Shrove Tuesday was until late years the great holiday of the apprentices; why it should have been so is easy to imagine, on recollecting the sports that boys were allowed on that day at school. The indulgencies of the ancient city ’prentices were great, and their licentious disturbances stand recorded in the annals of many a fray. Mixing in every neighbouring brawl to bring it if possible to open riot, they at length assumed to determine on public affairs, and went in bodies with their petitions and remonstrances to the bar of the house of commons, with as much importance as their masters of the corporation. A satire of 1675 says, They’r mounted high, contemn the humble play Of trap or foot-ball on a holiday In Finesbury-fieldes. No, ’tis their brave intent, Wisely t’ advise the king and parliament. But this is not the place to notice their manners further. The successors to their name are of another generation, they have been better educated, live in better times, and having better masters, will make better men. The apprentices whose situation is to be viewed with anxiety, are the out-door apprentices of poor persons, who can scarcely find homes, or who being orphans, leave the factories or work-rooms of their masters, at night, to go where they can, and do what they please, without paternal care, or being the creatures of any one’s solicitude, and are yet expected to be, or become good members of society. PANCAKES. A MS. in the British Museum quoted by Brand states, that in 1560, it was a custom at _Eton_ school on Shrove Tuesday for the cook to fasten a pancake to a crow upon the school door; and as crows usually hatch at this season, the cawing of the young ones for their parent, heightened this heartless sport. From a question by Antiquarius, in the “Gentleman’s Magazine,” 1790, it appears that it is a custom on Shrove Tuesday at _Westminster_ school for the under clerk of the college, preceded by the beadle and the other officers, to throw a large pancake over the bar which divides the upper from the lower school. Brand mentions a similar custom at _Eton_ school. Mr. Fosbroke is decisive in the opinion that pancakes on Shrove Tuesday were taken from the heathen Fornacalia, celebrated on the 18th of February, in memory of making bread, before ovens were invented, by the goddess Fornax. FOOT-BALL. This was, and remains, a game on Shrove Tuesday, in various parts of England.