To feed
these bonfires, everything combustible which could be begged or stolen
from the neighboring villages, farm-houses, and fences is put in
requisition. Old tar-tubs, purloined from the shipbuilders of the
river-side, and flour and lard barrels from the village-traders, are
stored away for days, and perhaps weeks, in the woods or in the rain-
gullies of the hills, in preparation for Pope Night. From the earliest
settlement of the towns of Amesbury and Salisbury, the night of the
powder plot has been thus celebrated, with unbroken regularity, down to
the present time. The event which it once commemorated is probably now
unknown to most of the juvenile actors. The symbol lives on from
generation to generation after the significance is lost; and we have seen
the children of our Catholic neighbors as busy as their Protestant
playmates in collecting, "by hook or by crook," the materials for Pope-
Night bonfires. We remember, on one occasion, walking out with a gifted
and learned Catholic friend to witness the fine effect of the
illumination on the hills, and his hearty appreciation of its picturesque
and wild beauty,--the busy groups in the strong relief of the fires, and
the play and corruscation of the changeful lights on the bare, brown
hills, naked trees, and autumn clouds.
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