Pressing in Church.

On the morning of Easter Sunday, 1596, during the reign of queen Elizabeth, the lord mayor and aldermen of London received the royal command to aise a thousand men with the utmost pedition; wherefore they repaired with heir deputies, constables, and other officers, to the churches, and having caused the doors to be shut, took the people during divine service from their worship, till the number was completed, and having armed them, the men, so raised and equipped, were marched the same night for Dover, in order to their embarkation for France; but in the mean time, Elizabeth having received advice of the reduction of Calais by the Spaniards, they were countermanded, and returned to the city in about a week after their departure.

EASTER DAY CUSTOMS At Twickenham and Paddington. According to Mr. Lysons, “There was an ancient custom at Twickenham, of dividing two great cakes in the church upon Easter-day among the young people; but it being looked upon as a superstitious relic, it was ordered by parliaDent, 1645, that the parishioners should forbear that custom, and, instead thereof, buy loaves of bread for the poor of the parish with the money that should have bought the cakes. It appears that the sum of £1. per annum is still charged upon the vicarage for the purpose of buying penny loaves for poor children on the Thursday after Easter. Within the memory of man they were thrown from the church-steeple to be scrambled for; a custom which prevailed also, some time ago, at Paddington, and is not yet totally abolished." A correspondent imagines that the Paddington custom of throwing bread from the church-steeple, which exists also in other parishes, was derived from largesses bestowed on the poor by the Romish clergy on occasion of the festival, and that it has been continued since the Reformation, and, therefore, since the institution of poor rates, without due regard to its original object.

notice. The writer there states, that "Biddenden is a parish of great extent, as most parishes in the weald of Kent are;" that this part of the country is called the weald, "from the growth of large timber, oak particularly;" that the town of Biddenden is about five miles equi-distant from three several market towns, Cranbrook, Smarden, and Tenterden ; and is distant about fifteen miles from Maidstone. On the same authority, is now added that it does not furnish any antique inscriptions, nor does the weald in general yield the inquirer any thing antique or invaluable to repay his search. In the reign of queen Elizabeth, John Mayne, esq. endowed a good house and garden with 201. per annum, for a free grammar school, which owing to the salary being fixed at that amount by the founder, is neither eligible to persons qualified under the regulations, nor is it capable of being increased. The visitation of the school, was formerly in the archbishop of Canterbury, but is so no longer, and the schoolmaster is appointed the rectory, which, in the reign of Henry by the lord. The archbishop is patron of VIII., was valued so high as 351. The fair here is on the 8th of November. Mr. Urban's correspondent noticing "the two maided-sisters who grew together from the waist downwards," refers to acends his list by directing to the "Memoirs counts of similar wonders, and waggishly of Scriblerus, by A Pope," as an authority corroborative of the apocryphal "Biddenden Maids."

the proposition? Not I, for one. When our English mechanics accuse their betters of oppressing them, the said betters should reverse the old appeal, and refer from Philip sober to Philip drunk; and then nothing more could be said. But now, they have no betters, even in their own notion of the matter. And in the name of all that is transitory, envy them not their brief supremacy! It will be over before the end of the week, and they will be as eager to return to their labour as they now are to escape from it; for the only thing that an Englishman, whether high or low, cannot endure patiently for a week together, is, unmingled amusement. At this time, however, he is determined to try. Accordingly, on Easter Monday all the narrow lanes and blind alleys of our metropolis pour forth their dingy denizens into the suburban fields and villages, in search of the said amusement, which is plentifully provided for them by another class, even less enviable than the one on whose patronage they depend; for of all callings, the most melancholy is that of purveyor of pleasure to the poor.

During the Monday our determined holiday-maker, as in duty bound, contrives, by the aid of a little or not a little artificial stimulus, to be happy in a tolerably exemplary manner. On the Tuesday, he fancies himself happy to-day, because he felt himself so yesterday. On the Wednesday he cannot tell what has come to him, but every ten minutes he wishes himself at home, where he never goes but to sleep. On Thursday he finds out the secret, that he is heartily sick of doing nothing; but is ashamed to confess it; and then what is the use of going to work before his money is spent? On Friday he swears that he is a fool for throwing away the greatest part of his quarter's savings without having any thing to show for it, and gets gloriously drunk with the rest to prove his words; passing the pleasantest night of all the week in a watchhouse. And on Saturday, after thanking "kis worship" for his good advice, of which he does not remember a word, he comes to the wise determination, that, after all, there is nothing like working all day long in silence, and at night spending his earnings and his breath in beer and politics! So much for the Easter week of a London holiday-maker.

But there is a sport belonging to

Easter Monday which is not confined to the lower classes, and which fun forbid that I should pass over silently. If the reader has not, during his boyhood, performed the exploit of riding to the turnout of the stag on Epping-forest-following the hounds all day long at a respectful distance-returning home in the evening with the loss of nothing but his hat, his hunting whip, and his horse, not to mention a portion of his nether person -and finishing the day by joining the lady mayoress's ball at the Mansionhouse; if the reader has not done all this when a boy, I will not tantalize him by expatiating on the superiority of those who have. And if he has done it, I need not tell him that he has no cause to envy his friend who escaped with a flesh wound from the fight of Waterloo; for there is not a pin to choose between them.

EPPING HUNT.

In 1226, king Henry III. confirmed to the citizens of London, free warren, or liberty to hunt a circuit about their city, in the warren of Staines, &c.; and in ancient times the lord mayor, aldermen, and corporation, attended by a due number of their constituents, availed themselves of this right of chace" in solemn guise." From newspaper reports, it ap pears that the office of "common hunt,' attached to the mayoralty, is in danger of desuetude. The Epping hunt seems to have lost the lord mayor and his brethren in their corporate capacity, and the annual sport to have become a farcical show.

A description of the Epping hunt of Easter Monday, 1826, by one "Simon Youngbuck," in the Morning Herald, is the latest report, if it be not the truest; but of that the editor of the Every-Day Book cannot judge, for he was not there to see: he contents himself with picking out the points; should any one be dissatisfied with the "hunting of that day," as it will be here presented, he has only to sit down, in good earnest, to a plain matter-of-fact detail of all the circumstances from his own knowledge, accompanied by such citations as will show the origin and former state of the usage, and such a detail, so accompanied, will be inserted—

"For want of a better this must do." On the authority aforesaid, and that, without the introduction of any term not in the Herald, be it known then, that before, and at the commencement of the hunt aforesaid, it was a cold, dry, and

dusty morning, and that the huntsmen of the east were all abroad by nine o'clock, trotting, fair and softly, down the road, on great nine-hand skyscrapers, nimble daisycutting nags, flowing-tailed chargers, and ponies no bigger than the learned one at Astley's; some were in job-coaches, at two guineas a-day; some in three-bodied nondescripts, some in gigs, some in cabs, some in drags, some in short stages, and some in long stages; while some on no stages at all, footed the road, smothered by dust driven by a black, bleak northeaster full in the teeth. Every gentleman was arrayed after his own particular taste, in blue, brown, or black-in dress-coats, long coats, short coats, frock coats, great coats, and no-coats;-in drab-slacks and slippers;-in gray-tights, and blackspurred Wellingtons ;-in nankeen bombballoons;-in city-white cotton-cord unmentionables, with jockey toppers, and in Russian-drill down belows, as a memento of the late czar. The ladies all wore a goose-skin under-dress, in compliment to the north-easter.

At that far-famed spot, the brow above Fairmead bottom, by twelve o'clock, there were not less than three thousand merry lieges then and there assembled. It was a beautiful set-out. Fair dames" in purple and in pall," reposed in vehicles of all sorts, sizes, and conditions, whilst seven or eight hundred mounted members of the hunt wound in and out "in restless ectasy," chatting and laughing with the fair, sometimes rising in their stirrups to look out for the long-coming cart of the stag, "whilst, with off heel assiduously aside," they "provoked the caper which they seemed to hide." The green-sward was covered with ever-moving crowds on foot, and the pollard oaks which skirt the bottom on either side were filled with men aud boys.

But where the deuce is the stag all this while? One o'clock, and no stag. Two o'clock, and no stag!-a circumstance easily accounted for by those who are in the secret, and the secret is this. There are buttocks of boiled beef and fat hams, and beer and brandy in abundance, at the Roebuck public-house low down in the

est; and ditto at the Baldfaced Stag, on he top of the hill; and ditto at the Coach and Horses, at Woodford Wells; and ditto at the Castle, at Woodford; and ditto at the Eagle, at Snaresbrook; and if the stag had been brought out before the beef, beer, bacon, and brandy, were

eaten and drank, where would have been the use of providing so many good things? So they carted the stag from public-house to public-house, and showed him at threepence a head to those ladies and gentlemen who never saw such a thing before; and the showing and carting induced a consumption of eatables and drinkables, an achievement which was helped by a band of music in every house, playing hungry tunes to help the appetite; and then, when the eatables and drinkables were gone, and paid for, they turned out the stag.

For a

Precisely at half-past two o'clock, the stag-cart was seen coming over the hill by the Baldfaced Stag, and hundreds of horsemen and gig-men rushed gallantly forward to meet and escort it to the top of Fairmead bottom, amidst such whooping and hallooing, as made all the forest echo again; and would have done Carl Maria Von Weber's heart good to hear. And then, when the cart stopped and was turned tail about, the horsemen drew up in long lines, forming an avenue wide enough for the stag to run down. moment, all was deep, silent, breathless anxiety; and the doors of the cart were thrown open, and out popped a strapping four-year-old red buck, fat as a porker, with a chaplet of flowers round his neck, a girth of divers coloured ribbons, and a long blue and pink streamer depending from the summit of his branching horns. He was received, on his alighting, with a shout that seemed to shake heaven's concave, and took it very graciously, looking round him with great dignity as he stalked slowly and delicately forward, down the avenue prepared for him; and occasionally shrinking from side to side, as some supervalorous cockney made a cut at him with his whip. Presently, he caught a glimpse of the hounds and the huntsmen, waiting for him at the bottom, and in an instan! off he bounded, sideways, through the rank, knocking down and trampling all who crowded the path he chose to take; and dashing at once into the cover, he was ought of sight before a man could say "Jack Robinson!" Then might be seen, gentlemen running about without their horses, and horses galloping about without their gentlemen; and hats out of number brushed off their owners' heads by the rude branches of the trees; and every body asking which way the stag was gone, and nobody knowing any thing about him; and ladies beseeching gentlemen not to