4 rectifying our deluded countrymen, who spend the festival of this most abstemious and mortified man in riot and excess, as if they looked upon him only in the light of a jolly companion." Justly has this anniversary been characterised in the "Irish Hudibras," as rich "With rhimes, cronaans,* and many a gay trick, When the people of Ireland, in their venerated saint's "name, make holiday, When all the Monaghans† shall play; Ordain a statute to be drunk, And burn tobacco free as spunk.‡ On pain of excommunication." It is a day on which all true-born sons of Erin feel peculiarly happy, and are inclined to view every occurrence in a favourable and mellow light. This was remarked more than two centuries ago, as a reference to "Strafford's State Letters,” vol. ii. p. 57, will prove; where Mr. Garrard informs the Lord Deputy of Ireland, that, " on Friday morning, the 17th of this month (March 1636), St. Patrick's * Songs. + Clowns; inhabitants of the county of Monaghan. day, was the queen brought to bed of a daughter: which,” he adds, " will please the Irish well.” The day, in fact, is nationally regarded as auspicious. Major Mitchell, whose recent work on Australia is an important addition to our knowledge of that interesting country, thus notes the starting of his expedition for the Darling and Murray rivers precisely two hundred years afterwards (1836). "Dr. Johnson's Obidah was not more free from care on the morning of his journey, than I then was on this the first morning of mine, which was also St. Patrick's day; and, in riding through the bush, I had again leisure to recall past scenes and times connected with this anniversary. I remembered that, exactly on that morning, twentyfour years before, I had marched down the glacis of Elvas, to the tune of St. Patrick's day in the Morning,' as the sun rose over the beleaguered towers of Badajoz. Now, without any of the pride, pomp, and circumstances of glorious war, I was proceeding on a service not very likely to be peaceful," &c. Merry-making in honour of St. Patrick is, by no means, confined to Ireland. Wherever Irishmen have penetrated—and where is the quarter of the globe in which they are not to be found? or where is the nation in which they are not distinguished?—the fame of St. Patrick cannot be unknown. For instance, it is recorded in the "Annual Register," that "on the 17th March 1766, His Excellency Count Mahony, ambassador from Spain to the court of Vienna, gave a grand entertainment in honour of St. Patrick, to which were invited all persons of condition who were of Irish descent; being himself a descendant of an illustrious family of that kingdom. Among many others present were Count Lacy, president of the council of war, the Generals O'Donnell, M'Guire, O'Kelly, Browne, Plunket, and M'Eligot, four chiefs of the grand cross, two governors, several knights military, six staff officers, four privy counsellors, with the principal officers of state, who, to shew their respect to the Irish nation, wore crosses in honour of the day, as did the whole court." The melancholy feelings of a patriot unable to celebrate St. Patrick's day with becoming propriety, may be estimated by the following extract, full of sober sadness, from the Journal of Theobald Wolfe Tone, under date the 16th March, 1796, when in Paris negotiating for the invasion of Ireland :— "I live," he writes, " very soberly at present, having retrenched my quantity of wine one half; I fear, however, that if I had the pleasure of P. P's company to-morrow, being St. Patrick's day, we would indeed' take a sprig of water-cresses with our bread.' Yes! we should make a pretty sober meal of it. Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord! "17. St. Patrick's day. Dined alone in the Champs Elysées. Sad! sad!" Holt, the Irish rebel general, thus records, in his 'Autobiography," the commemoration of St. Patrick's day at Liverpool in 1814, after his return from New South Wales. "The 17th of March, the Irishmen all assembled and walked in procession, dressed with ornaments that are due to the memory of St. Patrick, a band playing 'St. Patrick's day in the Morning,' going before them. I brought my son with me to shew him his countrymen. I drank at Peter Ryan's, near the Packet House, and I got a cold; which so much affected me, that I was confined to my bed on the 18th of March," &c. To multiply quotations, however, is trifling work, especially upon a point that admits of much less discussion than the absolute existence of the Saint in memory of whom the orgies in question continue to be zealously performed. But a few words may be permitted on the subject of the crosses worn in honour of St. Patrick, and respecting what Holt calls the "ornaments that are due to his memory." Lawrence White, a "lover of the Muses and mathematicks," as he styles himself on the title-page of a volume of poems, which he published nearly a hundred years ago (1742) in Dublin, describing the progress of a love affair, says, "He gained the affections of the maid, For him a fine St. Patrick's cross." It appears from this, that these crosses were made of silk and embroidery; but, as in modern times, tapestry became superseded by paper, so the embroidered St. Patrick's cross was imitated in coloured papers, of which the annexed is a faithful represent ation, one fourth of the original size, with the colours heraldically tricked. The popular demand for decorations of this saintly order being very general Ireland, and especially an object of ambition ong juvenile patriots, the state of whose finances did not warrant the outlay of one penny; an inferior kind of decoration, or cross, was devised by rustic ingenuity to gratify the humbler votaries of St. Patrick. This badge was formed by arcs intersecting each other within a circle, by which something like the figure of two shamrock leaves united at the stalks was produced; but any resemblance that fancy might have traced in the outline, was destroyed by the colourist, who, according to his |