The first of May was formerly observed with the pageantry of processions, music, dancing, and oxen decorated with ribbons and flowers. This festival is still observed in most parts of Europe. People of all classes go out into the fields to gather flowers and green branches, which they often leave in baskets at the door of some friend, accompanied with a poetical welcome to Spring. In most villages a May-pole is erected, decorated with garlands and ribbons, around which the young people dance right joyfully. The favorite of the village is usually chosen queen of May, and crowned with flowers. It was an old superstition that the first dew gathered in May was peculiarly beneficial to the complexion. The limits of this work will not permit even a passing allusion to the numerous games and festivals of modern times; it is sufficient to say that women join in all, except those which are fatiguing and dangerous. The habits and employments of fashionable circles are nearly the same throughout Christendom; the general tone of their manners is taken from the French and English, and is sometimes a compound of both. Their infants are almost always nourished and taken care of by hired nurses. The fashion of dress, which varies more rapidly than the changing seasons, is an all-absorbing object of interest. The time that is not spent with mantuamakers, milliners, jewellers, and dressing maids, is devoted to parties, morning calls, and amusements, with an occasional exertion of ingenuity in some light fancy-work. Many of the court ladies of Bavaria are said to have no other employment than changing their dresses many times a day, and playing with their numerous parrots, dogs, and cats. But in every country there are among the wealthy classes honorable exceptions to these remarks--women who appear with elegance, without suffering dress to engross their thoughts, and who can find time for the graceful courtesies of life, without neglecting the cultivation of their minds, or the care of their children. In recent times, it is very common for ladies to form societies for various charitable purposes. Women of different nations sometimes unite their efforts for the same object; thus the English ladies joined with the German, to support the numerous Saxon orphans, who lost their parents in the wars of 1813. Sometimes the members of such societies busy themselves, for months together, in preparing useful and elegant articles, and afterwards sell them at a fair, which their friends and acquaintances are, of course, generally desirous to attend. In many parts of Europe the peasantry do not change their style of dress in the course of centuries; but each of the innumerable districts has a fashion peculiar to itself. They are distinguished from the same classes of women in Asia, by going with their faces uncovered, and almost universally dressing modestly high in the neck. Among the wealthy, female decorum is often sacrificed on the altar of unblushing fashion.