"There was a star in the west land,

So bright it did appear

Into King Herod's chamber,

And where King Herod were.

"The wise men soon espied it, And told the king on high,

'A princely babe was born that night, No king could e'er destroy.'

"If this be true,' King Herod said,

As thou tellest unto me,

This roasted cock that lies in the dish,
Shall crow full fences three.'

"The cock soon freshly feather'd was, By the work of God's own hand, And then three fences crowed he

In the dish where he did stand."

Herod then gives orders for the neral massacre of the young children, ad the Saviour, with Joseph and his other, travel into Egypt amongst the fierce wild beasts." The blessed irgin being weary, "must needs sit own to rest," and her son desires her "see how the wild beasts come and orship him :"

"First came the lovely lion,

Which Jesu's grace did spring,
And of the wild beasts in the field
The lion shall be the king."

The Holy Family continuing their Right, pass by a husbandman "just while his seed was sown:"

Museum, contains a representation of the flight into Egypt, in which the above legend is introduced. The city of Bethlehem stands in the background, and on the right, in the distance, a field of corn and a reaper, who is in conversation with a soldier by his side. A curious Scotch tradition states that when Herod and his soldiers made their inquiry of the husbandman, "a little black beetle lifted up his head, and exclaimed, The Son of Man passed here last night." Black beetles are probably not more popular here than in Scotland, but Highlanders, whenever they find the dastardly insect, kill it, repeating the words, "Beetle, beetle, last night."

"The Holy Well" is a very favorite carol with the broadside printers; I have seen it side by side with a very lively "legendary " production, "Flyaway Carol:"

"There good old Wesley, and a throng
Of saints and martyrs too.
Unite and praise their Saviour's name,
And there I long to goo.

Fly away! Fly away!

While yet it's called to-day!"

The Magi or three Kings of Cologne form the subject of many an old carol. The names of these "famous men are supposed to have been, Kasper or Gaspar, King of Tarsus, young and beardless; Melchior, King of Nubia, old, with long beard and grey hair; and Balthazar, King of Saba, a negro. Their offerings were, as is well known, symbolical; to use the words of the Anglo-Saxon Hymnary, translated by the recorder of Sarum:

"Incense to God, and myrrh to grace his tomb,
For tribute to their King, a golden store;
One they revere, three with three offerings come,
And three adore."

From an old commentary on the gospel of St. Matthew, we gather some curious matter relating to the history of the Three Wise Men. A certain nation dwelling close to the ocean, in the extreme east, possessed a writing, inscribed with the name of Seth, concerning the star which was to appear: "Twelve of the more learned men of that country * had dis

*

posed themselves to watch for that star; and when any of them died, his son or one of his kindred * was appointed in his place. These, therefore, year by year, after the threshing out of the corn, ascended into a certain high mountain, called Mons victorialis, having in it a certain cave in the rock, most grateful and pleasant, with fountains and choice trees, into which, ascending and bathing themselves, they prayed and praised God in silence three days. And thus they did, generation after generation, watching ever, lest peradventure that star of beatitude should arise upon themselves, until it appeared descending on the mountain, having within itself, as it were, the form of a man-child, and above it the similitude of a cross; and it spake to them, and taught them, and commanded them that they should go into Judæa. And journeying thither for the space of two years, neither food nor drink failed in their vessels."

Other old accounts state that their journey occupied twelve days only "they took neither rest nor refreshment; it seemed to them indeed as one ne day; the nearer they approached to Christ's dwelling, the brighter the star shone." 994

There appears to have been no decided opinion or tradition as to the form of the star; it is shown thus by Albert Durer, in an old book which I have by me of 1519: it is drawn with eight points, the lowest one being much longer than the others; in another book, 1596, I find it represented as a star of six points; in some old pictures it is shown as a sort of comet, and it is described to have been "as an eagle flying and beating the air with his wings," having within the form and likeness of the Holy Child.

*

* Early Christian Legends.

In "Dives and Pauper," printed in 1496, we gather the following account of it:

"Dives. What manner of star was it then?

"Pauper. Some clerks tell that it was an angel in the likeness of a star, for the kings had no knowledge of angels, but took all heed to the star. Some say that it was the same child that lay in the ox-stall which appeared to the kings in the likeness of a star, and so drew them and led them to himself in Bethlehem."

I wish it were possible to give here a quaint illustration of the journey of the Three Wise Men, from a sheet of carols printed in 1820, which forms one of the wood-cuts procured with no little difficulty from the publisher by Mr. Hone, and is but little known.

The history of the Magi is even traced further; after their return to their own country they were baptized by St. Thomas the Apostle, became missionaries with him, and were, said by some, martyred.

it is

Their journeyings did not, however, end with their deaths-their bodies were translated to Constantinople, thence to Milan, and afterward to Cologne, where they are still preserved in the cathedral, and their history recorded in a series of frescoes. Their shrine at Cologne was once exceedingly rich and magnificent, but during the excitement of the first French revolution many of the jewels which adorned the monument were sold and replaced by paste or glass counterfeits. The following description of their tomb I gather from Mr. Fyfe's book on "Christmas:"

piece, of gold, diamonds, and pearls. It is asserted (but doubted) that the tomb and its contents are of the value of £240,000."

From the offerings of the three kings arose the practice of Christmas gifts, and the festival of the Epiphany has always been observed in remembrance of their visit to Bethlehem; it has also been the custom from earliest times for our sovereigns to offer the three mystic gifts of gold, myrrh, and incense at the altar on the day of the Epiphany, which custom is still observed at the Chapel Royal, the royal oblations being received by the dean or his deputy in a bag of crimson and gold. The Epiphany is also a "scarlet day" at the universities. After this long roundabout discourse, I am almost afraid to weary my readers with a second edition of the wanderings of the Wise Men, but I must rely upon their generous forbearance; the accompanying carol is from a manuscript of the time of King Henry VII.:

Glad and blithe they were all iij, Of the sights that they had seen, By dene-a,

The company was clean-a."

The

I will conclude with a modern specimen of a legendary carol written by the Rev. Dr. Neale, and published in Novello's shilling collection. story of St. Wenceslaus, the good King of Bohemia, is given by Bishop Jeremy Taylor in his "Life of Christ:"

"One winter night, going to his devotions in a remote church, barefooted in the snow, his servant Poda

vius, who waited on his master's piety, and endeavored to imitate his affections, began to faint through the violence of the snow and cold, till the king commanded him to follow him, and set his feet in the same footsteps which his feet should mark for him; the servant did so, and either fancied a cure, or found one, for he followed his prince, helped forward with shame and zeal to his imitation, and by the forming footsteps for him in the snow."

"Good King Wenceslaus look'd out,
On the Feast of Stephen;
When the snow lay round about,
Deep and crisp and even:
Brightly shone the moon that night,
Though the frost was cruel,
When a poor man came in sight,
Gath'ring winter fuel.

"Hither, page, and stand by me,
While thou know'st it telling,
Yonder peasant who is he?

Where and what his dwelling?'
"Sire, he lives a good league hence
Underneath the mountain;
Right against the forest fence,
By Saint Agnes' fountain.'

"Bring me flesh and bring me wine,
Bring me pine logs hither;
Thou and I will see him dine,
When we bear them thither.'
Page and monarch forth they went,
Forth they went together;

Through the rude wind's wild lament,
And the bitter weather.

"Sire, the night is darker now,

And the wind blows stronger,
Fails my heart, I know not how,
I can go no longer.'

"Mark my footsteps, good my page;
Tread thou in them boldly;
Thou shalt find the winter's rage
Freeze thy blood less coldly."

"In his master's steps he trod,
Where the snow lay dinted;
Heat was in the very sod

Which the saint had printed,
Therefore, Christian men-be sure-
Wealth or rank possessing,

Ye who now will bless the poor,
Shall yourselves find blessing."

The Formation of Christendom. Part First. By T. W. ALLIES. London: Longmans.

IT is somewhat paradoxical, but strictly true, to say that the greatest and most important revolution which ever took place upon earth is that to which least attention has hitherto been paid, and concerning which least is known-the substitution of "Christendom" for the heathen world. Before our own day no historian, no philosopher of modern times has felt any interest in this vast theme, and whatever information with regard to it is attainable must be sought in the fragmentary remains of ancient writers, or in works very recently published on the continent. In the volume betore us Mr. Allies has taken ground not yet occupied by any English author. He has availed himself of two works Döllinger's "Christenthum und Kirche" and Champagny's Histories and he acknowledges in the most liberal and loyal manner his obligation to them; but, in the main, he has been left to find his way for himself, and no man could well be more highly qualified for the task, whether by the gifts of nature or by the acquirements of many years. We infer from the work itself that his attention was immediately turned to the subject by his appointment as professor of the "Philosophy of History" in the Catholic university of Dublin, under the rectorship of Dr. Newman. The duties of his post obliged him to weigh the question, "what is the philosophy of history?" and the inaugural lecture with which the volume before us commences, although it gives no formal definition of the phrase (which is to be regretted), supplies abundant considerations by the aid of which we

may arrive at it. History, in its ori gin, was far more akin to poetry than to philosophy, and even when it passes into prose it is in the half-legendary form, which makes the narrative of Herodotus and of the annalists of the middle ages so charming to all readers. They are ballads without metre. Next came that style of which Thucydides is the model, and which Mr. Allies calls "political history." "Its limit is the nation, and it deals with all that interests the nation.” “Great, indeed, is the charm where the writer can describe with the pencil of a poet and analyze with the mental grasp of a philosopher. Such is the double merit of Thucydides. And so it has happened that the deepest students of human nature have searched for two thousand years the records of a war wherein the territory of the chief bel ligerents was not larger than a modern English or Irish county. What should we say if a quarrel between Kent and Essex, between Cork and Kerry, had kept the world at gaze ever since? Yet Attica and Laconia were no larger."

And yet it needed something more than territorial greatness in the states of which he wrote to enable even Thucydides himself to realize the idea of a philosophical history. For the five hundred years which followed the Peloponnesian war brought to maturity the greatest empire which has ever existed among men, and although, at the close of that period, one of the ablest and most thoughtful of writers devoted himself especially to its history, yet, says our author, "I do not know that in reading the pages of Polybius, of Livy, or even of Tacitus, we are conscious of a wider grasp of thought, a more enlarged experience of political interests, a higher idea of

ian, and of all that concerns his peronal and public life, than in those of hucydides." Great, indeed, was the enius of those ancient historians, agnificent were the two languages hich they made their instrumentsnguages "very different in their caacity, but both of them superior in riginality, beauty, and expressiveness any which have fallen to the lot of modern nations. It may be that the arbles of Pentelicus and Carrara asure good sculptors." "In the narative-that is, the poetic and pictorial art of history-they have equal mert. Their history is a drama in which he actors and the events speak for hemselves. What was wanting was he bearing of events on each other, he apprehension of great first principles-the generalization of facts." And his no mere lapse of time could give. It is wanting in the works of the greatest ancient masters. It is found in moderns in all other respects immeasurably their inferiors. "What, then, had happened in the interval?" Christianity had happened-Christendom had been formed. "There was a voice in the world greater, more potent, thrilling, and universal, than the last cry of the old society, Civis sum Romanus, and this voice was Sum Christianus. From the time of the great sacrifice it was impossible to sever the history of man's temporal destiny from that of his eternal; and when the virtue of that sacrifice had thoroughly leavened the nations, history is found to assume a larger basis, to have lost its partial and national cast, to have grown with the growth of man, and to demand for its completeness a perfect alliance with philosophy."

Thus, then, the "philosophy of his tory" is the comparison and arrangement of its great events by one whose mind is stored with the facts which it records, and who at the same time possesses the great first principles which qualify him to judge of it. We may, therefore, lay it down as an absolute rule, that without Christianity

no really philosophical history could have been written.

Not unnaturally, then, the first example of the philosophy of history was given by a man whose mind, if not the greatest ever informed by Christianity, was at least among a very few in the first class, was moreover so thoroughly penetrated by Christian principles, that to review the events of the world in any other aspect, or through any other medium, would have been to him as impossible as to examine in detail without the light of the sun the expanse of plains and hills, rivers and forests, which lay under him as he stood on some predominant mountain peak. God, the Almighty Creator-God incarnate, who had once lived and suffered on earth, and now reigned on high until he should put all enemies under his feet, and who was coming again to judge the world which he had redeemed-the Church founded by him to enlighten and govern all generations throughout all nations, and in which dwelt the infallible guidance of God the Holy Ghost-the evil spirits, powerless against the divine presence in the Church, but irresistible by mere human power-the saints, no longer seen by man, but whose intercession influenced and moulded all the events of his life,-all these were ever before the mind of St. Augustine, not merely as articles of faith which he confessed, but as practical realities. To trace the events of the world without continually referring to all these, would have been to him not merely irrelig ious, but as unreal, unmeaning, and fallacious as it would be to a natural philosopher of our own day to investigate the phenomena of the material. world without taking into consideration the attraction of the earth and the resistance of the air. This should be noticed, because we have all met men who, while professing to believe most, if not all, of these things, would consider it bad taste to introduce such considerations into any practical affair. They are, in short, part of that very