is well
if the culprit, at the conclusion of the business, has not a ducking
added to the rest of the punishment. Of the origin of this custom we
know nothing. It is well known, however, over the country; and within
these six years, it was with great ceremony performed upon a weaver
in the Canongate of Edinburgh.

This custom can scarcely fail to recall to the recollection of the
intelligent reader, the analogous practice among the Negroes of
Africa, mentioned by Mungo Park, under the denomination of the
mysteries of Mumbo Jumbo. The two customs, however, mark, in a
striking manner, the different situations of the female sex in the
northern and middle regions of the globe. From Tacitus and the
earliest historians we learn, that the most ancient inhabitants of
Europe, however barbarous their condition in other respects might be,
lived on terms of equal society with their women, and avoided the
practice of polygamy; but in Africa, where the laws of domestic
society are different, the husbands, as the masters of a number of
enslaved women, find it necessary to have recourse to frauds and
disgraceful severities to maintain their authority; whereas in Europe
we find, among the common people, a sanction for the women to protect
each other, by severities, against the casual injustice committed by
the ruling sex.

CHARLES STUART.

* * * * *

NOTES OF A READER.

* * * * *

CHRISTMAS SCRAPS.

We have _spiced_ our former volumes, as well as our present number,
with two or three articles suitable to this jocund season; but we
cannot deny ourselves the pleasure of adding "more last words." People
talk of Old and New Christmas with woeful faces; and a few, more
learned than their friends, cry _stat nominis umbra_,--all which may
be very true, for aught we know or care. Swift proved that mortal MAN
is a _broomstick_; and Dr. Johnson wrote a sublime meditation on a
_pudding_; and we could write a whole number about the midnight mass
and festivities of Christmas, pull out old Herrick and his Ceremonies
for Christmasse--his yule log--and Strutt's Auntient Customs in Games
used by Boys and Girls, merrily sett out in verse; but we leave
such relics for the present, and seek consolation in the thousand
wagon-loads of poultry and game, and the many million turkeys
that make all the coach--offices of the metropolis like so many
charnel-houses. We would rather