a licensed licentiousness.
This forms a distinct characteristic from those other popular customs
and pastimes which the learned have also traced to the Roman, and even
more ancient nations. Our present inquiry is, to illustrate that
proneness in man, of delighting to reverse the order of society, and
ridiculing its decencies.

Here we had our _boy-bishop_, a legitimate descendant of this family of
foolery. On St. Nicholas's day, a saint who was the patron of children,
the boy-bishop with his _mitra parva_ and a long crosier, attended by
his school-mates as his diminutive prebendaries, assumed the title and
state of a bishop. The child-bishop preached a sermon, and afterwards,
accompanied by his attendants, went about singing and collecting his
pence: to such theatrical processions in collegiate bodies, Warton
attributes the custom, still existing at Eton, of going _ad
montem_.[132] But this was a tame mummery, compared with the grossness
elsewhere allowed in burlesquing religious ceremonies. The English, more
particularly after the Reformation, seem not to have polluted the
churches with such abuses. The relish for the Saturnalia was not,
however, less lively here than on the Continent; but it took a more
innocent direction, and was allowed to turn itself into civil life: and
since the people would be gratified by mock dignities, and claimed the
privilege of ridiculing their masters, it was allowed them by our kings
and nobles; and a troop of grotesque characters, frolicsome great men,
delighting in merry mischief, are recorded in our domestic annals.

The most learned Selden, with parsimonious phrase and copious sense, has
thus compressed the result of an historical dissertation: he derives our
ancient Christmas sports at once from the true, though remote, source.
"Christmas succeeds the Saturnalia; the same time, the same number of
holy-days; then the master waited upon the servant, like the _lord of
misrule_."[133] Such is the title of a facetious potentate, who, in this
notice of Selden's, is not further indicated, for this personage was
familiar in his day, but of whom the accounts are so scattered, that
his offices and his glory are now equally obscure. The race of this
nobility of drollery, and this legitimate king of all hoaxing and
quizzing, like mightier dynasties, has ceased to exist.

In England our festivities at Christmas appear to have been more
entertaining than in other countries. We were once famed