actively employed in numerous others, of great importance at the time he wrote; though they are no longer of interest, excepting his Epistle to EGBERT bishop of York, which furnishes a picture of the state of the Church at that period, no where else to be found.

AUSTIN, when he converted the Anglo-Saxons, had forcibly impressed upon their minds, the virtues attendant upon monastic life, and he succeeded so effectually, that monasteries became extremely numerous, powerful, and wealthy; BEDE strongly urged the bishops to lessen their numbers, and to augment that of the bishops and secular clergy, to preach the Gospel in country towns and villages; many of which places, he said, never were visited by a bishop; nor had they any presbyters to instruct the people in religion and morality. The language he has used is nervous, his arguments impressive; and it is to be remembered, that not only the first Protestants availed themselves of his ideas, but that the subsequent Reformers of the English Church, under HENRY the VIIIth, EDWARD the VIth, and ELIZABETH, all severally acted upon his principles.

The translation of the Gospel of ST. JOHN was the last of BEDE's labours, and he is said to have completed it only a few hours before he died, on the 26th of May, 735. His remains were deposited in a golden coffin in the church of the monastery at Jarrow, where he had passed his life, though his body was removed to Durham in

the year 1370, and interred in the same coffin with the ashes of ST. CUTHBERT in a Chapel, at the West end of the Cathedral, where may yet be seen his tomb, with an antient parchment scroll hanging over it, enumerating his virtues.

BEDE is the FIRST ENGLISH AUTHOR who used the modern mode of date," ANNO DOMINI ;" and he is alleged by CRESSY to have given name to the CHAPLETS for numbering prayers, which from him were called BEDES, now BEADS. CRESSY's assertion is much controverted, though it is certain, that the Romanists make use of Beads in rehearsing their Pater-nosters, &c. and that the bead-makers are called by the French, Paternostriers,

POLYDORE VERGIL, whose testimony is more to be relied upon than CRESSY's, makes PETER, the Hermit, the inventor of beads, "to be as guides to direct the offices of religion to a proper course: At first," he says, they were made of wood, but afterwards sometimes of amber, coral, silver, and gold, and used by women as ornaments, or by hypocrites as instruments of feigned devotion."

This great and good man was never canonized; but he obtained the titles of "VENERABLE, ADMIRABLE, and THE WISE SAXON," by the voluntary homage of his contemporaries, and from the utility of his works: an attention-much more honourable to his memory, and expressive of the esteem in which he was held for his exalted virtue,

and extensive knowledge. The monks, however, not satisfied with such respectable cause for these appellations, have favoured us with two accounts of the origin of his more general title of VENERABLE: "When blind," say some of these authors," he preached to a heap of stones, thinking himself in a church, and the stones, were so much affected by his eloquence and piety, that they answered, Amen, venerable BEDE, Amen." While others assert, that "his scholars being desirous of placing upon his tomb an Epitaph in rhyme, agreeably to the usage of the times, wrote

"Hæc sunt in fossa,

"Beda presbyteri ossa ;"

which not meeting complete approbation, the much vexed Poet determined to fast until he should succeed better: accordingly, he expunged the word Presbyteri, and in vain attempted to substitute one more sonorous and consistent with metre, until falling asleep, an ANGEL filled up the blank he had left, and rendered the couplet thus

"Hæc sunt in fossa,

"Bedæ venerabilis ossa

BEDE's anniversary is kept on the 27th of May, because the 26th, on which he died, was appro priated to ST. AUSTIN; and as AUSTIN was a great promoter of monasteries, and BEDE wished their reduction, it was not probable that the former

should be displaced to make room for one not so much the friend of MONKS; who, for that reason; except in the alleged cause of his title of Venerable, never vouchsafed to mark his memory by any of their miraculous narrations.

Our good historian is frequently styled, as already mentioned, the ADMIRABLE BEDE, as well as the VENerable Bede; and the chair in which he composed his Ecclesiastical History, is yet stated to be preserved at Jarrow. Some few years since, this chair was intrusted to the custody of a person who had been accustomed to nautical affairs, and who used, by a whimsical mistake, very excuseable in a sailor, to exhibit it as a curiosity, formerly belonging to the great Admiral BEDE, upon whose exploits he ventured several encomiums consistent with the naval character.

Corpus Christi,

(28TH MAY, 1812,)

is a feast in the Romish Church, held on the Thursday in each year next following Trinity Sunday. It was instituted A. D. 1264, by Pope URBAN the Fourth, in honour of a miracle that was vouchsafed in his supremacy,-—and which the Inimitable pencil of RAPHAEL has made generally

known, of the consecrated wafer having dropt with blood, when a sceptic Priest had presumed to doubt the real presence in the Sacrament. A different origin has, however, been given to this festival by two authors of great celebrity in Popish rites, who assign its establishment solely to a DREAM of Eva, formerly a familiar of URBAN, but at the period of her important vision a recluse in the territory of Lieju. Pope HONORIUS the Third, it is stated, had before entertained some ideas of such ordinance.

The object of this festival, is to celebrate the inestimable blessings conferred upon mankind by the Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist, with its mystic doctrine of TRANSUBSTANTIATION; and hence the pageantry of the day has far surpassed that of most others in shadowy observance.

Since the Reformation, we have not any remains of the original ceremonies in this country, though formerly we could rival the most bigoted parts of the Continent in the absurdity and profligacy of its celebration, particularly at Coventry, where folly was suffered to take its full range. In Ireland, too, the solemn absurdities of the day were carried to an extraordinary height: In Dublin, the whole of the different Guilds or Fra→ ternities had their respective characters allotted to them, when they attended in procession.

The GLOVERS and BREECHES-MAKERS represented Adam and Eve, with an Angel bearing a fiery sword before them;