be made of indications, more or less trivial in themselves, of a tolerably general feeling throughout society that Lent was not quite what other seasons are, and ought not to be wholly disregarded.  There were few marriages in Lent,[1006] comparatively few entertainments, public or private;[1007] in some cathedral towns the music of the choir was silent.[1008] And just as Sunday is sometimes honoured only by the putting on of a better dress, so the fashionable world would often pay that easiest show of homage to the sacredness of the Lenten season, not by curtailing in any way their ordinary pleasures, but by going to the theatre in mourning.[1009] Masquerades, too, were considered out of place, at all events unless they were disguised under another name—­

    In Lent, if masquerades displease the town,
    Call them ridottos, and they still go down.[1010]

In the Isle of Man, and there only, under the system of Church discipline set afoot and maintained in so remarkable a manner by the influence of the venerable Bishop Wilson, Lent was celebrated with much of the solemnity and austerity of primitive times.  Immediately before its commencement, courts of discipline were held, in which Church censures were duly passed and notified.  During the forty days penances were performed, and Easter was the time for re-admission into the full communion of the Church.[1011]

Throughout the country Lent was very commonly selected as a time specially appropriate for public catechizing.[1012] ’A Presbyter of the Church of England,’ writing in the first year of this century, said that, except among the Evangelical clergy, it was almost confined to that season.[1013] Secker also, in the middle of the century, expressed a similar regret.[1014]

‘It was Passion Week,’ writes Boswell, in 1772, ’that solemn season, which the Christian Church has appropriated to the commemoration of the mysteries of our Redemption, and during which, whatever embers of religion are in our breasts, will be kindled into pious warmth.’[1015] He could hardly have written thus if Holy Week, and especially Good Friday, had not received at that time a fairly general observance.  The rough treatment with which Bishop Porteus was requited[1016] for his attempt to bring about a better regard for Good Friday might seem to show the contrary.  But there was no period in the last century when throughout the country at large shops were not generally closed on that day, and the churches fairly attended.

In the Olney Hymns, published 1779, Christmas Day only is referred to among all the Christian seasons.[1017] This was somewhat characteristic of the English Church in general during the greater part of the Georgian period.  Other Christian seasons were often all but unheeded; Christmas was always kept much as it is now.  It may be inferred, from a passage in one of Horsley’s Charges, that in some country churches, towards the end of the century, there was