At Haydock, in Lancashire, a Ritualist harvest home was cele-
brated last week of the most ridiculous description. There were, -of course, the grandest conceivable clothes, of which the following -are to us unintelligible, and only minute specimens—" crucifer in -cassock, cotta, fur tippet, and biretta ; choir boy in a violet CAS- Lock, bearing on his head a round basket of fruit, vine leaves," -&c. ; then somebody carried "a white, blue, and silver banner of -the Holy Spirit," "a banner of St. James the Great, with painted picture," &c. Then "the following offefings, which had previously been borne in procession, were brought to the sacristan at the chancel steps, and by him taken to the priest at the altar for presen- tation " :—" A pig's head, decked out with flowers, corn, and berries, a large pat of butter stamped with a lamb, two smaller pate of butter, twelve fresh eggs in moss baskets," &c., after which,—the pig's head and the butter,—the band appears to have -significantly played "0 Paradise !" The Vicar preached, "grasp- ing a cross, which he used in a most spirited manner," but lost his -voice before he got to the end of his sermon. We suppose all this aort of thing is intended to make people more grateful for their pigs' heads, pats of butter, corn, eggs, and other good things ; but if so, why not present new books, newspapers, sewing-machines, microscopes, voltaic batteries, and other such gifts of God on the -altar ? It is poor work, this spasmodic attempt to make a nation -whose outward life has been absorbed, so to say, by its inward, go -back into the dancing, gesticulating, genuflecting days of its infancy.
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