In Poor Robin’s Almanack, 1676, the drawing of Valentines is thus alluded to: 

  “Now Andrew, Antho-
    Ny, and William,
  For Valentines draw
    Prue, Kate, Jilian.”

Gay makes mention of a method of choosing Valentines in his time, viz. that the lad’s Valentine was the first lass he spied in the morning, who was not an inmate of the house; and the lass’s Valentine was the first young man she met.

Also, it is a belief among certain playful damsels, that if they pin four bay leaves to the corners of the pillow, and the fifth in the middle, they are certain of dreaming of their lover.

Shakspeare bears witness to the custom of looking out of window for a Valentine, or desiring to be one, by making Ophelia sing:—­

  Good morrow! ’tis St. Valentine’s day,
    All in the morning betime,
  And I a maid at your window. 
    To be your Valentine!

In London this day is ushered in by the thundering knock of the postman at the different doors, through whose hands some thousands of Valentines pass for many a fair maiden in the course of the day.  Valentines are, however, getting very ridiculous, if we may go by the numerous doggrels that appear in the print-shops on this day.  As an instance, I transmit the reader a copy of some lines appended to a Valentine sent me last year.  Under the figure of a shoemaker, with a head thrice the size of his body, and his legs forming an oval, were the following rhymes:—­

  Do you think to be my Valentine? 
  Oh, no! you snob, you shan’t be mine: 
  So big your ugly head has grown,
  No wig will fit to seem your own
  Go, find your equal if you can,
  For I will ne’er have such a man;
  Your fine bow legs and turned-in feet,
  Make you a citizen complete.”

The fair writer had here evidently ventured upon a pun; how far it has succeeded I will leave others to say.  The lovely creature was, however, entirely ignorant of my calling; and whatever impression such a description would leave on the reader’s mind, it made none on mine, though in the second verse I was certainly much pleased with the fair punster.  I wish you saw the engraving!

W.H.H.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  Kirkstall Abbey.]

The first page or frontispiece embellisment of the present Number of the MIRROR illustrates one of the most recent triumphs of art; and the above vignette is a fragment of the monastic splendour of the twelfth century.  Truly this is the bathos of art.  The plaster and paint of the Colosseum are scarcely dry, and half the work is in embryo; whilst Kirkstall is crumbling to dust, and reading us “sermons in stones:”  we may well say,

  “Look here, upon this picture, and on this.”