ENGLISH HOLIDAYS. 99

master he first paid a ducat to the guild; and then | dressed, washed, and combed when they attended

in the course of the next fourteen days concocted his diachylon, gyptiacum, &e., &e. Each time that he mixed the necessary ingredients, he was bound to call the whole guild together and enter- tain the members with a good dinner; if it were not good enough, or did not satisfy the masters, he had to pay a fine. At the end of the fourteen

days, he prepared his plaisters in the presence of |

all the masters, whom he was bound to furnish with food and drink the while. If the master- piece turned out ill, there was a fine to pay; if on the contrary it was successful, there was still a tax to pay, though in a more pleasant shape, for the

man was expected to give what was called his |

master’s banquet, consisting of good roast and boiled meat and good wine, and to it he must invite not only all the masters, but their wives. If the banquet failed to give satisfaction, he had to

rules of the honourable company, presented each master with a ducat and had his name enrolied on the register of the guild. Then, as the youngest master, he had to serve the guild at its banquets,

and was bound not to get tipsy himself, so that he |

might give an eye to the older masters, if they chanced to have taken too much, and might be able to give a clear report of the proceedings the following day.

Among these barber-surgeons, much of the same etiquette was observed as among the medical pro- fession of the present day. For instance, if a patient had had a wound bound up by one master barber and then went to another, the latter could not attend to him without being guilty of a grave breach of etiquette. If he did, however, bind up his wound or so much as touch it, knowing that

another had previously done it, he was fined at an | * | If, indeed, the |

increasing rate for each offence. wound was dangerous and requiring immediate ttention, he might exonerate himself by calling the whole guild together, and in this case, the patient had to pay instead. No such operation as

the amputation of a hand or foot, or the setting of |

a dislocated shoulder, might be performed, save in

the presence of the whole guild—the patient’s | How- | ever, it would be too long to tell all the old) customs of the various guilds; how the journey- | men tailors of one company never received more |

nerves were not considered in those days!

than 23d. for their weekly wages, and for this were obliged to work from 2 a.m. to 9 P.mw.; how at Komorn the youngest master-tailors had to put up all the candles in the chureh before mass on all festivals and throughout Advent under pain of forfeiting a pound of wax to the church; how

the bootmakers were directed to appear properly |

meetings of their guild, not to take too much snuff, and above all not to dirty their moustaches with it, for fear of disousting the other masters when they happened to be drinking out of the same beaker; how no one was to let his handker- chief hang out of his pocket on these occasions;

/how among the butchers it. was forbidden for

journeymen and ’prentices to use thee and thou in addressing their master, no matter how intimate their relations may previously have been; and how, finally, a button-maker was strictly forbidden to go out walking with journeymen shoemakers, or to enter an inn unless he had one of his own trade with him.

These and many other similar laws and regula- tions gradually came to be out of harmony with the changed spirit and ideas of the age; and

/under the celebrated Queen Maria Theresa many pay down twenty-four guiden on the spot. The | following day, he took his oath to observe all the |

of them were abrogated, the guilds being provided with new charters, This partial reform was followed by a more thorough revision at the begin-

|ning of the present century, when every corpora- | tion in the kingdom was ordered to provide itself

with a fresh code, eR eee

Eneuisnh Hormays.—Work is a blessed thing for philan-

| thropists and philosophers to descant upon in the abstract ;

but it begins to pall on the nerves when it resolves itself into

| a steady grinding strain at making the two ends meet. The ; chances are that working people out for their occasional day

feel the hopelessness of letting their burden of care slip from their shoulders, so they are driven to resort to the excitement of noise or of mere material stimulants to enable them to for- get it. Others make it a leading article of their creed that so solemn an occasion as an annual day in the country should be decently féted with appropriate libations. The spirit of good fellowship reciprocates freehanded hospitality, and if cach in- dividual of a promiscuous vanful is determined to remain in- debted to none of his hospitable fellows, it is easy to calculate roughly the quantity of ale consumed before the party arrives at Epping or Hampton. The result is a burst of factitious meryiment, ending in violence, ribaldry, or dismal reaction. Instead of being the fresher, the happier, and the better, the galley-slave returns to resume his labour at the oar with feverish frame, trembling hands, and racking headache. Ex- perience tells him that the lurid gleams which break the dul- ness of his daily toil are sheer illusions, and what should give him hope and courage loses its value for him. It may seem a bold thing to assert, but we are convinced that nowhere is work taken so easily as in a great English city. Go to Cheap- side or Cornhill any day at high noon, and if you are at all in haste, you are irritated beyond endurance by the pottering crowd of busy men in which you get entangled. It stands to reason it should be so. If a hired clerk knows he must be on duty from his early breakfast to his tea-supper, naturally he will dawdle through his duties. If his master thinks it necessary to remain to superintend, just as naturally he will lounge at his post. If one or the other saw some little hope in their daily lives, if they knew that occasionally they would be taken off the treadmill and turned out to disport themselves where they could refresh the reminiscences of their boyhood, ean any one doubt that more and better work would be done? —Saturday Review.