In the North Riding of Yorkshire, the young folks retain a very ancient custom during Advent.  They make a wax figure representing the infant Jesus, and place it in a small wooden case, with evergreens, which hide all but the figure.  A napkin is thrown over the box; and the puppet is thus carried about, and exhibited from door to door, by a boy, the others chanting some supplicatory lines.  The same custom prevails in Wales.

In Italy, a wax figure representing the Virgin, inclosed in a beautifully carved wooden case, is placed on the back of an ass, and exhibited through the country during Advent.  Every traveller on seeing it prostrates himself immediately, and crosses himself, and considers himself in duty bound to bestow his charity on the proprietor.  Others carry emblematical figures through the different towns, or sit by the road side, and uncover the effigy to every passer-by.

W.H.H.

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CURIOUS MANORIAL RIGHT.

(For the Mirror.)

At Ripley Castle, in Yorkshire, the seat of Sir William Ingilby, there is in the great staircase an elegant Venetian window, in the divisions of which, on stain-glass, are a series of escutcheons, displaying the principal quarterings and intermarriages of the Ingilby family since their settling at Ripley, during a course of 430 years.

In one of the chambers of the tower is the following sentence, carved on the frieze of the wainscot:—­“In the yeire of owre Ld.  MDLV. was this howse buyldyd, by Sir Wyllyam Ingilby, Knight, Philip and Marie reigning that time.”

John Pallisser, of Bristhwaite, formerly held his lands of the manor of Ripley, by the payment of a red rose at Midsummer, and by carrying the boar’s head to the lord’s table all the twelve days of Christmas.

W.G.C.

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NOTES OF A READER.

EUGENE ARAM.

We intend to quote a few scenes and snatches from Mr. Bulwer’s extraordinary novel of this name.  At present, however, we can only introduce the ill-fated hero.

(Two young ladies, daughters of the lord of the Manor, approach Aram’s house:—­)

“Madeline would even now fain have detained her sister’s hand from the bell that hung without the porch half embedded in ivy; but Ellinor, out of patience—­as she well might be—­with her sister’s unseasonable prudence, refused any longer delay.  So singularly still and solitary was the plain around the house, that the sound of the bell breaking the silence had in it something startling, and appeared, in its sudden and shrill voice, a profanation to the deep tranquillity of the spot.  They did not wait long—­a step was heard within—­the door was slowly unbarred, and the Student himself stood before them.”