offered to the goddess at this time were cakes, made no doubt of fine flour, but of their form we are ignorant. The Christians when they seized upon the Easter festival, gave them the form of a bun, which indeed was at that time the ordinary form of bread; and to protect themselves and those who ate them from any enchantment—or other evil influences which might arise from their former heathen character—they marked them with the Christian symbol—the cross. Hence we derived the cakes we still eat at Easter under the name of hot cross-buns, and the superstitious feelings attached to them; for multitudes of people still believe that if they failed to eat a hot cross-bun on Good Friday, they would be unlucky all the rest of the year.” ARCHITECTURAL PILLARS DEVISED FROM THE LOTUS The earliest capital seems to have been the bell or seed vessel, simply copied without alteration, except a little expansion at the bottom to give it stability. The leaves of some other plant were then added to it, and varied in different capitals according to the different meanings intended to be signified by the accessory symbols. The Greeks decorated it in the same manner, with the foliage of various plants, sometimes of the acanthus and sometimes of the aquatic kind, which are, however, generally so transformed by excessive attention to elegance, that it is difficult to distinguish them. The most usual seems to be the Egyptian acacia, which was probably adopted as a mystic symbol for the same reasons as the olive, it being equally remarkable for its powers of reproduction. Theophrastus mentions a large wood of it in the “Thebaid,” where the olive will not grow, so that we reasonably suppose it to have been employed by the Egyptians in the same symbolical sense. From them the Greeks seem to have borrowed it about the time of the Macedonian conquest, it not occurring in any of their buildings of a much earlier date; and as for the story of the Corinthian architect, who is said to have invented this kind of capital from observing a thorn growing round a basket, it deserved no credit, being fully contradicted by the buildings still remaining in Upper Egypt. The Doric column, which appears to have been the only one known to the very ancient Greeks, was equally derived from the Nelumbo; its capital being the same seed-vessel pressed flat, as it appears when withered and dry—the only state probably in which it had been seen in Europe. The flutes in the shaft were made to hold spears and staves, whence a spear-holder is spoken of in the “Odyssey” as part of a column. The triglyphs and blocks of the cornice were also derived from utility, they having been intended to represent the projecting ends of the beams and rafters which formed the roof.