London, Mar. 22.
Do you have brimstone butterflies in China, those brave hardy fellows who are always the first to come fand the last to leave us? I saw one in the garden to-day; and therewith one felt that this particularly long winter of our discontent was over at last. There is always one day when spring seems definitely to have arrived, when all growing things appear to make a sudden leap forward; and the brimstone is the sign of it I should like to put out faucets of syrup for him, though T fear that what all butterflies much prefer isa bit of decomposed meat. Tt seems an ignoble taste for such beautiful things.
"Another event of the day may be mentioned. How many even of "those who profess and call themselves Christians" could say what "Mothering Sunday" is or why from very ancient times it has been the ame for the middle Sunday in Lent?
On that day all sons and daughters working away from their homes fried to get back to see their parents. Hence the old phrase to "go mothering" and the name given to this particular Sunday. It was Lime of general merry-making. too, the Church indulgently considering that human nature needed some tet from the mortifications of Lent if it was to endure theth properly for the rest of the season.
Simmel cakes are eaten on Mothering Sunday, though what the exact origin-of that name is nobody Kenows, They are made of the finest flour, coloured with saffron (was to match the brimstone butterflies?), boiled as well as baked, with a very hard crust and very rich Inside. The best Simnel cakes now ate made in Lancashire. 1 was specially invited to tea one year to eat one. It was frightfully good, with a two-inch layer of almond paste on top, and none of "us wanted any dinner that. evening.
Tt seems a pity that the old fes-riyals of the Church with their ey propriate customs are not kept up. Christmas, of course, retains its associations. But Ascension Day only noticed by a tiny minority; and Good Friday and Easter, with Whi sun tide running second, have becom merely "our great national holiday," fs T have seen them described in the papers. Lady Day (except for fnanial transactions) Lammas, All Saints and All Souls have practically gone out of the calendar 'A few days ago a headmistress of] a girls' school wrote to the "Daily Telegraph" lamenting that church services made-so little appeal to children and were generally so dull Girls at school, she said, are made to go to church, but it is obvious that they regard It as one of the duties to be got through as one best may.and to be discarded with other Jeorvées as soon as school days are over.
Perhaps if more stress were Laid on the ups and downs of the Chris-Yan year, ils high lights and darknesses, and the many pretty old. Practices connected with each, this headmistress would not have to make this unfortunately just com-
Dickens in drawing them was writing to an Early Victorian convention, which his inmost soul must have known had no counterpart in reality.
'Some would say that he never drew a read person, that they were li caricatures. But what no one can deny is that (excepting those stuily heroines) every one of Dickens' Characters is so startlingly alive that we seem to sec them as we read, and they are all as different from tone another as Shakespea Tt is interesting that the French, whose' artistic Judgment mo one gainsays, regard Dickens with un-Bounded admiration, He is in fact almost the only foreign novelist whom they think worthy of atten tion. They also are enthusiastic about Byron, whom nobody in England ever reads now.
But perhaps Byron will presently become fashionable again, Only a few days ago a Russian was telling him how highly he is esteemed in Russia, and of course anything that goes in Russia sets our intellectuals simply dithering.
Meals of Moonbeams Byronie revival would be fortunate in one way now, just when "curves", begin to get the upper hand again of slimming. For all indispensable part of Byronism is that "young females should subsist entirely upon moon beams, I remember an old lady tell-me that when on her honeymoon, the train stopping at Banbury, she horrified her husband, who was' very Byronlan, by making him buy her a Banbury cake. He had to get out fon the platform and stand with his Back fo the carriage while she ate It.
Apart from the commonplace dangers of starving in pursuit of fashion, I gee that scientists have discovered that the average woman does not get nearly enough iron in her diet, 'Consequently she is more prone to anomia thin men, the principal reason being that men eat more meat than women, On the other hand, if women do' not care for meat, they could still get what Nature needs from eggs, fish and cereals, all of which are' richer fron, we are told, than meat. But the real explanation of women's undernourishment is that they order to please men. Lett to them-they cannot be bothered, Which must be an unconscious in heritance from the countless ages in which women have had to do all the cooking. Antipathy to anything Like fan ordered repast, unless for some imperious overlord who cannot be denied, is ingrained in them.
'Apropos of food, the students of the London School of Economies, Uke the undergraduates of Pembroke College, Oxford, have been on strike against' the meats at their refectory. But the Oxford men merely stayed away from hall one night and then came to terms with their dons. The London students have done the thing much more thoroughly to judge by 8 notice published by the School authorities, which forbids intimidation, or picketing or advertising a boycott of the refectory, under pain of the "severest disciplinary action." 'The students' have their own Union, Uke boller-makers or paperhangers, which will decide what the strikers "Pickwick Papers'" Birthday An interesting literary anniversary falls at the end of this month when it will be 100 years since the publication of the first monthly number of the "Pickwick Papers," the most Widely printed book in the English Tanguage except the Bible, Prayer Book and Shakespeare. One wonders. whether any serial nowadays could arouse the enormous excite. ment and expectation with which ach installment of "The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club" to quote the title first used by Dickens Was awaited, But there is too much to read nowadays and people are too Impatient to tackle a serial; though T-knew a man some years ago who maintained 2 wife and children and charming house at Newbury on Serials which he wrote for weekly and girls, He al-Ways had half-2-dozen going at once, made them up as he went along, fand had to keep a careful list of his characters for fear of resurrecting one whom he had killed some weeks before, But he did not call his stories literature and 1 fear that the nation will never celebrate his centenary.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.