A month later they were married.

Before the end of the year, Dolores stood a widow by her husband's grave. Her home was left unto her desolate ;-that was her expiation. In due time she became the lady of Kingsmead Manor.

Lord St. Vincent came back from a five years' tour, handsomer, gayer, more fascinating than ever. He had adopted many foreign customs, and declared no unmarried woman was ever worth speaking to. He is a professed marriage-hater, and serious people do not like his talk.

Five years ago, the world said, he had been engaged to the beautiful Miss Knyvett, now Mrs. Egerton, you know; but he found out that a marriage with her would not conduce to his happiness, and so went away on his travels. As he wisely left no address, brothers, uncles, and cousins could not pursue and chastise him. Miss Knyvett took the affair philosophically, and married Mr. Egerton the following year, soon after which her husband obligingly died, and left her a very handsome fortune in addition to her own.

Mrs. Stapleton and Lord St. Vincent never met again.

As I sat by her side yesterday she told me all her story. I knew by the sound of her voice that she was crying.

"Never trifle with sacred things, my love," she said, bending over and kissing me; "and remember that every pang we cause a loving human soul is a sin against the divinest and most sacred thing which God has given us on earth to know."

A "FEAST OF FLOWERS"

I HAVE just returned from a visit to a secluded and charming Derbyshire village, where I witnessed as lovely a sight as the most ardent and poetic imagination could desire or devise. Will the readers of Belgravia, I wonder, thank me if I briefly describe to them what I saw and heard there? Or will they consider it a waste of time to read an article which has no romance or startling incident connected with it? I have sufficient faith in them to feel sure they will be pleased with the simple recital of the observance of a simple custom; and I will tell them about a floral festival-a perfect "feast of flowers"-which is annually held in the village to which I have alluded, and which is one of the most beautiful observances which this or any past age has followed, and one in whose simplicity and artlessness lies its greatest charm.

Tissington, near Dove Dale, is a village of the most secluded and most old-world character; one into whose precincts neither turnpikeroad, canal, nor railway has dared to enter, and where neither factories, those curses to beautiful scenery, nor public-houses, those banes to beautiful lives, have existence; a village where all is apparent happiness, and whose inhabitants seek not, nor are sought by, the world beyond; a village

"Far removed from noise and smoke"

of the busy town, where there is the purest air, the most sparkling water, and the most unpolluted lives; a village whose inhabitants at the present day can trace back, through

"The rude forefathers of the hamlet,"

who sleep in its quiet churchyard, connection with ages long past, and who would look with laudably jealous eyes on any interlopers who might wish to settle amongst them. Within a stone's-throw of the village church-which was built by Norman hands-the bones and other remains of the ancient Briton and of his Roman conqueror, of the Anglo-Saxon and of the Norman, and of all later times, exist, and show that the spot on which but an hour or two ago I stood to witness the observance of one of the most ancient of customs had been known and stood upon and passed over by its residents through countless ages, back into the dim distance of the most remote of prehistoric times; that the springs, around which the people had this day gathered with songs of praise, had bubbled up with the same tinkling sound, with the

same unceasing flow, and with the same refreshing purity, for our skinclothed Celtic ancestor as for us, and that their waters had been as grateful and as refreshing to him in his wild and free and uncontrolled state as to us, with our thousand conventionalities and artificial surroundings.

It is happy to reflect that in this isolated village, which lies away from turnpike-roads, and is closed in on its approaches from every side by gates, the custom I am about to speak of, which is a remnant of the visible spirit of thankfulness of its early inhabitants, is still observed in a proper spirit and with thankful and solemn feelings.

In Tissington, which is a very small village, are several "wells" or springs of water, of which five are annually, on Ascension-day (Holy Thursday), "dressed," as the village term is, with flowers, in a remarkable and perfectly unique manner. Not with garlands nor with. festoons; not with bouquets or unmeaning heaps of flowers; not with "bow-pots" or vases; not with choice plants brought out, flower-show fashion, from the conservatories and greenhouses of the rich Fitzherberts at the Hall, or of their friends; but with wild-flowers set in brilliant mosaic work on wooden frames, forming shrines, surrounding and rising up above the wells to several feet in height. These are the work of the villagers, who year by year, and each year with new device, prepare these floral temples, and place them above the ever-flowing springs.

These structures generally partake of the character of a gothic temple or shrine. They are formed of a framework of wood, made in several pieces, so as to be put easily together. On each piece of this framework a coating of moist clay, tempered with salt, is carefully spread, and in this the flowers, cut close off from their stems, and carefully sorted into tints, are inserted in the required pattern. The whole structure becomes thus a piece of perfect mosaic work, the tesseræ of which it is composed being flowers of different colours.

The gifted authoress of the Art Student in Munich, having made a pilgrimage to Tissington, thus spoke of the beautiful effect of these floral mosaics:* "The floral decorations being purely mosaic work, flowers are used instead of stones-ruby-red, pink and white double daisies instead of porphyry and marbles, the crisp flowers of the wild blue hyacinth instead of lapis lazuli, the bright-green twigs of the yewtree instead of malachite; and so on. The colours principally employed are crimson, pink, blue, golden-yellow, white, and varied greens. The effect is marvellously brilliant, original, and fantastic beyond the description of words. The designs are arabesques-quaint symbols, such as crosses, vases, doves, &c., mingled with texts from Scripture. The character is, as has been said, that of mosaic work or illumination. The principal flowers used are double daisies, the crimson and white predominating. Occasionally pink double daisies are chosen; but

See the Reliquary, Quarterly Journal and Review, vol. ii. pp. 29-48,

the tints have to be most carefully sorted, and only the same shade of flowers employed in masses together. White double daisies are frequently chosen as the groundwork for a text, or emblazonment of some brilliant colour, with an excellent effect. Double white daisies, we also observe, are made use of for the symbolic doves with surprising taste, their dead whiteness telling with exquisite purity upon a crimson, light-green, or blue ground. Yellow is produced in various tints by laburnum, furze-blossom, caltha, and corcorus; blue by the wild hyacinth; crimson and dull pink by double daisies; green, dark olive, and grass-green by the old and young twigs of the yew-tree. Occasionally various kinds of berries and even lichens are most ingeniously and artistically employed to produce gradation of tint; and this introduction of these tertiary colours in slight degrees is valuable in the extreme to an artistic eye. The flowers are carefully separated from their branches and stems, and laid together in heaps of colour to be used. The whole is, in fact, an art, and requires both taste, skill, and experience in its elaboration. In the first place, the wooden frame of the shrine, which is in separate pieces, so as to be readily moved about, is covered with a layer of clay mixed with salt in order to preserve the moisture. Upon this clay is very accurately marked out the pattern to be, as it were, embroidered with flowers, by pricking with a wooden skewer through a paper on which the pattern or design had been traced. Into this moist clay the flowers and twigs, according to colour, are closely stuck together side by side, producing at a distance, in their rich masses, an effect almost like velvet."

For several days before the appointed time the children of the village employ themselves in collecting flowers, and the young men, ay, and old ones too, busy themselves in forming the shrines and filling-in the mosaics, working with a laudable zeal, and animated by a loving spirit for the good and the beautiful, and by veneration for the custom handed down to them from their ancestors. In the early morning of Holy Thursday these five shrines are placed over the wells, busy groups being at work at each; and temporary fences of green boughs wattled together are formed in front of those which, for effect, require such aid; the ground inside being strewed with a carpet of flowers, the yellows of the cowslips blending and harmonising sweetly with the blues of the wild hyacinth and the forget-me-not.

At eleven o'clock divine service is held in the parish-church,-a truly interesting Norman building, with many noteworthy features,and always with a numerous, attentive, and devout congregation. The service is of course the usual morning-service, with this exception, that the proper psalms for the day (Ascension-day) and the epistle and gospel are omitted in the church, in order that they may form a part of the succeeding open-air celebration. The sermon has invariably some special allusion or reference to the sweet and simple ceremony of the day, and is thus rendered more than usually impressive and

useful. The sermon ended, the rector of the parish with his assisting clergymen this year three of his neighbouring incumbents-clothed in their white surplices and university caps and distinctions, preceded by the village choir, and followed by the entire congregation and visitors, form themselves into procession at the church-porch, and proceed to visit the various wells.

Emerging from the churchyard gates, this simple but impressivelooking procession wends its way along the village green to the first of the wells, situated opposite to Tissington Hall, and hence called the "Hall Well." Here-the clergy in front of and facing the well, the choir ranged on either side, and the congregation gathered closely around, all bareheaded-the first of the proper psalms for the day was read, and a hymn, written specially for the occasion many, many years ago, sung by the whole of the assembly of clergy and laity and choir. From hence the procession moved on to the next well, known as "Hand's Well," where the second proper psalm for the day and another hymn were read and sung; and then, by way of a long lane, to the third well, called, from the curious form of the stonework which receives the water, the "Coffin Well." Here the third proper psalm of the day was, as at the other wells, read, and then a hymn sweetly sung. The fourth well, the "Town's Well," was next in like manner visited, and here the epistle for the day was read, and a fourth hymn sung. At the fifth and last well, known as "Goodwin's Well," which was next visited, the gospel of the day was read, and the doxology effectively sung. This was followed by prayer from the rector, who next pronounced the benediction, and the charming observances of the day were brought to a close.

The procession had, in the course of the visitation of the wells, passed around the village-proceeding out from the churchyard to the north, skirting the village along its east side, and returning to the church on the south.

The inscriptions on the wells this year, besides sacred monograms and appropriate emblems and devices, were respectively, "O YE WELLS, BLESS THE LORD;" "GOD IS LOVE;" "LORD OF LORDS;" "THE PRINCE OF PEACE;" and "PRAISE YE THE LORD."

Of the origin of this sweet custom but little beyond conjecture can be said, and conjecture need not be indulged in in this brief article. The custom, if not as old as the hills which surround the "happy valley" in which Tissington is placed, is at least as old as the time when Christianity first planted itself there; and it may, indeed, not improbably be of even more remote origin. It is one of the last remnants of the purity, the simplicity, the open-hearted thankfulness of our early forefathers to "the Parent of good" for all His "wondrous works," for making the waters flow into their valley, for supplying them with never-ending streams; and it is a blessed feature in the character of the Tissington people that they are tenacious of its observance, and vie