dairy-farms of Germany at this day. When the cows have gone dry, their udders are gently rubbed with the thunderstone, that they may fill again. With the same intention, on May-day, when the cows are driven out for the first time to pasture, they are made to step over a broad-axe (symbol of Thor), which is laid before the door of the cowhouse, wrapped in a woman's red apron or red stocking. In Westphalia, on the same occasion, the young cows that have not yet calved are struck by the herdsman three times over the loins with a rod cut from Thunar's redberried tree, the mountain-ash, in order, as a song states which is sung during the ceremony, that the holy thunder-rod may bring milk into the udders. In other places a hazel-rod is used for the same purpose.

The wishing or divining rod is taken either from the mountain ash or the hazel, generally from the latter, and in the following manner. By moonlight on St. John's eve a yearling shoot of a wild hazel-tree is chosen, which forks at the upper end, and is between four and five feet long. It is broken off from the tree after being twisted, thrice round on its axis, and the person who does this must keep his face turned to the east, bow to the tree and say, "God bless thee, noble shoot and summertwig!" Such a rod, consecrated by sundry incantations and ceremonies, serves for the discovery of buried treasures, mineral veins, water-springs, concealed thieves and murderers, remote calamities, conflagrations, &c. Held between the finger and thumb by its forked ends, the divining-rod turns of its own accord with irresistible force over the spot where there is metallic ore, water, or any of the other objects of search. The hazel wishing-rod shows also at midnight on May-day the spot where grows the luck-flower that opens the way into the treasure-chamber in the heart of the mountain, and whoever finds that flower prospers thenceforth in all that he undertakes. His cattle are never destroyed by pestilence, nor his fields laid waste by hail. The fern and the mistletoe, by the Swiss called thunder-besom, possess, with slight modifications, the same powers as the spring-root and the wishing-rod.

Wishing-rods have various names, according to the special use for which they are designed. There is one called by Germans Schlagrute, or drubbing-rod, which is likewise hazel of a year's growth, but instead of being torn from the tree, it is cut from it with three cuts on Good-Friday morning. It is used for thrashing people at a distance. With such a rod in your hand, all you have to do is to take an old coat or other garment, call it by the name of the person against whom you have a grudge, and then whack away at it à son intention. He will feel every blow, though he be twenty miles off.

Bags of Gold.

"PUT money in thy purse," was sage counsel; and Iago, had his motive been less unholy, would have deserved well of the world for the advice he gave to Roderigo. There is no greater friend to a man than a bag of gold. It gives him an air of independence. It is a pillar of strength, a shelter in the day of storm-sunshine at all times. Our Volunteers are proud of the motto, "Defence, not defiance;" but what is a rifle as a weapon of defence compared with your bag of gold? There is no mistaking the fact, that a leathern purse well filled is a staunch companion; it wards off, like a potent charm, innumerable evils, and invites the advance of pleasant Spirits. Doubtless the poet-philosopher of the ancients

was right when he penned his couplet:

"Dum felix eris multos numerabis amicos;

Nubila si fuerint tempora, solus eris."

It is true that, so long as you are prosperous, you may reckon swarms of friends; but if the skies which vault your once-happy home become cloudy and lowering, these sunshine companions will disperse. The swallow abandons us when the summer fades; but what of that? Is it not satisfactory to have the real attractive metal, and to be able to create that summer warmth which shall engender these sensitive creatures? No doubt it is a low doctrine, a kind of grovelling Mammon-worship; but, after all, taking Nature as she is, what is to be done? The faithful hound may serve with indifferent affection the wealthy master or the needy dependent, the throned monarch or the pining exile; but had he thy reason, would he serve so impartially? No; we must take the world as it stands,-its good and its evil, its littlenesses and its greatnesses, its selfishness as well as its nobler impulses; and if it will insist on bowing the knee to Mammon, it is prudent to acquire, and if possible hoard up, "bags of gold."

But looking at this question of "bags of gold" from an æsthetic point of view, is it the gold we worship? Why is it that, if we have a rich friend and a poor friend, we take greater cognisance of the rich man than the poor man? Is the taste so perverse? are we so very malevolent in our "proclivities"? Let us consider the matter. We prefer an ornamented mansion to a plain barn; we love the accessories which wealth is enabled to throw around the prosperous man; and perhaps it must be confessed, we follow the herd in paying devotion to success. To praise and admire is certainly a pleasanter feeling than to pity and deplore. Life may be very tolerable in an ill-furnished garret; a Duke of Wellington may be satisfied with a tent-bedstead and a rough palliasse; the veteran soldier may enjoy a night's repose on the frosty ground, wrapped in his martial cloak; but, after all, cultivated taste does pant for something more. Mind seeks communion with mind; and if a rich man is not in himself a

mine of knowledge-and this he ought to be, considering his opportunities -he still manages to surround himself with the productions of masterspirits, the chefs-d'œuvre of those great geniuses which have shed light upon the world, and conferred honour upon their race. Besides which, man is an animal that delights in comfort. He must have comfort to be happy; and the higher the degree of comfort he attains, the more agreeable is it to his nature. Fortunately the present aim of philosophy tends to banish that Manichæan idea of two deities, a material and a spiritual, ever at war with each other. We no longer think it necessary to mortify the flesh in that savage manner which the ancients conceived was necessary in order to appreciate the indwelling spirit. And therefore, admitting that money is the root of all evil-which, by the by, is not the literal interpretation of the poet's idea-there is yet much to be said in favour of L. S. D.

We must therefore really show for the moment the cold shoulder to our poor friends, and, in behalf of society itself, inculcate the atrocious doctrine that individually we should seek to accumulate "bags of gold." And this, too, for moral considerations. Poverty, after all, is not that disinterested friend of the virtues which too many enthusiastic admirers—at a distance-have loved to represent it. Poverty has in its train a huge assembly of vices: Chaucer's motley crowd of pilgrims is nothing to them. It is a decided foe to independence; or if, in spite of poverty, a man becomes independent, this characteristic too frequently degenerates into rude assurance and haughty defiance. It makes, too, a man cringing and fawning, and capable of many meannesses. He becomes in his defenceless position a tool in the hands of powerful wickedness, and is too frequently ready to commit the most atrocious crimes at the instigation of wealth. Poverty must put up with dingy apartments, with bad ventilation, with untidiness, with uncleanliness; and becomes prone to acquire a taste for that which is low and grovelling-habit binding him down with adamantine fetters, having first blinded him to the appreciation of that which is high and noble. We grant that this is not a pretty picture, and that we may be libelling a host of honest and commendable individuals; but nevertheless we maintain that the portraiture is correct in its main features, and that a glance around us, whether we live in crowded towns or in the open country, will confirm the genuineness of the description. The Millennium has not yet arrived. Utopia is very, very far away in the future; and Arcadia, if it ever existed, has long vanished from the geography of history.

Therefore we say, "put money in thy purse;" and we further add, keep it there. The time has long past since the institution of Begging Friars was thought honourable in this country. We want no lazzaroni feeding on the bountiful hand of charity, like swine at a meal-trough. We have no desire to see the virtue of benevolence artificially encouraged. The nobility of labour has now become a dogma in the faith of the political economist; and with honest labour should be cultivated those prime vir

tues-thrift and frugality. Hence it is that modern philanthropists have applied themselves to the development of such institutions as SavingsBanks, Friendly Societies, Mutual-Aid Associations; and when we say, "put money in thy purse," we would be understood to mean no more than prepare for a stormy day, and learn to prefer to reap the harvest which you yourselves have sown, to being dependent upon the eleemosynary assistance of friends, or, it may be, the alms of strangers. The importance of Savings-Banks has long been admitted by the most eminent political economists both in England and on the Continent; and any one who casts a casual glance only at the good results which have been achieved since their first establishment, must regard them as among the most valuable institutions of a civilised age. Adam Smith, Ricardo, Malthus, Parnell, Buchanan, Stuart Mill, Baron Charles Dupin, and M. Agathon Prévost, are their especial advocates; besides a host of others, whose valuable suggestions are only sprinkled, as it were, through their various works.

Between the very rich, whose ample wealth affords them a permanent provision for life, and the very poor, whose destitute condition renders it impossible for them to lay-by a single farthing, there is a vast middleclass, which lives honourably on the fruit of its labour, whether of mind or body. These are the working or industrial class; and they it is for whom savings-banks were originally established, and to whose requirements they are singularly adapted. The utility of these institutions may be measured by the fact that the deposits have advanced from fourteen millions in 1828, to forty-one millions in 1857. And what a picture does this present to us! Analyse these facts, thrust them home to their very source, fathom what they imply, and we shall have a startling revelation made to us. Forty-one millions deposited in the hands of trustees by the hard-working classes of the country! What industry, what frugality, what providence, what self-denial, what thrift, what honesty, does not all this suggest! Again, if they achieve these vast moral and social results, what effect will they not produce upon the political world? In proportion as these Societies advance in the ways of civilisation, labour occupies a more elevated position. The martial principle, which had penetrated so deeply and cast its shadows so forward in the social constitution of Europe, seems to droop its head before the progress of industry, which every day grows taller and stronger. We have begun to understand that the conquests of man over nature are the most real, the most permanent; those only, indeed, which form the basis of the prosperity of nations as well as of individuals. The object of savingsbanks, it is needless to say, is to afford to persons whose time and attention are otherwise occupied an opportunity of obtaining, with as little expense as possible, a remunerative instalment for their savings, and with such a system and with such a security as shall present little doubt of their money being safely laid out.

"The secret of their success," remarks M. Prévost, "is, that a sav

ings-bank may be entered and quitted how and when a man pleases. So long as the money remains deposited, it is continually increasing for the benefit of the depositor. Do his wants require the whole or a part? By simply making the demand, he receives what he requires. If, in the interval between the demand and the payment, his temporary necessity has ceased to exist; if, as it sometimes happens, a salutary thought interposes, and triumphs over a transient whim,-the savings-bank, with a paternal feeling for the depositor, considers the demand as not having taken place, and retains the deposit without the expense or loss of interest—thus encouraging, with all its power, perseverance in the wise paths of economy and saving."

Savings-banks, it should be observed, differ from other channels of industrial investment in the fact of their management and supervision being entirely out of the hands of the parties whose money is at stake, and in their presenting no elements either of speculative assurance affecting relatively the deposits of members, as in friendly societies for sickness or life-contingencies, or of commercial trading, as in benefit, building, and other coöperative investment societies. Before savings-banks were established, there were no systematic means of encouragement to thrift, and no provision was made for its gatherings. Through long years of hard saving and scraping together and hoarding in his old stocking, or between the sacking of his bed, or in a broken cup, some cottager bent with age may here and there have attained the end of his desire by the purchase of the freehold of his cottage and garden; but this, from the nature of the things, could not be general, and in our highly artificial civilisation perhaps is not desirable, when labour can be so often more profitably employed in service or in the work of an artisan. Now, however, those among the labouring population of England whose industry and frugality have enabled them to lay aside a portion of their earnings, have a readier and a far better opportunity for the profitable employment of their money than can be generally procured by the purchase of a bit of land: the savings-bank is open to receive their deposit, and to yield a moderate and certain return of interest for them. Upon the effect of these institutions in forming habits of forethought and frugality amongst the working-classes, Archbishop Whately observes, that "if they had become general some ten or twelve years earlier, at the time when wages were at the highest, they would have saved probably much moral degradation resulting from the distress which followed. It happens, as a fortunately countervailing circumstance, that, in those very employments which are the most liable to fluctuation, wages are, generally speaking, the highest; so that in prosperous times the workman of steady habits-and not, like the savage, a slave to personal gratification, and thoughtless of the future-may accumulate a little store, which, when employment fails altogether, may either enable him to subsist till times improve again, or till he shall have acquired a competent skill in some other kindred art, or else to re