sanction for their charming indiscretions. Indeed, he is fabled by the
poets to be responsible for the billing and cooing of the whole creation.
Everybody knows that the birds, too, pair on St. Valentine's Day. We have
many a poet's word for it. Donne's charming lines, for instance--

'All the air is thy diocese,
And all the chirping choristers
And other birds are thy parishioners:
Thou marriest every year
The lyrique lark, and the grave whispering dove,
The sparrow, that neglects his life for love,
The household bird with the red stomacher;
Thou mak'st the blackbird speed as soon
As doth the goldfinch or the halcyon.'

In fact, it would appear that St. Valentine was, literally, a
hedge-priest.

But do lovers, one wonders, still observe his ancient, though mistaken,
rites? Do they still have a care whose pretty face they should first set
eyes upon on Valentine's morning, like Mistress Pepys, who kept her eyes
closed the whole forenoon lest they should portend a _mesalliance_ with
one of those tiresome 'paynters' at work on the gilding of the pictures
and the chimney-piece? Or do they with throbbing hearts 'draw' for the
fateful name, or, weighting little inscribed slips of paper with lead or
breadcrumbs, and dropping them into a basin of water, breathlessly await
the name that shall first float up to the surface? Do they still perform
that terrible feat of digestion, which consisted of eating a hard-boiled
egg, shell and all, to inspire the presaging dream, and pin five
bay-leaves upon their pillows to make it the surer?

We are told they do, these happy superstitious lovers, though probably the
practices obtain now mostly among a class of fair maids who have none of
Mrs. Pepys' fears of 'paynters,' and who are not averse even from a bright
young plumber. Indeed, it is to be feared that the one sturdy survival of
St. Valentine is to be sought in the 'ugly valentine.' This is another of
Time's jests: to degrade the beautiful and distinguished, and mock at
old-time sanctities with coarse burlesque. We see it constantly in the
fortunes of old streets and squares, once graced with the beau and the
sedan-chair, the very cynosure of the polite and elegant world, but now
vocal with the clamorous wrongs of the charwoman and the melancholy appeal
of the coster. We see it, too, in the ups and downs of words once
aristocratic or tender, words once the very signet of polite conversation,
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