Time is ever busy blotting out the land-marks which our ancestors reared with so much patience for our behoof. It is well, therefore, if occasionally, with reverential spirit, we try to set in order the fragments of those that still remain. In so doing, we may perchance cull some useful lesson, and ere they pass away for ever, haply profit by the experiences which they record. The Story of the Crosier. BY THE REV. GEO. S. TYACK, B.A. The staff of authority, which we have in so many forms, as sceptre, crosier, mace, wand, or otherwise, has its origin in each case in one of two ideas. Sometimes it is an instrument of correction; thus the churchwarden's staff, the wand or rod of a royal usher, and of a beadle, and probably also the mace of a mayor, were all, like the fasces of a Roman governor, intended to correct the unruly, or to forcibly clear a way, when necessary, for the progress of the dignitary before whom they were borne. In other cases this symbol of authority, as it has now become, was originally nothing more or less than the trusty staff on which the aged ruler leaned, as on a modern walking stick. All language points to the fact that age was at first considered an essential condition of dignity and authority, for almost all terms of respect imply the seniority of the person addressed. Sir, sieur or monsieur, signor, senor, are of course but varied forms of the word _senior_; and we have more particular instances in the terms sire, senator, and alderman, in matters of state, with patriarch, father (applied to a bishop or a priest) and pope, abbot, priest, presbyter, or elder, in the Church. Thus it came to pass that in the earliest times the aged ruler was usually seen supporting his weight of years by the help of his staff; and the step from this familiar sight to the idea that the staff symbolized his rule, was simple and natural. The sceptre, therefore, which was the needful support of Homer's old councillors, has become the emblem of royal power; and the crutch-stick of the aged bishop is transfigured into the crosier. This being the case, it is obviously impossible to fix the exact date at which the crosier, or any other of these staves of office, came to be recognized simply as such, the progress from the first idea being in all cases a gradual development. We find the episcopal staff, however, mentioned in connection with S. Cæsarius of Arles, who was bishop of that See from A.D. 501 to 542, and it is also referred to by Gregory, Bishop of Tours, in the same century, and again in the proceedings of the Fourth Council of Toledo a little later.