Once a year, we are reminded, there _was_ something else—SHREWSBURY SHOW, a pageant which showed the degeneracy of the past. With the exception of the Coventry festival and the Preston guild it was the only one of its kind in the kingdom. What was the Show? It was the remnant of a feast religiously observed by the Romish Church, and styled _Corpus Christi_ the feast of the body of Christ. It consisted of a solemn procession, in which the several incorporated companies of the town, preceded by the masters and wardens, attended by the bailiffs, aldermen, and commonalty, and accompanied by priests, who carried the Holy Sacrament under a gorgeous canopy, marched to old St. Chad’s Church, where mass was said amidst the richest and costliest treasures of the church. The religious part of the ceremony was abolished at the Reformation; but the members of the companies, though prohibited from attending mass, resolved to retain as much of the imposing custom as they could. They therefore continued the procession, which they determined upon having on the second Monday after Trinity Sunday. They possessed on Kingsland small parcels of land which the Corporation had allotted to and enclosed for them, and on which they had erected arbours as places of resort, of feasting, and of pastime. They therefore selected Kingsland as the destiny of the procession, and, arrived there, they entertained each other in almost princely style, and indulged in the recreations of the time. The anniversary until very recently was observed, but it was a sorry picture of the old festivities. The procession, which was made up of bands of music, flags, banners, ancient horses ridden by individuals dressed out as kings, queens, and other notabilities, followed by a number of artisans, was perhaps about the most ludicrous sight which the ingenuity of a buffoon could invent. It was a ridiculous travesty of the ancient spectacle; and its concomitants, its influence, and its results are best described in the (slightly altered) words of Hamlet: _The people wake to-day and take their rouse_, _Keep wassail_, _and the swaggering up-spring reels_; _And_, _as they drain their draughts of Rhenish down_, _The kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray out_ _The triumph of their pledge_. _Is it a custom_? _Ay_, _marry_, _is’t_; _But to my mind_, _though I am native here_ _And to the manner born_, _it is a custom_ _More honour’d in the breach than the observance_. _This heavy-headed revel east and west_ _Makes us traduced and tax’d of other people_: _They clepe us drunkards_, _and with swinish phrase_ _Soil our addition_. [Picture: Shrewsbury, from Coton Hill] Leaving the scene of so much that is gay and festive, and that unites the present with the past, we re-cross the Severn, re-walk a portion of the Quarry, and ascend the magnificent centre avenue. The church before us is