The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1846-01-06 00:00:00

THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD.

JANUARY SIXTH-THE EPIPHANY.

(Sharpe* London Magr!zine,)

This festival is' celebrated by the whole Western
Church. Pope Julius 1., iat the fourth century, is said to
have directed the Nativity, and Epiphany, or Manifesta-
tion of Christ to the Magi, to be celebrated on distinct
days. The Greeks still keep Epiphany with the Birth of
Christ, on Christmas-day. From the circumstance of
this festival being held twelve days after Christmas, it is
called Twelfth-day. It was formerly also styled The
Feast of Kings (in reference to the supposed regal dignity
of the Wise Men), a name which in Spain it still retains.
The customs of this day, though various in different
countries, yet agree in the same eittl, to do honour to the
Eastern Magi. In France, one of the courtiers was for-
merly chosen king, and waited upon by the real sovereign,
and his nobles, at a grand entertainment. In Germany
they observed nearly the same custom in cities and acade-
mies. At our own universities, not many years ago, and
in private entertainments, it was usual to give the name
of king to one of the company, and to honour him with
mock homage. "In every family," says an eloquent
writer, alluding to the Twelfth-day of the olden time, "a
king was chosen, who ruled for the day." This choice
was usually made by means of a bean found in a piece of
divided cake. Mr. Horace Smith thinks this mode of
perpetuating the remembrance of the Wise Men unly
have been partly borrowed from the Roman Saturnalia,
when the masters made a ba.nquet for their servants, and
waited upon them; and partly from the Roman custom
of drawing lots, or beans, for the title of king, when the
fortunate party was declared a monarch of the festive
circle, over which he exercised full authority until they
separated. Allusion has been made to the Tweltth-night
cake, in connexion with the ancient usual way of choosing
the Twelfth-night sovereign. The ancient cake was com-
posed of flour, honey, ginger, and pepper. Mr. Fosbroke
says that it " was full of plums, with a bean in it for the
king, and a pea for the queen, so as to determine them
by the slices. Sometimes a penny was put in the cake,
and the person who obtained it i ecoming king, crossed
all the beams and rafters of the house against devils."
The custom of choosing a king and queen on Twelfth-
night, has never been wholly left off in England. A writer
in 1744 says: " After tea yesterday, a noble cake was
produced, and two bowls, containing the fortunate chances
for the diffe?W sexes. Our host filled up the tickets,
the whole company, except the king and queen, were to
be ministers of states, maids of honour, or ladies of the
bed-chamber. Our kind host and hostess, whether by
design or accident became king and queen. According
to Twelfth-day law, each party is to support their charac-
ter till midnight." "At present," writes Mr. Brady,
at the beginning of the nineteenth century, " the honours
of king and queen, and others of a festive nature, intros
duced to heighten the jollity, are determined by the draw-
ing of folded slips of paper, on which are inscribed these
ephemeral distinctions, though the practice of drawing
beans is yet preserved in some few districts. Every one
knows that the custom of eating Twelfth-cake, and draw-
ing "characters," is still retained in London and some of
the provinces.
In France the Twelfth-cake is plain, with a bean, and
the drawer of the slice containing the bean is king or
queen. There is no other drawing, and consequently the
sovereign is the only distinguished personage. In Nor-
mandy they place a child under the table, which is covered
in such a manner with the cloth that he cannot see what
is doing ; and when the cake is divided, one of the com-
pany, taking up the first piece, cries out, " Fabe Domini
pour qui ?" The child answers, " Pour le bon Dieu ;"
and in this manner the pieces ate allotted to the company.
If the bean be found in the piece for the " bon Dieu,"
the king is chosen by drawing long or short straws.
Whoever gets the bean chooses the king or queen. accord-
ing as it happens to be a man or a woman. At the close
of 1792, in the French Revolution, the Council General
of the Commons at Paris ordained that " La Fete de
Itois" (Twelfth-day) was thenceforth to be called " La
Fete de Sans-Culottes." To this nominal change the
French consented, but they would not resign the festival.
" While the statue of Marat," says Cbateaubriand,
" usurped the place of the image of S. Vincent de Paul,
while people celebrated all those festivals the anniversaries
of which are marked in our calendars as days of eternal
grief, many a pious family secretly kept a Christian holi-
day, and religion still mingled a small proportion of joy
with a sea of affliction. Simple hearts cannot recollect,
without emotion, the happy hours when whole families
assemb'ed round their cakes, which recalled to mind the
presents of the Magi. The infirm grandfather, confined
all the rest of the year to his room, made his appearance
on this festive occasion. His grandchildren, who had
long anticipated the expected feast, surrounded his knees,
and made him young again with their affectionate vivacity.
Joy beamed from each face, and every heart swelled with
transport; the festive apartment was unusually decorated,
and each individual appeared in his best clothes. Amid
loud bursts of merriment, the happy company drew lots
for those royalties which cost neitl et sighs nor tears; and
oftimes an artifice, which heightened the mirth of the
subject, and drew complaints from the queen alone,
transferred the highest dignities to the daughter of the
house, and the son of some neighbour. lately arrived from
the army. The young people blushed, embarrassed as
they were with their crowns; the mothers smiled ; the
fathers made signs to one another, and the grandfather
drank his glass to the prosperity of the new queen.
"The pastor, who was present at the festival, received
the first portion, styled the portion of the poor, to be dis-
tributed among them, with other gifts. Diversions
handed down from days of yore ; a ball, at which some
aged domestic performed the part of first musician, pro-
longed the pleasure's of the festival till late at night ; and
the whole company nurses and children, farmers, servants
and masters, joined all together in the sprightly dance.
"These scenes were formerly repeated throughout all
Christendom, from the palace to the cottage. And what
a succession of happy days ! Christmas, New-year's day,
and Twelfth-day. At that time the farmers renewed their
leases, the tradesman was paid his bills; it was the time
of marriages, of presents, and of charity; the companies,
fraternities, courts of justice, universities, corporations
assembled according to the ancient Gallic custom ; the
infirm and indigent were relieved. The obligation you
were under to receive your neighbour at this season,
made you live on good terms with him all the rest of the
year.'

ARTESIAN WELLS.—The simple well has been known
and used from the earliest periods for procuring water.
In ancient times it was raised from these pits by means of
a vessel let down by a rope or chain, and hence the ex-
pression of drawing water. Modern science has greatly
improved this simple machinery by the introduction of
pumps of various kinds. But a still more remarkable ap-
plication of science has been made in the general intro-
duction of what are named Artesian wells. They are so
designated from the province of Artois, in France, where
they have been in use from the twelfth century. They
have also been long known to the Chinese, who employ
them in some of the central provinces for procuring salt
water, from which they condense the salt by fires of na-
tural gas which rise from other similar holes. The prin-
ciple of Artesian wells will be readily understood rrom the
illustration lately used. Were we to suppose two bowls,
one within the other, and the interval between them full
of water. it is evident that on a hole being pierced in the
bottom of the inner one the water would flow up through
it, and as fluids in connected vessels always stand at the
same height, or, as it is commonly expressed, seek their
level, were a tube placed in the hole, the water would rise
to the same elevation in it as between the vessels. Now,
as formerly mentioned, valleys or extensive basins occur,
in which the rocks and the water contained in them are
disposed in a similar manner. Thus London stands in a
basin of tertiary rocks, consisting of beds of sand and
clay, nearly horizontal in the centre, but rising up all
round to the chalk hills in Surrey, Hants, Berks, Buck-
ingham, and Hertford. The chalk itself forms somewhat
of a similar basin. and, like the beds of sand, is very per-
vious to water. When, therefore, the London clay is pe-
netrated to one of the reservoirs of water, it rises up
sometimes to the surface, at other times even above it.
Many wells of this kind have been formed of late years,
in which water has been found at various depths. At
Sheerness it was obtained at three hundred feet in the
London clay or tertiary beds, and lose above the surface;
but at Fulham the bore bad to be carried about-seventy
feet into the chalk before a successful result was attained.
In the gardens of the Horticultural Society at Chiswick,
a plentiful supply was secured at three hundred and thirty
feet. But in the grounds above Chiswick no water was
met with in the tertiary strata, nor until the chalk had
penetrated to a great depth ; but at six hundred and
twenty feet a source was reached which rose to four feet
above the surface.—Hogy's Weekly Instructor.
MAY FIELDING'S " GENTEEL MAMMA."—May ut-
tered no word, good or bad, but sat quite still, with her
eyes cast down; and made no sign of interest in what had
passed. The good lady her mother now interposed : ob-
serving, in the first instance, that girls were girls, and
byegones byegones, and that so long as young people were
young and thoughtless, they would probably conduct
themselves like young and thoughtless persons: with two
or three other positions of a no less sound and incontro-
vertible character. She then remarked, in a devout spi-
rit, that she thanked Heaven she had always found in her
daughter May, a dutiful and obedient child; for which
she took no credit to herself, though she had every reason
to believe it was entirely owing to herself. With regard
to Mr. Tackleton, she said, that he was in a moral point
of view an undeniable individual; and that he was in an
eligible point of view a son-in-law to be desired, no one
in their senses could doubt. (She was very emphatic
here.) With regard to the family into which he was so
soon about, after some solicitation, to be admitted, she
believed Mr. Tackleton knew that, although reduced in
purse, it had some pretensions of gentility ; and that if
certain circumstances, not wholly unconnected, she would
go so far as to say, with the Indigo Trade, but to wl, 2,b
she would more particularly refer, bad happened difier-
ently, it might perhaps have been in a possession of
wealth. She then remarked that she would not allude to
the past, and would not mention that her daughter had
for some time rejected the suit of Mr. Tackleton; and
that she would not say a great many other things which
she did say at great length. Finally, she delivered it as
the general result of her observation and experience, that
those marriages in which there was least of what there
was romantically and sillily called love, were always the
happiest; and that she anticipated the greatest amount of
bliss—not rapturous bliss; but the solid, steady going ar-
ticle—from the approaching nuptials. She concluded by
informing the company that to-morrow was the day she
had lived for, expressly ; and that when it was over, she
would desire nothing better than to be packed up and dis-
posed:of, in any genteel place of burial. As these re-
marks were quite unanswerable : which is the happy pro-
perty of all remarks that are sufficiently wide for the pur-
pose : they changed the current of the conversation, and
diverted the general attention to the Veal and Ham-Pie,
the cold mutton, the potatoes, and the tart. In order
that the bottled beer might not be slighted, John Peery-
bingle proposed to-morrow : the Wedding-Day : and
called upon them to drink a bumper to it, before he pro-
ceeded on his journey.--Cricket on the Hearth.