rehearsed beforehand, the proceedings could not
have been more business-like and methodical.
That the engine I was near stood idle, was due
to the failure of the water supply from the plug
it should have worked from. Turncock, beadle,
and other functionaries had rammed and probed
without effect; and the most powerful engine at
the fire was unavailable, for the simple reason
that the parochial arrangements, with beautiful
consistency, had permitted a principal water-
main to become useless. Just as the flames
were at their fiercest, a strange rumbling sound
mixed with their fiery hiss; then the whole front
of the house bulged forward; then it seemed to
quiver, much as a theatrical scene does when run
rapidly across the stage by the shifters; then,
without further warning, it became a heap ot
ruins. It fell forward, in one dead lump. In a
single instant, what had been a house was a
mere chaotic map of charred timbers and broken
bricks and stones. One great crash, in which
its front split up into countless solid hurtful
atoms, injuring one fireman slightly, and spitting
angrily across the road, and all was over.
Nothing remained to show even the shape of a
room or the direction of a staircase. A huge
lump of ugly rubbish, which smoked and hissed
under cold water, and that was all. The hose
kept playing vigorously; for certain tell-tale
"bull's-eyes" showed that the building behind
had caught fire, and needed careful tending;
then the foremen present came round and
quietly gave instructions to their silent men;
then the waggon of the Salvage Corps drove off;
the firemen made up the rubbish, which had been
a house, into a more seemly heap; the watch
was told off for the night; the crowd gradually
melted away; and soon the water, flowing
steadily and plentifully down the alleys near,
alone reminded the spectator of the fierce
element subdued.

PANCAKES AND BELLS.

THAT mankind are more disposed to mirth
than grief, may appear from the fact continually
recurring that the grave passes readily into the
burlesque as by a natural law. The sacred, the
solemn, and the staid, imply a strain upon the
mind to which it unwillingly submits; the bow
then unbends, and the thing gladly relaxes. In
an age so devoted to burlesque as the present,
illustrations cannot be wanting of the manner
in which the sublime is made to pass into the
ridiculous, and the beautiful to become vulgar
and even coarse. The finest poetry, the finest
music, the most fanciful legends, whether of
antiquity or the most recent faëry lore, are in
times customarily traduced and linked to
the lowest associations. The art thus exercised
grows, like other arts, out of a natural tendency.
Even grave customs have a similar proclivity to
burlesque themselves. The shriving-bell of an
elder period became after the Reformation the
Pancake Bell, which is still rung in some
parishes on Shrove Tuesday, from half-past
twelve until two o'clock in the afternoon.
Originally designed to call people together to
shrift or confession, as a preparation for Lent,
it was ultimately used for a signal to the people
to begin frying their pancakes. This fact is
noticed by Taylor, the water-poet, in the
following facetious manner: "By the time the
clock strikes eleven," says he, "which by the
help of a knavish sexton is commonly before
nine, there is a bell rung, called the pancake
bell, the sound whereof makes thousands of
people distracted and forgetful either of manners
or humanity. Then there is called wheaten
flour, which cookes do mingle with water, spice,
and other tragical and magical inchantments,
and then put it little by little into a frying-pan
of boiling suet, where it makes a confused
dismall hissing, untill at last, by the skill of the
cooke, it is transformed into the form of a
flip-jack, which ominous incantation ignorant
people doe devoure greedily."

Ominous incantation! Taylor seems to have
thought that the frying of these flip-jacks was a
custom originally related to black magic; by
the celebrated Franklin the custom was more
favourably esteemed. He connected happy
notions with it. "Some folks," he says,
"think it never will be good times till houses
are tiled with pancakes." The cake itself
probably comes down to us from pagan times, and
the prefix is derived rather from the god Pan
than the vessel in which it is so curiously made.
The pancake may be thus elevated to the
highest antiquity, and, with the bell-ringing in
addition, might then have formed a part in such
an incantation, "ominous" or other, as Taylor
has intimated.

To Taylor clearly the ceremony of making
pancakes was significant, or, as he words it,
"ominous." He probably connected it with
that natural terror which is called panic, to
which shepherds, dwellers in forests, and some
animals, are occasionally liable. Military troops
are subject, also, to this strange kind of sudden
fright. The great element in this species of
terror is, indeed, its suddenness. It frequently
occurs without any real cause; or, at least, it is
inspired by some trivial occasion, or misapprehension
of danger. The soldier, by the influence
of his dreadful, however needful, trade, is
reduced, it would thus seem, to a mere animal
condition, and flees from the unknown by the
force of instinct only, like the herds of the field.

One might, by virtue of the prefix Pan
(which stands for the universe of things,
personified), include in our consideration of this
subject an infinity of particulars, and affect all
kinds of knowledge in illustrative details. But
our ambition is confined within narrower limits.
We may gather from this inslance how tenacious
the ancient superstitions have been of
their existence, and how, at last, in Protestant
times, they have mingled with common occurrences
having some; small force of custom left,
but inept to excite serious reflection, though
not to provoke sportive remark. The pancake-
bell no longer calls us to confession, and bells