manners, without destroying their simplicity, should be valued. Indeed it is to the decline of this happy simplicity that the decline of old customs may be traced; and the rural dance on the green, and the homely rush-bearing pageant, have almost gradually disappeared, in proportion as the peasantry have become expensive and artificial in their pleasures, and too knowing for simple enjoyment. Some attempts, indeed, have been made of late years, by men of both taste and learning, to rally back the popular feeling to these standards of primitive simplicity; but the time has gone by; the feeling has become chilled by habits of gain and traiiic; the country apes the manners and amusements of the town, and little is heard of rural pastimes, except from the lamentations of authors, who sigh after it from among the brick walls of the great towns." These lamentations, however, are not of recent origin, for in Pasquil's "Palinodia," published in 1654, the poet thus sings of the decay of May games, two hundred years
ago:-

"Happy the age, and harmless were the days,
(For then true love and amity was found)
When every village did a May-pole raise,
And Whitsun ales and May-games did abound;
And all the lusty yonkers, in a rout,
With merry lasses daunc'd the rod about;
Then friendship to their banquets bid the guests,
And poore men far'd the better for their feasts.

The lords of castles, manors, towns, and towers,
Rejoic'd when they beheld the farmers flourish;
And would come downe unto the summer bowers
To see the country-gallants dance the Morrice.
* * * * * * * * *
But since the summer poles were overthrown,
And all good sports and merriments decay'd,
How times and men are chang'd, so well is knowne,
It were but labour lost, if more were said."

Renewed threats of invasion on the part of the government of France, produced a revival of the volunteer system throughout the country. The Oldham volunteers were arrayed in September, 1803, under the command of John Lees, Esq., of Church lane and Werneth: and many were the feats of these provincial

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