VISITATION OF THE SICK.--The subject of _Extreme Unction_, “the Sacrament of the sick,” to be given in danger of death through sickness, raises the question of the visitation of the sick in a mediæval parish. The order that all parish priests should visit the sick of their district every Sunday has already been noticed. It was, moreover, a positive law of the Church, that every priest should go at once on being called to a sick person, no matter what time of the day or night the summons might come. Priests were ordered also to impress upon all doctors the need of urging sick people and their friends to send immediately for the priest in all cases of serious illnesses. Priests, however, were not to wait to be called, but directly they heard that any of their people were unwell they were warned to go at once to them. A chance story, used to enliven a fifteenth-century sermon, illustrates the readiness of priests to go to the sick whenever they were summoned. “I read,” says the preacher, “in Devonshire, besides Axbridge dwelt a holy vicar, and had in his parish a sick woman that lay all at the death, half a myle from him in a town. The which woman at midnight sent after this vicar to come and give her her rites. Then this vicar with all haste that he might he rose and rode to the church and took God’s body in a box of ivory,” etc. Archbishop Peckham legislated for the mode of carrying the Blessed Sacrament to the sick, or rather he codified and made obligatory the usual practice. The parish priest was to be vested in surplice and stole, and accompanied by another priest, or at least by a clerk. He was to carry the Blessed Sacrament in both hands before his breast, covered by a veil, and was to be preceded by a server carrying a light in a lantern, and ringing a hand bell, to give notice to the people that “the King of Glory under the veil of bread” was being borne through their midst, in order that they might kneel or otherwise adore Him. If the case was so urgent, that there was no time for the priest to secure a clerk to carry the light and bell, Lyndwood notes that the practice was for the priest to hang the lamp and bell upon one of his arms. This he would also do in large parishes, where sick people had to be visited at a distance and on horseback. In this case the lamp and bell would be hung round the horse’s neck.