one or two specimens of soon came to think that they ought to find the government bread disagree with them, and even to believe that it certainly would, or actually did. They pitied themselves, and condoled with each other, lamenting their hard fate in being obliged to break the law of the country, by force of necessity which had no law at all; and they set to work to make bread which they might eat without being ordered to do so, and found it agree with them amazingly at least they said so.

The government was of course aware of all this, and of the evils arising from such illicit practices; and, besides this, it really wished, as far as possible, to make the people happy, even in regard to what it considered in some degree a matter of caprice and fancy. It passed an act, by which any person who pleased was allowed to take out a licence without any expense or trouble, authorizing him or her to eat any bread, or anything in, or pretending to, the nature of bread, made in anyway whatsoever, whether baked or unbaked, either at home or by any baker or manufacturer whom they should choose to patronize, on their simply making an affidavit that they were afraid to eat the government bread, lest it should disagree with them. This was considered as very kind at the time, and indeed some people thought it was going (to say the least) as far as was safe in humouring what was, in a great degree, fancy. But, as my grandfather used to say, it was not all fancy then, whatever it might have been originally. He thought that as matters then were, when many of the people were really frightened, and in actual danger of being starved or choked if compulsion were used, the best thing that could be done was to put it to their consciences by the affidavit, and so keep the evil within as narrow bounds as possible. If steam engines had been familiar in those days, he would perhaps have compared the affidavit to a safety valve, by which an irregular and dangerous force might safely escape.

Well, of course a great many persons took advantage of the indulgence; and bakers' shops of all sorts and sizes, and with all sorts of bread, began to abound. You may easily suppose that these private bakers could not have found sufficient support merely from those who could conscientiously make the affidavit; but the fact is, that the whole origin and design of the thing was very soon in a great degree forgotten. It is almost incredible how soon people (and many very honest people too) lost sight of the spirit of the " Act for the Relief of Weak Stomachs," and came to consider it as if it had been an act to repeal that one by which the government company had been established. You will naturally suppose that those who dealt with the private bakers brought up their children to do the same; and by when that generation had grown up to be men and women, some had forgotten, and a greater part had never known, that they were under the slightest obligation to use the government provision, or that there was any moral propriety in their using one sort more than another, supposing that they felt able to do it. You cannot think how they argued, and on what entirely different grounds they put the question. I was talking to a gentleman who, I knew, frequently dealt at the private shops, and on my urging the excellence of the government bread, I

was surprised at his answering, "The best in the world, Sir; I adınire it beyond anything; none of the private manufacturers can pretend to furnish such an article." "Then why do you go to them?" said I. “Oh dear,” he replied, "what has that to do with it? That would be exclusive, and would look like a very unkind reflection upon a great many very respectable tradesmen and their customers; no, I am a true patriot, I love all my countrymen, and desire to shew my good will to all: the two best things in the world are peace and plenty; and peace is best attained by being very friendly with everybody about everything; and as to plenty, it stands to reason that the more bakers there are the more bread will be baked, and the cheaper it will be, and therefore the more plentiful. If I was obliged to keep to one sort, I quite agree with you that there is none like the government bread. I always have it for breakfast, and some private baker's for tea." "But," said I, "do you feel yourself quite at liberty to do this ?" "To be sure," he replied; "who is to hinder me?" "Nobody," I answered, "if your own conscience is satisfied; but since you acknowledge that the government bread agrees with you, what do you say to the act?" To my great astonishment he answered, "What act?" And on my explaining myself, he assured me that he had never heard of it. "Never heard of it!" said I," why, it is under and by virtue of that act, and with the distinct and constant recognition of it as their Magna Charta, that these private bakers carry on business at all, or anybody ventures to deal with them. "That's very odd," said he, "but I do not think that one person in fifty knows any more about it than I do. I have often heard the name of the act, but never knew what it was; and now you remind me, I have also heard some of the private bakers tell their customers, that they did not believe they knew why they dealt with them; which I thought very comical, but I suppose it was under an apprehension that unless they got up something to meet the act, people might think (or they might come to think themselves) that they had no business to deal there at all."

The fact is, that circumstances conduced very much to keep people in ignorance, and even to lead them into mistake. When first the private bakers began business, they did it in a very quiet way; and if any one of them had put on the red cap and white apron, which distinguished the government bakers, or had set up over his door the lion and unicorn, which adorned the government stores, I believe that his companions would have sent him to Coventry. But this feeling, which was a mixture of pride and delicacy, gradually wore off. Of course the private bakers, who depended entirely on the custom which they got, desired to get all they could, and used various plans for that purpose; but one thing was greatly against them in this competition with the government men. They could not supply their customers anything like so cheap, because the company had been not only chartered, but endowed, and furnished with various privileges and immunities in order to enable them to sell cheap for the public benefit; so that their living did not by any means depend on their success in putting off their wares. On the other hand, the private tradesmen had some advantages, the principal of which was that they were not under the

same control as the others, and could therefore do as they pleased, and make all sorts of inventions to gain custom. These were chiefly two,-one, the assimilating their bread as much as possible to cakes and gingerbread; the other, swelling up puff paste so as to seem as if they gave a great deal for the money. Besides, there were varieties suited to all tastes; some made their bread sweet, and people bought it because it was so nice; some made it bitter, and it sold prodigiously because it was so wholesome; some sold their great loaves because they were so solid; and some their French rolls because they were so light. But though there might be a little of what are called, in the milder sense, the tricks of trade, yet most of them were very good kind of men, who did not mean to cheat, and who really took a great deal of pains in the manufacture of their own articles, though they might not always speak quite fairly of other people's.

But all would not have done had it not been that, as I have already stated, the pride and delicacy of the private bakers by degrees wore off. They were of course, from the first, in a certain sense, opponents of the government bakers; but they were really jealous of anything that might have looked like the affectation of being rivals. They put their shops in quiet, out-of-the-way places, where they looked rather dismal and uninviting, even by daylight; and as to lighting them up, they were strenuous in maintaining that a tallow candle, stuck in a lump of dough, was as sufficient for all purposes of business as the lamps and wax lights of the government stores, and much more creditable. And as to the dress of the government men, what could be more foolish? Could not a man bake good bread without a red cap and an apron? They did not mean to say that the government intended to cheat the people. But was it not only too probable, that when people (especially children) went to buy bread, they would be so taken with the red cap, perhaps with a tassel, (some said bells, but that was not true,) that they would only lay down their pence upon the counter, stare at the baker, and come away without the victuals which they went for,-and even, perhaps, get a confused idea that they were to be sustained by gazing at red caps, instead of eating quartern loaves? But, in fact, as their numbers and their notion of their own consequence increased, they fairly became rivals, and felt, or pretended to feel, very indignant, that anybody should make a distinction between public and private stores. They got caps and aprons, lighted up their shops, and put something very like the king's arms over their doors. One, I remember, went so far as to hang up something framed and glazed in his shop, which was almost a facsimile of the government regulations. He might have said that those regulations were very good, and that, if he had a mind to conduct his business according to them, nobody had a right to find fault; that, if it was proper to frame and glaze them, and hang them up in the government stores, there could be no harm in his having them in his, and that he ought to be commended for keeping as close as he could to the law. But he was too candid for this; and when he was asked about it, he fairly said that he did it "to catch the flats."

Such things, however, were not common, though the coming round,

to which I have alluded, was so; and the argument by which it was defended was curious and cogent. "Bread," said they, "is bread;" and they looked round as if they felt quite sure beforehand that nobody would venture to dispute the position. Nobody did; and they went on-" He that bakes bread is a baker." The keenest wits were baffled in the attempt to gainsay it; they paused, but their enemies were silent-everybody knew what was coming; their friends prepared for "much cheering," and the men in red caps put their hands in their pockets, and looked at their shoe-buckles. "Then," said they, quietly but firmly, and very deliberately, "a baker is a baker." It was carried by acclamation; and then, and from that time forward, it was admitted in all polite assemblies (of whatever grade in society) that a baker is bona fide, and to all intents and purposes, and at all times, and under all circumstances, and irrespectively of all accidents, a baker. He may be a fat baker, or a lean baker; he may bake bread, or he may bake brick-bats; he may be a public baker, or a private baker, it makes no difference. Nothing but a narrow-minded spirit of jealousy would look at his accidents; nothing but a mean spirit of oppression would deny him the cap and apron; nothing but a cruel spirit of malignity would smile to see him putting them on. Nay, it was said, (truly or not,) that the delusion was wonderfully helped on by some of the government bakers, who affected great kindness towards the private bakers, imitated them in some things, and sometimes even openly and notoriously dealt at their shops, and led others, by precept as well as by example, to do the same. So you may easily understand how the people came not to distinguish; and really sensible, well-informed, and, in other matters, conscientious persons, seemed quite surprised when one said to them, "Do you feel that you are bona fide one of the persons for whom the act was made? And if you do, and on full and serious consideration you feel yourself absolutely required, for the sake of your health, to take advantage of the indulgence granted by the act to those who really need it, how do you defend the attempt to persuade other people, who have no such infirmity, and would never have thought of such a thing, to commit what is, in their case, a breach of the law?" I am, my dear Sir, yours very truly,

IOTA.

ANTIQUITIES, ETC.

[The series of papers illustrative of the mode of disposing of Church Preferment in former days is not closed, but only suspended for this Number.]

KING ATHELSTAN'S COPY OF THE GOSPELS, IN LAMBETH LIBRARY.

THIS very beautiful volume is a MS. of the seventh century, written in the character then prevalent in Europe, and which is to this day preserved in Ireland, almost exactly in the form in which it is found in MSS. of the time VOL. XIV.-August, 1838.

U

of Charlemagne. It is often confounded with the Anglo-Saxon alphabet, which it resembles in many of its letters, though not in all; but the volume which is the subject of the following remarks bears decisive and satisfactory evidence of having been written in Ireland.

A great number of similar copies of the gospels is still preserved in Ireland, in various public and private collections; they were usually kept in silver or brass boxes, (called in Irish cuṁdaċ,) many of which are richly ornamented with precious stones, crystals, and figures of saints, and some bear marks of great antiquity. These cumhdachs or covers were in many places regarded by the peasantry with great veneration, and lent out on remarkable occasions to swear persons who were suspected of purloining property; in this way stolen goods have often been recovered, without appealing to the laws, the thief being afraid to perjure himself on one of these sacred boxes, although he had no scruples about taking possession of his neighbour's goods.*

The University Library of Dublin possesses two of these curious boxes, and as many as six manuscripts of the gospels, all older than the eighth century, and two probably of the sixth. The curious reader will find many interesting details respecting some of these relics of ancient Irish Christianity, together with accurate drawings of boxes and facsimiles of the MSS., in Sir William Betham's Irish antiquarian researches.+

After the genealogy of our Lord in the first chapter of St. Matthew, a blank page was left by the original scribe, perhaps for some ornament or illumination. But the intended drawing never having been inserted, an Anglo-Saxon scribe of the tenth century (as the handwriting seems to indicate) has availed himself of the blank page to record the following inscription :—

I shall be very glad if any of your correspondents will favour me with a translation of the first part of this inscription. Dogmatizare, in the Latinity of the middle ages, signifies to teach, and is generally used in a bad sense, to teach false or erroneous doctrine; but it can hardly have this meaning in the instance before us. o. is a contraction for DEO, or DOMINO. Triquadrus, when used as an adjective, means trisected, divided into three parts; it is not a common word, especially when used as a substantive, as it appears to be here. The meaning of the word textus is evident; copies of the gospels, such

* See an account of the Domnach airgid, one of these venerated boxes, which contains a copy of the gospels probably as old as the fifth century, by Geo. Petrie, Esq., with engravings of the four sides, top, and bottom of the box, in the 18th vol. of the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, the first part of which has just been published.

+ Sir W. Betham has given plates of the figures of the evangelists contained in the Book of Dimma, a copy of the gospels of the seventh century, now in the library of Trinity College, Dublin. They are interesting as rude representations of the ecclesiastical habit of that period in the Irish church, being evidently the figures of priests in the chasuble.

Vid. Du Cange, Glossar. in voc.