One other pageant, more especially connected with the history of a manufacturing city, is the procession of Bishop Blaize, or St. Blazius, the great patron saint of wool-combers; in which usually figured Jason, the hero of the “golden fleece,” and forty Argonauts on horseback, the emblems of the expedition, preceded by Hercules, Peace, Plenty, and Britannia. These were followed by the bishop, dressed in episcopal costume, crowned with a mitre of wool, drawn in an open chariot by six horses, and attended by vergers, bands of music, the city standard, a chaplain, and orators delivering, at intervals, grandiloquent speeches. Seven companies of wool-combers on foot, and five on horseback, brought up the rear; shepherds, shepherdesses, tastefully attired in fancy costumes, added to the brilliancy of the display. Bishop Blazius, the principal personage in the festivity, was Bishop of Sebesta, in Armenia, and the reputed inventor of the art of combing wool. The Romish church canonized the saint, and attributed to his miraculous interposition many wondrous miracles. Divers charms, also, for extracting thorns from the body, or a bone from the throat, were prescribed to be uttered in his name. Among the festivals that lay claim to antiquity, of which some faint traces, at least, are left in the observances of the nineteenth century, are some few that belong as much to the history of the present as the past, and must not be omitted in sketches of the characteristic features of an old city. The Fair—the great annual gatherings of wooden houses and wooden horses, tin trumpets, and spice nuts, Diss bread, and gingerbread—menageries of wild natural history, and caravans of tame _unnatural_ collections, giants, dwarfs, albinos, and _lusus naturæ_ of every conceivable deformity—of things above the earth and under the earth, in the sea and out of the sea—of panoramas, dioramas—wax-works, with severable heads and moving countenances—of Egyptian tents, with glass factories in miniature concealed within their mystic folds, under the guidance of the glass-wigged alchemist, the presiding genius—performing canaries, doing the Mr. and Mrs. Caudle, and firing off pistols—pert hares playing on the tambourine, and targets and guns to be played with for prizes of nuts, and whirligigs and rocking-boats—the avenues of sailcloth, with their linings of confectionary, toys, basket-work, and ornamental stationery—the gong and the drum, and the torrents of Cheap-Jack eloquence, mingling with the music of the leopard-clad minstrels of the zoological departments;—dear is the holiday to the hearts, and memories, and anticipations, of many an _enlightened_ infant of this highly developed age;—as dear, and welcome, and thrilling, in its confusion of noise, and bewilderment of colour, as ever of old, to the children of larger growth, who, in the infancy of civilization, were wont to find in them their primers of learning, arts, and sciences.