An account of the ceremony at Warton, earlier still,[206] gives an interesting variation of custom. Here the floral decorations were not separate from the rushes, but covered the bundles as crowns. The smartest of them, trimmed with fine ribbon and flowers, were carried in front by girls. The crowns were detached in the church, and after the strewing of the rushes were left as ornaments. Artificial trimmings were in use in Grasmere in 1828, for the stranger's eye had been "particularly attracted by the paper garlands which I found deposited in the vestry; they were curiously and tastefully cut, and I was almost tempted to buy one of them." The sketch by Allom of the Ambleside Festival in 1833 shows how elaborate and artificial the bearings had become.[207] But taste and meaning could not have been altogether banished for certain sacred emblems and devices were cherished; and Moses in the Bulrushes, and the Serpent in the Wilderness--the latter wholly composed of rushes--which are still carried as "bearings" at Grasmere, are said to have been handed down from a forgotten past. The same is claimed for the Ambleside Harp, the strings of which are contrived from the pith of the rush--the "sieve" of the olden days of rush-lights. [206] MS. account, given in Whitaker's _Richmondshire._ [207] _Westmorland and Cumberland, etc., Illustrated_, 1833. It has been seen that the joint payment by the townships for the boon service ceased when the actual rush-strewing ceased. But the Festival continued, though it was clearly changing its character and becoming the children's Feast of Flowers. This is shown by Grasmere's special contribution to the occasion. The annual gift, after rising a little, is entered in 1819 as 3s. 9d., "To Rushbearers' Gingerbread paid Geo: Walker." From that time Grasmere's expenditure for "Rushbearers bread" is a constant though varying item. In 1839 it dropped as low as 1s. 6d., which, supposing two-pennyworth to be the amount given to each child, would represent but nine bearers. From this low figure however it rose; and the languishing Festival was revived, if not saved, by the munificence of Mr. Thomas Dawson, of Allan Bank, who began about this time to present each bearer with 6d.[208] The gingerbread item was often 6s.; in 1847 it was 9s. 10d.; in 1851 it is set down as "To Rushbearers 62," 10s. 4d. In 1856 13s. 6d. was paid to A. Walker for "Rushbearers Cake," and in the next two years the climax was reached by the sums £1. 1s. 5d. and £1. 1s. The long-continued item then abruptly ceases--seventeen years after the provision made for ale by the whole parish ceased--swept away no doubt by the revolution in church-management and church-rates, and for thirteen years there is a gap. When, however, the ancient but now resisted church-rate was dropped in 1871, and all expenses were defrayed from the large and gladly-paid offertory, the church again provided for the Festival. The expenses were now put down under