecclesiastical history for his opposition to Arius whom, with St. his especial colleagues, he resisted at the Athanasius and Marcellus of Ancyra, as council of Nice, till Arius was banished, his books ordered to be burnt, and an edict issued denouncing death to any who secreted them. On the death of St. Alexander in 420, St. Athanasius succeeded to his patriarchal chair. FOGS. The fogs of England have been at all times the complaint of foreigners. Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador, when some one who was going to Spain waited on him to ask whether he had any commands, replied, "Only my compliments to the sun, whom I have not seen since I came to England."-Carraccioli, the Neapolitan minister here, a man of a good deal of conversation and wit, used to say, that the only ripe fruit he had seen in England were roasted apples! and in a conversation with George II. he took the liberty of preferring the moon of Naples to the sun of England. TIME. Time is the stuff that life is made of,' says Young. "BEGONE about your business," says the dial in the Temple: a good admonition to a loiterer on the pavement below. The great French chancellor, d'Aguesseau, employed all his time. Observing that madame d'Aguesseau always delayed ten or twelve minutes before she came down to dinner, he composed a work entirely in this time, in order not to lose an instant; the result was, at the end of fifteen years, a book in three large volumes quarto, which went through several editions. FLORAL DIRECTORY. Lungwort. Pulmonaria Officinalis. Dedicated to Leander. February 28. Martyrs to the Pestilence in Alexandria, 261, &c. St. Proterius, Patriarch of Alexandria, 557. Sts. Romanus and Lupicinus. Sts. Romanus and Lupicinus. These saints were brothers, who founded the monastery of Condate with a nunnery, in the forest of Jura. St. Lupicinus prescribed a hard regimen. He lived himself on bread moistened with cold water, used a chair or a hard board for a bed, wore no stockings in his monastery, walked in wooden shoes, and died about 480. FLORAL DIRECTORY. Purple Crocus. Crocus vernus. Dedicated to St. Proterius. Five Sundays in February. The February of 1824, being leap-year, consisted of twenty-nine days; it contained five Sundays, a circumstance which cannot again occur till another leap-year, wherein the first of February shall fall on Sunday. FOR THE MEMORY Old Memorandum of the Months. Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November, All the rest have thirty and one, Except February, which hath twenty-eight alone. MARCH is the third month of the year; with the ancients it was the first: according to Mr. Leigh Hunt, from Ovid, the Romans named it from Mars, the god of war, because he was the father of their first prince. "As to the deity's nature, March has certainly nothing in common with it; for though it affects to be very rough, it is one of the best natured months in the year, drying up the superabundant. moisture of winter with its fierce winds, and thus restoring us our paths through the fields, and piping before the flowers like a bacchanal. He sometimes, it must be confessed, as if in a fit of the spleen, hinders the buds which he has dried from blowing; and it is allowable in the less robust part of his friends out of doors, to object to the fancy he has for coming in such a cutting manner from the east. But it may be truly said, that the oftener you Spenser. meet him firmly, the less he will shake you; and the more smiles you will have from the fair months that follow him." Perhaps the ascription of this month to Mars, by the Romans, was a compliment to themselves; they were the sons of War, and might naturally deduce their origin from the belligerent deity. Minerva was also patroness of March. Verstegan says of our Saxon ancestors, that "the moneth of March they called Lenct-monat, that is, according to our new orthography, Length-moneth, because the dayes did then first begin in length to exceed the nights. And this moneth being by our ancestors so called when they received Christianity, and consequently therewith the ancient christian custome of fasting, they called this chiefe season of fasting the fast of Lenct, because of the Lenct-monat, whereon the most part of the time of this fasting alwayes fell; and hereof it cometh that we now cal it Lent, it being rather the fast of Lent, thogh the former name of Lenctmonat be long since lost, and the name of March borrowed in stead thereof." Lenct, or Lent, however, means Spring; hence March was the Spring-month. Dr. Sayer says the Saxons likewise called it Rhedmonath,a word derived by some from one of their deities, named Rheda, to whom sacrifices were offered in March; others derive it from ræd, the Saxon word for council, March being the month wherein wars or expeditions were usually undertaken by the Gothic tribes, The Saxons also called it Hlyd-monath, from hlyd, which means stormy, and in this sense March was the Stormy month. แ No living writer discourses so agreeably on the Months" as Mr. Leigh Hunt in his little volume bearing that title. He says of March, that "The animal creation now exhibit unequivocal signs of activity. The farmer extends the exercise of his plough; and, if fair weather continues, begins sowing barley and oats. Bats and reptiles break up their winter sleep: the little smelts or sparlings run up the softened rivers to spawn: the field-fare and woodcock return to their northern quarters; the rooks are all in motion with building and repairing their nests; hens sit; geese and ducks lay; pheasants crow; the ring-dove coos; young lambs come tottering forth in mild weather; the throstle warbles on the top of some naked tree, as if he triumphed over the last lingering of barrenness; and, lastly, forth issues the bee with his vernal trumpet, to tell us that there is news of sunshine and the flowers. In addition to the last month's flowers, we now have the crownimperial, the dog's-tooth violet, fritillaries, the hyacinth, narcissus, (bending its face like its namesake,) pilewort, scarlet ranun culus, great snow-drop, tulips, (which turned even the Dutch to enthusiasts,) and violets, proverbial for their odour, which were perhaps the favourite flowers of Shakspeare. The passage at the beginning of 'Twelfth Night,' in which he compares their scent with the passing sweetness of inusic is well-known, and probably suggested the beautiful one in lord Bacon's Essays,' about the superiority of flowers in the open air, where the scent comes and goes like the warbling of Lausic.'" No. 11. ST. DAVID. Patron of Wales. St. David, or, in Welch, Dewid, was son of Xantus, prince of Cardiganshire, the Isle of Wight, afterwards preached to brought up a priest, became an ascetic in the Britons, founded twelve monasteries, milk and water. ate only bread and vegetables, and drank at Brevy, in Cardiganshire, A. D. 519, in A synod being called order to suppress the heresy of Pelagius, «St. David confuted and silenced the infernal monster by his learning, eloquence, and miracles." After the synod, St. Dubritius, archbishop of Caerleon, resigned his see to St. David, which see is St. Kentigern saw his soul borne by angels now called St. David's. He died in 544. to heaven; his body was in the church of St. Andrew. In 962, his relics were translated to Glastonbury. Butler conceals that St. David's mother was not married to his father, but Cressy tells the story out, and that his birth was prophecied of thirty years before it happened. is, that at the anti-Pelagian synod he reOne of the miracles alleged of St. David stored a child to life, ordered it to spread a napkin under his feet, and made an oration; that a snow white dove descended from heaven and sat on his shoulders; and that the ground whereon he stood rose under him till it became a hill," on the top of which hill a church was afterwards built, which remains to this day." He assembled a provincial synod to confirm the de of both synods for preservation in his crees of Brevy; and wrote the proceedings own church, and to be sent to the other churches of the province; but they were lost by age, negligence, and the incursions of pirates, who almost every summer came Butler's Saints. |