There is no superstition, however harmless it may appear, and may indeed long continue to be, but has in it some latent evil. Much has arisen from the distinction of unlucky days, which may very innocently and naturally have originated, though it was afterwards dexterously applied by astrologers, and by the priests of false religions, to their own purposes. No one would willingly commence an important undertaking on the anniversary of a day which had brought to him some great and irreparable calamity. It would be indecent to fix upon St. Bartholomew's for a day of public rejoicing in France; or in Portugal upon that day on which Lisbon was laid in ruins by the great earthquake. On the other hand an English General, and an English army, would feel something more than their wonted hope and expectation of victory, if they gave the enemy battle on the anniversaries of Waterloo, or Blenheim, Cressy, Poictiers, or Agincourt. God be thanked neither our fleets, or armies have ever yet caused a day to be noted with black in the English calendar! But many a good ship has lost that tide which might have led to fortune, because the captain and the crew thought it unlucky to begin their voyage on a Friday. You were in no danger of being left behind by the packet's sailing on that day, however favourable the wind, if it were possible for the captain to devise any excuse for remaining till the morrow in harbour. Lord Byron partook this superstition; and if any thing of the slightest importance in which he was concerned were commenced on a Friday, he was seriously disconcerted. Such however are the effects of superstitious animosity, that (as the Puritans in the next generation made Christmas-day a fast by an ordinance of Parliament) in James the first's reign Friday was kept as a sort of holyday. The biographer of a Spanish lady, who came to England for the purpose of secretly serving the Roman Catholic cause, says “that among her other griefs she had that of hearing the wheel go round, by which they roasted whole quarters of beef on every Friday, delighting to profane with forbidden food that day on which the catholics, by fasting and other works of penitence, manifested their sense, every week throughout the year, of the sufferings of their Lord and Saviour. In all English houses,” he says, “both private and public (to which latter great part of the people went for their meals) all kinds of meat roasted and boiled, are seen on Fridays, Good Friday not excepted, as if it were a land of Jews or Turks. The nobles in particular reserve their feasts and entertainments of all kinds of meats and delicacies for Fridays. It is the sport of the great, and their sort of piety, to testify by these sacrileges their hatred to the Roman church.”