statement that they were the arms of the Medicis, a branch of which family (together with many other Lombard houses) settled in London at an early period, fixing their quarters in the street which was called after them Lombard Street. The subject of signs has recently been treated, in a style at once copious, entertaining, and instructive, in the volume entitled The History of Signboards. BARBERS' SIGNS. A barber's shop is generally distinguished by a long pole, the singularity of which arrests the attention of the passenger. It is the historic memorial of the time when barbers practised phlebotomy, and patients undergoing the operation had to grasp the pole in order to accelerate the discharge of blood. As the pole was thus liable to be stained, it was painted red; and, when not in use, the owner suspended it outside the door with the white linen swathing bands twisted around it. In later times, when surgery was dissociated from the tonsorial art, the pole was painted red and white, or black and white, or even with red, white, and blue lines winding about it, emblematic of its former use; and the soap basin was appended thereto. The cut representing a barber's shop, in the Orbis Pictus of Comenius, confirms the use of the pole, the patient submitting to the operation of phlebotomy having a pole or staff in his hand; and an illumination in a missal of the time of Edward IV. certifies its antiquity. In The British Apollo (1708), to the question "I'de know why he that selleth Ale The answer given is "In antient Rome, when men lov'd fighting, Could walk, on Stumps the others hopt :- Their Trade decaying; to keep swimming, Thus twisted both their Trades together." Gayton writes: "The Barber hath a long pole elevated; and at the end of it a Labell, wherein is, in a fair text hand, written this word Money. Now the Pole signifies itself, which joined to the written word makes Pole-money. There's the Rebus, that Cut-bert is no-body without Pole-money." Barber, In Green's Quip for an upstart Courtier (1620) we read: when you come to poor Cloth Breeches, you either cut his beard at your own pleasure, or else in disdaine aske him if he will be trim'd with Christ's cut, round like the half of a Holland Cheese, mocking both Christ and us;” and in Wits, Fits, and Fancies (1614) we read: “A Gentleman gave a Gentlewoman a fine twisted bracelet of Silke and Golde, and seeing it the next day upon another Gentlewoman's wrist, said, it was like a Barber's Girdle, soone slipt from one side to another." According to Steevens, it was formerly part of a barber's occupation to pick the teeth and ears. So, in the old Play of Herod and Antipater (1622), Tryphon, the barber, enters with a case of instruments, to each of which he addresses himself separately— "Toothpick, dear tooth-pick: ear-pick, both of you Speaking of the "grosse Ignorance" of the barbers, the author of the World of Wonders (1607), says: "This puts me in minde of a Barber who after he had cupped me (as the Physitian had prescribed) to turn away a Catarrhe, asked me if I would be sacrificed. Sacrificed? said I; did the Phisition tell you any such thing? No (quoth he) but I have sacrificed many, who have bene the better for it. Then musing a little with myselfe I told him, surely, Sir, you mistake yourself, you meane scarified. O Sir, by your favour, (quoth he) I have ever heard it called Sacrificing, and as for scarifying I never heard of it before. In a word I could by no means perswade him, but that it was the Barber's Office to sacrifice Men. Since which time I never saw any Man in a Barber's hands, but that sacrificing Barber came to my mind." Opposing the Surgeons' Incorporation Bill in a speech delivered in the House of Peers on 17th July 1797, Lord Thurlow stated that by a statute then in force both barbers and surgeons were required to use poles; the former painting them with blue and black stripes, without any appendages, and the latter adding thereto gallipots and flags, by way of denoting the particular nature of their vocation. Gay's fable of the goat without a beard thus describes a barber's shop "His Pole with pewter Basons hung, Did well his threefold Trade explain, Who shav'd, drew Teeth, and breath'd a Vein." TOBACCO IN ALEHOUSES. UR catalogue of Popular Antiquities would be incomplete with OUR catacluding some notice of what Stow calls " that stinking weed so much abused to God's dishonour," the first introduction of which into England is dated about the year 1586, Drake's fleet being the importers of it after their attack upon the Spanish provinces in the West Indies. With the exception of love and war, it has been truly observed, perhaps no subject has ever attracted to itself so much attention as the theme of tobacco. Popes, kings, poets, historians, and physicians have all of them dwelt upon its use and abuse. The Athenian Oracle's explanation of the prevalence and permanence of its use, if not remarkable on the score of historic fidelity, certainly is entertaining. According to it when America was first discovered by people professing Christianity, the devil was troubled at the prospect of losing his hold upon the people through the introduction of the true faith; but he soon hit upon an expedient. He confidentially informed some Indians of his acquaintance that he had found out a way to be revenged upon the Christians for daring to invade his quarters. He would teach them to take tobacco, and they would thenceforward be enslaved to it. Burton's Anatomy (1621) is at once ironically and seriously encomiastic: "Tobacco! Divine, rare, super-excellent tobacco, which goes farre beyond all their panaceas, potable gold, and philosopher's stones, a sovereign remedy to all diseases! A good vomit, I confesse ; a vertuous herbe, if it be well qualified, opportunely taken, and medicinally used: but, as it is commonly used by most men which take it as tinkers do ale, 'tis a plague, a mischiefe, a violent purger of goods, lands, health; hellish, devilish, and damned tobacco, the ruine and overthrow of body and soule." Among King James' Apophthegms (1658) we have His Majesty professing that, in the event of his inviting the devil to dinner, he should have three dishes-a pig; a poll of ling and mustard; and a pipe of tobacco "for digesture.' An old collection of epigrams embraces the following quaint one upon "A Tobacconist. "All dainty meates I do defie Which feed men fat as swine: He is a frugal man indeed He needs no napkin for his hands, That keeps his kitchen in a box, Hausted's version of the Hymnus Tabaci of Raphael Thorius (1651) supplies perhaps the strongest invective against tobacco "Let it be damn'd to Hell, and call'd from thence The Devil's addle eggs, or else to these A sacrifice grim Pluto to appease, A deadly weed, which its beginning had From the foam of Cerberus, when the cur was mad." By way of contrast to the above we may subjoin the opening of a parody, by Hawkins Browne, of the style of Ambrose Phillips "Little tube of mighty power, Our British Solomon, James I., who was a violent opponent of the devil, and testified his hostility to him by writing a book against witchcraft, also made a formidable attack upon this "invention of Satan" in a learned performance entitled a Counterblaste to Tobacco (1604). His sulphureous invective against the transmarine weed concludes with this peroration : "Have you not reason to be ashamed and to forbear this filthy novelty, so basely grounded, so foolishly received, and so grossly mistaken in the right use thereof? In your abuse thereof sinning against God, harming yourselves both in persons and goods, and taking also thereby (look to it, ye that take snuff in profusion !) the marks and notes of vanity upon you; by the custom thereof making yourselves to be wondered at by all foreign civil nations, and by all strangers that come upon you, to be scorned and contemned; a custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black stinking fume thereof nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless." If this small specimen of our learned monarch's eloquence, so well adapted to the understanding of old women, fails to effect the destruction of their tobacco pipes and their total abstinence from smoking, we know not what will. The subject is, as His Majesty rightly observes, smoke; and no doubt many of his readers will incline to regard the arguments of our royal author but as the fumes of an idle brain, and, it may be added, of an empty head. James, however, notwithstanding his antipathy to the drug, which he affirmed to be pernicious alike to moral and to physical health, gave the new planters in the West Indies permission to import it into England; only prohibiting by proclamation the entry of tobacco from Spain. That our ancestors, on the first introduction of tobacco into the country, carried its use to a frightful excess, may be gathered from the fact that they smoked even at church. Urban VIII. in 1624 published a decree of excommunication against all such offenders; and, the practice extending to Rome itself, Innocent XII. in 1690 solemnly excommunicated all those who should be guilty of taking snuff or tobacco within the precincts of St Peter's. Perhaps the closest approach to this ardour for smoking that declined to have regard for the very elements of public decency (to say the least of it), is made in the case of William Breedon, vicar of Thornton in Bucks, introduced to our notice as "a profound divine, but absolutely the most polite person for nativities in that age ;" of whom we read in the Life of the astrologer Lilly that, when he had no tobacco (and presumably too much drink), he would eat the bell-ropes and apply himself to smoking them. Now-a-days alehouses are licensed to deal in tobacco. It was not so, however, in the time of James I., when it was thought to be such an incentive to drunkenness that it was strictly forbidden to be taken therein. An alehouse licence of the period enjoins, among other directions to the inn-keeper: "Item, you shall not utter, nor willingly suffer to be utter'd, drunke, or taken any tobacco within your house, celler, or other place thereunto belonging." 66 Byron's lines on the Indian weed” may fitly close our observations on this subject— "Sublime tobacco! which from east to west Cheers the tar's labours, or the Turkman's rest; His hours, and rivals opium and his brides; Though not less loved, in Wapping or the Strand; When tipped with amber, mellow, rich and ripe ; CUSTOMS AND SUPERSTITIONS CONCERNING WELLS AND FOUNTAINS. THIS HIS custom is of the most remote antiquity. In giving par ticular names to inanimate things the intention obviously is to distinguish the property of them. A well was a most valuable treasure in the dry and parched countries which were the scenes of patriarchal history; and accordingly we find in one of the earliest of writings, the Book of Genesis, that it was a frequent subject of contention. In Dodsley's Travels of Tom Thumb we read: "A Man would be inexcusable that should come into North Wales and not visit Holywell or St Winifride's Well, and hear attentively all the Stories that are told about it. It is indeed a natural wonder, though we believe nothing of the Virgin and her rape: for I never felt a colder Spring nor saw any one that affords such a quantity of water. It forms alone a considerable Brook which is immediately able to drive a Mill." To this we may add Pennant's account: "After the death of that Saint, the waters were almost as sanative as those of the Pool of Bethesda: all Infirmities incident to the human body met with relief: the votive Crutches, the Barrows, and other Proofs of Cures, to this moment remain as evidences pendent over the Well. The Resort of Pilgrims of late Years to these Fontinalia has considerably decreased. In the Summer, still, a few are to be seen in the water in deep devotion up to their Chins for hours. sending up their prayers or performing a number |