WATER, as one of the elements alike of animal and vegetable life, has always been an object of man's attention. In the early ages, indeed, it was reverenced as the substance of which all things were supposed to be made, and the vivifying principle that animated the whole hence rivers, fountains, and wells were worshipped, and religious ;

feasts and ceremonies instituted in honor of them, and of the spirits which were believed to preside over them.

This custom is not extinct among Pagan nations for the " Sacred Ganges" yet ;

receives the worship of millions of Hindoos, and the " Holy Well" in Benares is visited

by devotees from all parts of India, with offerings of rice, &c. Nor have Christian nations escaped this form of idolatry. In Europe the worship of wells was at one time universal and even so late as the seventeenth century, ac- ;

cording Ewbank. people in Scotland were in the habit of visiting wells, at which to

they performed numerous acts of superstition. Shaw, in his History of the Province of " that heathen customs were much practised among the people, such as Moray says, pilgrimages to wells, and building chapels to fountains.At the present time, in some parts of England, remains of well-worship are preserved in the custom of performing annual processions to them r decorating them with wreaths and chaplets of flowers, singing hymns, and reading a portion of the Gospel as part of the ceremonies," These same customs gave rise to the numerous holy wells which formerly abounded throughout the old world, and the memory of many of which is still preserved in names of towns. In the church of Nanterre, near Paris, the birth-place of St. Genevieve, is a well, by the water of which this patroness of the Parisians miraculously restored her blind mother, and many others to sight !