to solemn sacerdotal usage, or taking some blackguard of a Mulvaney for a
very god, is not more absurd than mankind thus ignorantly bringing to this
poor martyr throughout the years the very last offering he can have
desired. Surely it must have filled his shade with a strange bewilderment
to have watched us year by year bringing him garlands and the sweet
incense of young love, to have seen this gay company approach his shrine
with laughter and roses, a very bacchanal, where he had looked for
sympathetic sackcloth and ashes--surely it must have all seemed a silly
sacrilegious jest. However, he is long since slandered beyond all hope of
restitution. So long as the spring moves in the blood, lovers will
doubtless continue to take his name in vain, and feign his saintly
sanction for their charming indiscretions. Indeed, he is fabled by the
poets to be responsible for the billing and cooing of the whole creation.
Everybody knows that the birds, too, pair on St. Valentine's Day. We have
many a poet's word for it. Donne's charming lines, for instance--

'All the air is thy diocese,
And all the chirping choristers
And other birds are thy parishioners:
Thou marriest every year
The lyrique lark, and the grave whispering dove,
The sparrow, that neglects his life for love,
The household bird with the red stomacher;
Thou mak'st the blackbird speed as soon
As doth the goldfinch or the halcyon.'

In fact, it would appear that St. Valentine was, literally, a
hedge-priest.

But do lovers, one wonders, still observe his ancient, though mistaken,