One may question, as I have already remarked, whether one sees, in these several instances, polytheism in the act of forming, and but barely forming, in the human mind, or the mutilated remnants of a long-exploded mythology. The usages to which I have alluded as more certain in their lineage, are perhaps less suited to employ speculation. But they are curious; and the fact that they are fast sinking into an oblivion, out of which the diligence of no future excavator will be able to restore them, gives them of itself a kind of claim on our notice. I pass over Beltane; its fires in this part of the country have long since been extinguished; but to its half-surviving partner, Halloween, I shall devote a few pages; and this the more readily, as it chances to be connected with a story of humble life which belongs to that period of my history at which I have now arrived. True, the festival itself has already sat for its picture, and so admirable was the skill of the artist, that its very name recalls to us rather the masterly strokes of the transcript than the features of the original. But, with all its truth and beauty, the portrait is not yet complete. [Sidenote: RITES OF THE SCOTTISH HALLOWEEN.] The Scottish Halloween, as held in the solitary farmhouse and described by Burns, differed considerably from the Halloween of our villages and smaller towns. In the farmhouse it was a night of prediction only; in our towns and villages there were added a multitude of wild mischievous games, which were tolerated at no other season--a circumstance that serves to identify the festival with those pauses of license peculiar to the nonage of civil government, in which men are set free from the laws they are just learning to respect;--partly, it would seem, as a reward for the deference which they have paid them, partly to serve them as a kind of breathing-spaces in which to recover from the unwonted fatigue of being obedient. After nightfall, the young fellows of the town formed themselves into parties of ten or a dozen, and breaking into the gardens of the graver inhabitants, stole the best and heaviest of their cabbages. Converting these into bludgeons, by stripping off the lower leaves, they next scoured the streets and lanes, thumping at every door as they passed, until their uncouth weapons were beaten to pieces. When disarmed in this way, all the parties united into one, and providing themselves with a cart, drove it before them with the rapidity of a chaise and four through the principal streets. Woe to the inadvertent female whom they encountered! She was instantly laid hold of, and placed aloft in the cart--brothers, and cousins, and even sons, it is said, not unfrequently assisting in the capture; and then dragged backwards and forwards over the rough stones, amid shouts, and screams, and roars of laughter. The younkers within doors were meanwhile engaged in a manner somewhat less annoying, but not a whit less whimsical. The bent of their ingenuity