There is a semi-sacred bread eaten by the English race, and by no one else—the hot-cross bun—millions of which are devoured in England on Good Friday. Its origin is obscure, as is also that of the word ‘bun.’ Most dictionaries derive it from the old French _bigne_, or _bugne_—a swelling; but it certainly occurs in an early _Promptorium Parvulorum_, as ‘bunne-brede.’ Anent ‘Eating Buns on Good Friday,’ a correspondent in the _Athenæum_ of April 4, 1857, p. 144, wrote: ‘In the _Museo Lapidario_ of the Vatican, on the Christian side of it, and not far off from the door leading into the library, there is a tablet representing in a rude manner the miracle of the five barley loaves. Every visitor must have seen it, for it has been there for years. The loaves are round, like cakes, and have a cross upon them, such as our cakes bear, which are broken and eaten on Good Friday morning, symbolical of the sacrifice of the body of our Lord. Five of these cakes, explanatory of the scene, are ranged beneath an arch-shaped table, at which recline five people, while another, with a basket full, is occupied in serving them. The cakes are so significant of the Bread of Life that one might almost regard the repast as intended to prefigure the sacrifice that was to follow, and the institution connected with it. Having, from the earliest period of memory, cherished a particular regard for hot-cross buns and all their pleasing associations, it was a source of gratifying reflection to see my old favourites thus brought into intimate association with the pious thoughts of the primitive Christians, and to know that at home we cherished an ancient usage on Good Friday which the more Catholic nations of Europe no longer observed. But, alas! there is always some drawback to our full satisfaction in this world, and knowledge is often a cruel dissipation of favourite convictions; my faith in the Christian biography of these buns has recently received a very rude shock.