dispute and decide every controversy.  On that occasion, all the fires in the country were extinguished on the preceding evening, in order to be supplied next day by a portion of the holy fire which was kindled and consecrated by the Druids.  Of this, no person who had infringed the peace, or become obnoxious by any breach of law, or guilty of any failure in duty, was to have share, till he had first made all the reparation and submission which the Druids required of him.  Whoever did not, with the most implicit obedience, agree to this, had the sentence of excommunication passed against him, which was more dreaded than death; none being allowed to give him house or fire, or shew him the least office of humanity, under the penalty of incurring the same sentence.”  The ancient Romans held a great and popular festival at the end of February, called the Ferralia.  At this season, they visited the graves of their departed friends, and offered sacrifices and oblations to the spirits of the dead; they believed that the spirits of the departed, both the good and the bad, were released on that particular night, and that, if they were not propitiated, these spirits would haunt throughout the coming year their undutiful living relatives.  In all probability, though the time of celebration is different, these Roman ceremonies and the Hallowe’en ceremonies in this country had a common origin.  In the year 610, the Bishop of Rome ordained that the heathen Pantheon should be converted into a Christian church, and dedicated to all the martyrs; and a festival was instituted to commemorate the event.  This was held on the first of May, and continued to be held on this day till 834, when the time of celebration was altered to the first of November, and it was then called All Hallow, from a Saxon word, Haligan, meaning to keep holy.  This change was doubtless made in order to supply a Christian substitute for some heathen festival—­in all probability the festival of Sham-in, which, as we have seen, was an old Druidical feast.  Some time after this alteration in the time of holding the feast in honour of the martyrs, in 993, another festival was instituted for the purpose of offering prayers for the souls of those in purgatory, and this feast was kept on the second of November, and was called All Souls.  The following legend was either invented as a plausible reason for instituting this additional feast, or the legend, being previously well known and accepted as truth, was really the bona fide reason for the institution:—­“A pilgrim, returning from the Holy Land, was compelled by storm to land upon a rocky island, where he found a hermit, who told him that among the cliffs of the island was an opening into the infernal regions, through which huge flames ascended, and where the groans of the tormented were distinctly audible.  The pilgrim, on his return, told the Abbot of Clugny of this, and the Abbot appointed the second day of November to be set apart