Arrived at church, the money-lender goes through part of the service as best he may; but as soon as sermon time comes, off he goes, saying to himself, "I must get away home: the priest is going to preach a sermon to draw money out of our purses." Doubtless the priest in those times of ignorance had to deal with many most profane and unspiritual people, who could only be restrained by fear, and to whose "puerility" much had to be conceded. In touching upon the Church manners of the Middle Ages, M. Champfleury makes a remark that startles a Protestant mind accustomed only to the most exact decorum in churches. "Old men _of to-day_" (1850), he says, speaking of France, "will recall to mind the _gayety_ of the midnight masses, when buffoons from the country waited impatiently to send down showers of small torpedoes upon the pavement of the nave, to barricade the alcoves with mountains of chairs, to fill with ink the holy-water basins, and to steal kisses in out-of-the-way corners from girls who would not give them." These proceedings, which M. Champfleury styles "the pleasantries of our fathers," were among the concessions made by a worldly-wise old Church to the "puerility" of the people, or rather to the absolute necessity of occasional hilarious fun to healthy existence. Amusing and even valuable caricatures six and seven centuries old have been discovered upon parchment documents in the English record offices, executed apparently by idle clerks for their amusement when they had nothing else to do. One of these, copied by Mr. Wright, gives us the popular English conception of an Irish warrior of the thirteenth century. [Illustration: English Caricature of an Irishman, A.D. 1280.] The broad-axes of the Irish were held in great terror by the English. An historian of Edward I.'s time, while discoursing on that supreme perplexity of British kings and ministers, how Ireland should be governed _after_ being quite reduced to subjection, expresses the opinion that the Irish ought not to be allowed in time of peace to use "that detestable instrument of destruction which by an ancient but accursed custom they constantly carry in their hands instead of a staff." The modern Irish shillalah, then, is only the residuum of the ancient Irish broad-axe--the broad-axe with its head taken off. The humanized Irishman of to-day is content with the handle of "the detestable instrument." Other pen-and-ink sketches of England's dreaded foes, the Irish and the Welsh, have been found upon ancient vellum rolls, but none better than the specimen given has yet been copied.