The quartos of 1600 and 1608 (and also the three folios) read _pax_: “he hath stolne a packs;” “a packs of pettie price,” in both editions. Shakspeare very well knew that a pax exposed or left carelessly on an altar was much more likely to be stolen than a pyx, which would be taken infinitely greater care of and locked up in the tabernacle. Even Dr. Johnson was ignorant upon some subjects; and the way in which editors “emend” their authors is something marvellous. When Shakspeare lived, and when the quartos were printed, people had not forgotten the distinction between the pax and the pyx; and many even could still remember when that now mysterious thing, the pax, had been brought down to them in the services of the Church from the altar. The introduction of the pax instead of the old practice of mutual salutation was not until about the thirteenth century. The earliest mention in England occurs in a council held at York, A.D. 1250, under archbishop Walter Gray, where it is called “osculatorium.” A like order was made in the province of Canterbury, at the council of Merton, 1305, directing every parish to provide “tabulas pacis ad osculatorium.” Several figures of the pax are given in works relating to the subject; and we find it almost always represented as part of the furniture of an altar in the woodcut which often precedes the service for advent sunday, in the printed editions of the Salisbury missal from about 1500 to 1557. Le Brun has an interesting disquisition on the pax: and he tells us in a note that in its turn it also fell into disuse, because of quarrels about precedency which were occasioned among the people. Le Brun is borne out by Chaucer who, in the Parson’s Tale, speaking of the proud man explains that “also he awaited to sit, or els to go above him in the waie, or kisse paxe, or be encenced before his neighbour, _etc._” Occasionally, paxes in ivory have inscriptions upon them. One of the three in the Liverpool museum has the appropriate prayer, “Da pacem Domine in diebus nostris.” Two exhibited at Norwich in 1847 had legends. On one, the Annunciation, “Ave Maria;” on the other, the Nativity with the shepherds, “Gloria in excelsis Deo, et in terra pax, _etc._”