The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Book of Christmas, by Thomas K. Hervey.

To this tone of feeling the services of the Church have for some time previously been gradually adapting the mind. During the whole period of Advent a course of moral and religious preparation has been going on, and a state of expectation is by degrees excited, not unlike that with which the Jews were waiting for the Messiah, of old. There is, as it were, a sort of watching for the great event, a questioning where Christ shall be born, and an earnest looking out for his star in the East that we may "come to worship him." The feeling awakened by the whole series of these services—unlike that suggested by some of those which commemorate other portions of the same sacred story—is entirely a joyous one. The lowly manner of the Saviour's coming, the exceeding humiliation of his appointments, the dangers which beset his infancy, and his instant rejection by those to whom he came, are all forgotten in the fact of his coming itself, in the feeling of a mighty triumph and the sense of a great deliverance, or only so far remembered as to temper the triumph and give a character of tenderness to the joy. "The services of the Church about this season," says Washington Irving, "are extremely tender and inspiring. They dwell on the beautiful story of the origin of our faith, and the pastoral scenes that accompanied its announcement. They gradually increase in fervor and pathos during the season of Advent, until they break forth in full jubilee on the morning that brought 'peace and good-will to men.'" "I do not know," he adds, "a grander effect of music on the moral feelings than to hear the full choir and the pealing organ performing a Christmas anthem in a cathedral, and filling every part of the vast pile with triumphant harmony." We confess that, for ourselves, very sensible as we are to the grander and more complicated effects of harmony, we have, on the occasion in question, been more touched by the simple song of rejoicing as it rang in its unaided sweetness through the aisles of some village church. We have felt ourselves more emphatically reminded, amid pastoral scenes and primitive choirs, of the music of congratulation which was uttered through the clear air to men "abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flocks by night,"—

Nor is the religious feeling which belongs to this season suffered to subside with the great event of the nativity itself. The incidents of striking interest which immediately followed the birth of the Messiah, the persecutions which were directed against his life, and the starry writing of God in the sky, which, amid the rejection of "his own," drew to him witnesses from afar, all contribute to keep alive the sense of a sacred celebration to the end of the period usually devoted to social festivity, and send a wholesome current of religious feeling through the entire season, to temper its extravagancies and regulate its mirth. The worship of the shepherds; the lamentation in Rama, and the weeping of Rachel for the murder of the innocents; the miraculous escape from that massacre of the Saviour, and the flight of his parents into Egypt with the rescued child; and the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles, which is indeed the day of his nativity to us,—are all commemorated in the Christian Church, and illustrated by the series of services distributed through that period of religious worship which bears the general title of Christmas.

There is, too, in the lengthened duration of this festival a direct cause of that joyous and holiday spirit which, for the most part (after the first tenderness of meeting has passed away, and a few tears perhaps been given, as the muster-roll is perused, to those who answer to their names no more), pervades all whom that same duration has tempted to assemble.

Regrets there will no doubt, in most cases, be, for these distant and periodical gatherings together of families but show more prominently the blanks which the long intervals have created; this putting on anew, as it were, of the garment of love but exposes the rents which time has made since it was last worn; this renewing of the chain of our attachments but displays the links that are broken! The Sybil has come round again, as year by year she comes, with her books of the affections; but new leaves have been torn away. "No man," says Shakspeare, "ever bathed twice in the same river;" and the home-Jordan to which the observers of the Christmas festival come yearly back to wash away the leprous spots contracted in the world never presents to them again the identical waters in which last they sported, though it be Jordan still. Amid these jubilant harmonies of the heart there will be parts unfilled up, voices wanting. "This young gentlewoman," says the Countess of Rousillon to Lafeu, "had a father (oh that had! how sad a passage 'tis!)." And surely with such changes as are implied in that past tense some of the notes of life's early music are silenced forever. "Would they were with us still!" says the old ballad; and in the first hour of these reunions many and many a time is the wish echoed in something like the words! And if these celebrations have been too long disused, and the wanderer comes rarely back to the birthplace of the affections, the feeling of sadness may be too strong for the joyous influences of the season,—

till, amid the bitter contrasts of the past with the present, and thoughts of "the loved, the lost, the distant, and the dead," something like

may spoil his ear for the voice of mirth, and darken all the revels of the merry Christmas-tide.

To few assemblages of men is it given to come together in the scene of ancient memories without having to "remember such things were that were most precious." But excepting in those cases in which the suffering is extreme or the sorrow immediate, after a few hours given to a wholesome and perhaps mournful retrospect, the mind readjusts itself to the tone of the time, and men for the most part seem to understand that they are met for the purpose of being as merry as it is in their natures to be. And to the attainment of this right joyous frame of mind we have already said that a sense of the duration of the festival period greatly contributes. In the case of a single holiday the mind has scarcely time to take the appropriate tone before the period of celebration has passed away; and a sense of its transitoriness tends often to prevent the effort being made with that heartiness which helps to insure success.

But when the holiday of to-day terminates only that it may make way for the holiday of to-morrow, and gladness has an ancient charter in virtue of which it claims dominion over a series of days so extended that the happy school-boy (and some who are quite as happy as school-boys, and as merry too) cannot see the end of them for the blaze of joyous things that lies between,—then does the heart surrender itself confidently to the genius of the time, and lets loose a host of cheerful and kindly feelings, which it knows will not be suddenly thrown back upon it, and heaps up pleasant devices upon the glowing flame of mirth, as we heap up logs on the roaring fire, laying them decently aside at the end of the season, as we lay aside the burned-out brand of the Yule log to re-kindle the Christmas fire and the Christmas feeling of another year.

But there is yet another reason, in aid of those which we have enumerated, accounting for an observance of the Christmas festivities more universal, and a preservation of its traditions more accurate and entire, than are bestowed in England upon the festival customs of any other period of the year. This reason, which might not at first view seem so favorable to that end as in truth it is, is to be found in the outward and natural aspects of the season. We have been watching the year through the period of its decline, are arrived at the dreary season of its old age, and stand near the edge of its grave. We have seen the rich sunshines and sweet but mournful twilights of autumn, with their solemn inspirations, give place to the short days and gloomy evenings which usher in the coming solstice. One by one the fair faces of the flowers have departed from us, and the sweet murmuring of "shallow rivers, by whose falls melodious birds sing madrigals," has been exchanged for the harsh voice of the swollen torrent and the dreary music of winds that "rave through the naked tree." Through many a chilling sign of "weary winter comin' fast," we have reached the

The halcyon days, which sometimes extend their southern influence even to our stern climate, and carry an interval of gloomy calm into the heart of this dreary month, have generally ere its close given place to the nipping frosts and chilling blasts of mid-winter. "Out of the South" hath come "the whirlwind, and cold out of the North." The days have dwindled to their smallest stature, and the long nights, with their atmosphere of mist, shut in and circumscribe the wanderings of man. Clouds and shadows surround us. The air has lost its rich echoes, and the earth its diversified aspects; and to the immediate threshold of the house of feasting and merriment we have travelled through those dreary days which are emphatically called "the dark days before Christmas." Of one of the gloomy mornings that usher in these melancholy days Ben Jonson gives the following dismal description:—

And the general discomforts of the season are bemoaned by old Sackville, with words that have a wintry sound, in the following passage, which we extract from "England's Parnassus:"—

"The wrathfull winter, proching on a pace,
With blustring blast had all ybard the treene;
And old Saturnus, with his frosty face,
With chilling cold had pearst the tender greene;
The mantle rent wherein inwrapped beene
The gladsome groves that now lay over-throwne,
The tapers torne, and every tree downe blowne;
The soyle, that erst so seemely was to seeme,
Was all dispoiled of her beauties hewe,
And stole fresh flowers (wherewith the Somer's queene
Had clad the earth), now Boreas blast downe blew;
And small fowles flocking, in their songs did rew
The Winter's wrath, where with each thing defast,
In wofull wise bewayl'd the Sommer past:
Hawthorne had lost his motley liverie,
The naked twigs were shivering all for cold,
And, dropping down the teares aboundantlie,
Each thing, methought, with weeping eye me told
The cruell season, bidding me withhold
Myselfe within."

The feelings excited by this dreary period of transition, and by the desolate aspect of external things to which it has at length brought us, would seem, at first view, to be little in harmony with a season of festival, and peculiarly unpropitious to the claims of merriment. And yet it is precisely this joyless condition of the natural world which drives us to take refuge in our moral resources, at the same time that it furnishes us with the leisure necessary for their successful development. The spirit of cheerfulness which, for the blessing of man, is implanted in his nature, deprived of the many issues by which, at other seasons, it walks abroad and breathes amid the sights and sounds of Nature, is driven to its own devices for modes of manifestation, and takes up its station by the blazing hearth. In rural districts, the varied occupations which call the sons of labor abroad into the fields are suspended by the austerities of the time; and to the cottage of the poor man has come a season of temporal repose, concurrently with the falling of that period which seals anew for him, as it were, the promises of an eternal rest. At no other portion of the year, could a feast of equal duration find so many classes of men at leisure for its reception.

Amid the comforts of the fireside, and all its sweet companionships and cheerful inspirations, there is something like the sense of a triumph obtained over the hostilities of the season. Nature, which at other times promotes the expansion of the feelings and contributes to the enjoyments of man, seems here to have promulgated her fiat against their indulgence; and there is a kind of consciousness of an inner world created, in evasion of her law,—a tract won by the genius of the affections from the domain of desolation, spots of sunshine planted by the heart in the very bosom of shadow, a pillar of fire lit up in the darkness. And thus the sensation of a respite from toil, the charms of renewed companionship, the consciousness of a general sympathy of enjoyment running along all the links of the social chain, and the contrasts established within to the discomforts without, are all components of that propitious feeling to which the religious spirit of the season, and all its quaint and characteristic observances, make their appeal.

There is, too (connected with these latter feelings, and almost unacknowledged by the heart of man), another moral element of that cheerful sentiment which has sprung up within it. It consists in the prospect, even at this distant and gloomy period, of a coming spring. This is peculiarly the season of looking forward. Already, as it were, the infant face of the new year is perceived beneath the folds of the old one's garment. The business of the present year has terminated, and along the night which has succeeded to its season of labor have been set up a series of illuminations, which, we know, will be extinguished only that the business of another seed-time may begin.

Neither, amid all its dreary features, is the natural season without its own picturesque beauty, nor even entirely divested of all its summer indications of a living loveliness, or all suggestions of an eternal hope. Not only hath it the peculiar beauties of old age, but it hath besides lingering traces of that beauty which old age hath not been able wholly to extinguish, and which come finely in aid of the moral hints and religious hopes of the season.

The former—the graces which are peculiar to the season itself—exist in many a natural aspect and grotesque effect, which is striking both for the variety it offers and for its own intrinsic loveliness.

The white mantle which the earth occasionally puts on with the rapidity of a spell, covering, in the course of a night and while we have slept, the familiar forms with a sort of strangeness that makes us feel as if we had awakened in some new and enchanted land; the fantastic forms assumed by the drifting snow; the wild and fanciful sketching of old winter upon the "frosty pane;" the icicles that depend like stalactites from every projection, and sparkle in the sun like jewels of the most brilliant water; and, above all, the feathery investiture of the trees above alluded to, by which their minute tracery is brought out with a richness shaming the carving of the finest chisel,—are amongst the features which exhibit the inexhaustible fertility of Nature in the production of striking and beautiful effects. Hear how one of our best poetesses, Mary Howitt, sings of these graces:—

While on the subject of the natural beauties of this season, we must introduce our readers to some admirable verses which have been furnished to us by our friend Mr. Stoddart, the author of that fine poem the "Death-Wake," and in which its peculiar aspects are described with a very graphic pen:

The dew-lark sitteth on the ice, beside the reedless rill;
The leaf of the hawthorn flutters on the solitary hill;
The wild lake weareth on its heart a cold and changed look,
And meets, at the lip of its moon-lit marge, the spiritual brook.

Idly basks the silver swan, near to the isle of trees,
And to its proud breast come and kiss the billow and the breeze;
They wash the eider as they play about the bird of grace,
And boom, in the same slow mood, away, to the moveless mountain-base.

The chieftain-deer, amid the pines, his antlered forehead shows,
And scarcely are the mosses bent where that stately one arose;
His step is as the pressure of a light beloved hand,
And he looketh like a poet's dream in some enchanted land!

A voice of Winter, on the last wild gust of Autumn borne,
Is hurried from the hills afar, like the windings of a horn;
And solemnly and heavily the silver birches groan,
And the old ash waves his wizard hand to the dim, mysterious tone.

And noiselessly, across the heaven, a gray and vapory shred
Is wandering, fed by phantom clouds that one by one are led
Out of the wide North, where they grow within the aged sea,
And in their coils the yellow moon is laboring lazily!

She throws them from her mystic urn, as they were beckoned back
By some enchantress, working out her spells upon their track;
Or gathers up their fleecy folds, and shapes them, as they go,
To hang around her beautiful form a tracery of snow.

Lo, Winter cometh!—and his hoar is heavy on the hill,
And curiously the frostwork forms below the rimy rill;
The birth of morn is a gift of pearl to the heath and willow-tree,
And the green rush hangs o'er its water-bed, shining and silvery.

From the calm of the lake a vapor steals its restless wreath away,
And leaves not a crisp on the quiet tarn but the wake of the swan at play;
The deer holds up the glistening heath, where his hoof is lightly heard,
And the dew-lark circleth to his song,—sun-lost and lonely bird!

But the season hath other striking aspects of its own. Pleasant, says Southey,—

Mr. Southey might have mentioned, too,—as belonging to the same class of effects with those produced by the mosses "of many a hue" that "vary the old tree's brown bark,"—those members of the forest which retain their dead and many tinted leaves till the ensuing spring, hanging occasional wreaths of strange and fantastic beauty in the white tresses of winter, together with the rich contrast presented by the red twigs of the dog-wood amid the dark colors of the surrounding boughs. The starry heavens, too, at this period of the year, present an occasional aspect of extraordinary brilliancy; and the long winter nights are illustrated by a pomp of illumination, presenting magnificent contrasts to the cold and cheerless earth, and offering unutterable revelations at once to the physical and mental eye.

Amongst the traces of a former beauty not utterly extinguished, and the suggestions of a summer feeling not wholly passed away, we have those both of sight and scent and sound. The lark, "all independent of the leafy spring," as Wordsworth says, has not long ceased to pour his anthem through the sky. In propitious seasons, such as we have enjoyed for some years past, he is almost a Christmas-carol singer. The China-roses are with us still, and under proper management will stay with us till the snowdrops come. So will the anemones and the wallflowers; and the aconite may be won to come, long "before the swallow dares, and take the winds of January with beauty." The cold air may be kept fragrant with the breath of the scented coltsfoot, and the lingering perfume of the mignonette. Then we have rosemary, too, "mocking the winter of the year with perfume,"—

"It looks," says Leigh Hunt, pleasantly, "as if we need have no winter, if we choose, as far as flowers are concerned." "There is a story," he adds, "in Boccaccio, of a magician who conjured up a garden in winter-time. His magic consisted in his having a knowledge beyond his time; and magic pleasures, so to speak, await on all who choose to exercise knowledge after his fashion."

But what we would allude to more particularly here are the evergreens, which, with their rich and clustering berries, adorn the winter season, offering a provision for the few birds that still remain, and hanging a faint memory of summer about the hedges and the groves. The misletoe with its white berries, the holly (Virgil's acanthus) with its scarlet berries and pointed leaves, the ivy whose berries are green, the pyracanthus with its berries of deep orange, the arbutus exhibiting its flowers and fruit upon adjacent boughs, the glossy laurel and the pink-eyed laurestine (not to speak of the red berries of the May-bush, the purple sloes of the blackthorn, or others which show their clusters upon leafless boughs, nor of the evergreen trees,—the pine, the fur, the cedar, or the cypress), are all so many pleasant remembrancers of the past, and so many types to man of that which is imperishable in his own nature. And it is probably both because they are such remembrancers of what the heart so much loves, and such types of what it so much desires, that they are gathered about our doors and within our homes at this period of natural decay and religious regeneration, and mingle their picturesque forms and hopeful morals with all the mysteries and ceremonies of the season.

SIGNS OF THE SEASON.

We have said that the coming festivities of the season "fling their shadows" long before: the avant-couriers of the old man are to be seen advancing in all directions. At home and abroad, in town and in country, in the remote farmstead and on the king's highway, we are met by the symptoms of his approach, and the arrangements making for his reception.

We will not dwell here on the domestic operations which are so familiar to all,—the ample provision for good cheer, which has long been making in every man's home who can at any time afford to make good cheer at all. We need not remind our town readers of the increased activity visible in all the interior departments of each establishment, and the apparent extent and complication of its foreign relations; the councils held with the housekeeper and cook; the despatches to the butcher, baker, poulterer, and confectioner, which are their consequence; and the efficient state of preparation which is arising out of all these energetic movements. To our country readers we need not dwell upon the slaughter of fowls in the poultry-yard, and game in the field, or the wholesale doings within doors for the manufacture of pastry of all conceivable kinds and in all its conceivable forms. And to neither the one nor the other is it necessary that we should speak of the packages, in every shape and size, which both are getting ready, for the interchange between friends of the commodities of their respective positions. Here, however, the town has clearly the advantage in point of gain, and the country in point of character,—the former having little besides barrels of oysters and baskets of Billingsgate fish to furnish to the country larders in return for the entire range of the products of the dairy, farmyard, and game-field.

But however lightly we may allude to the other articles which enter into the charge of the commissariat department, and have no distinctive character, at this particular season, beyond their unimaginable abundance, we are by no means at liberty, without a more special notice, to pass over the mystery of Mince-pie! We speak not here of the merits of that marvellous compound; because a dish which has maintained without impeachment, since long before the days of honest old Tusser (who calls these marvels shred-pies), the same supreme character which it holds amongst the men of these latter days, may very well dispense with our commendation; and every school-boy knows, from his own repeated experience, the utter inadequacy of language to convey any notion of the ineffable flavor of this unapproachable viand. The poverty of speech is never so conspicuous as when even its richest forms are used for the purpose of describing that which is utterly beyond its resources; and we have witnessed most lamentable, although ludicrous, failures, on the part of eloquent but imprudent men, in their ambitious attempts to give expression to their sensations under the immediate influence of this unutterable combination. It is therefore to other properties than those which make their appeal to the palate that we must confine ourselves in our mention of mince-pie.

The origin of this famous dish, like that of the heroic in all kinds and classes, is involved in fable. By some it has been supposed, from the Oriental ingredients which enter into its composition, to have a reference (as probably had also the plum-porridge of those days) to the offerings made by the wise men of the East; and it was anciently the custom to make these pies of an oblong form, thereby representing the manger in which, on that occasion, those sages found the infant Jesus. Against this practice—which was of the same character with that of the little image called the Yule Dough, or Yule Cake, formerly presented by bakers to their customers at the anniversary of the Nativity—the Puritans made a vehement outcry, as idolatrous; and certainly it appears to us somewhat more objectionable than many of those which they denounced, in the same category. Of course it was supported by the Catholics with a zeal the larger part of which (as in most cases of controversy where the passions are engaged) was derived from the opposition of their adversaries; and the latter having pronounced the mince-pie to be an abomination, the eating thereof was immediately established as a test of orthodoxy by the former. Sandys mentions that even when distressed for a comfortable meal they would refuse to partake of this very tempting dish, when set before them, and mentions John Bunyan when in confinement as an example. He recommends that under such extreme circumstances they should be eaten with a protest, as might be done by a lawyer in a similar case.

In a struggle like this, however, it is clear that the advocates of mince-pie were likely to have the best of it, through the powerful auxiliary derived to their cause from the savoriness of the dish itself. The legend of the origin of eating roast-pig, which we have on the authority of Charles Lamb, exhibits the rapid spread of that practice, against the sense of its abomination, on the strength of the irresistible appeals made to the palate by the crackling. And accordingly, in the case of mince-pie we find that the delicious compound has come down to our days, stripped of its objectionable forms and more mystic meanings, from the moment when they ceased to be topics of disputation, and is freely partaken of by the most rigid Presbyterian, who raises "no question" thereon "for conscience' sake."

It may be observed, however, that relics of the more recondite virtues ascribed to this dish by the Catholics, in the days of its sectarian persecution, still exist in the superstitions which attach certain privileges and promises to its consumption. In some places the form of this superstition, we believe, is, that for every house in which a mince-pie shall be eaten at the Christmas season, the eater shall enjoy a happy month in the coming year. As, however, this version would limit the consumption, as far as any future benefit is attached to it, to the insufficient number of twelve, we greatly prefer an edition of the same belief which we have met with elsewhere, and which promises a happy day for every individual pie eaten during the same period,—thereby giving a man a direct and prospective interest in the consumption of as large a number out of three hundred and sixty-five as may happen to agree with his inclination.

Leaving, however, those proceedings which are going on within our homes, and of which the manufacture of mince-pies forms so important an article, we must turn to the symptoms of the approaching holiday that meet the eye at every turn which we make out of doors. He who will take the king's highway in his search after these, planting himself on the outside of a stage-coach, will have the greater number of such signs brought under his observation in the progress of a journey which whirls him through town and village, and by park and farmhouse.

The road is alive with travellers; and along its whole extent there is an air of aimless bustle, if we may so express ourselves,—an appearance of active idleness. No doubt he who shall travel that same road in the days of hay-making or harvest will see as dense a population following their avocations in the open air and swarming in the fields. But then at those periods of labor the crowds are more widely scattered over the face of the country, and each individual is earnestly engaged in the prosecution of some positive pursuit, amid a silence scarcely broken by the distant whistle or occasional song that comes faintly to the ear through the rich sunny air. People are busier without being so bustling. But now all men are in action, though all men's business seems suspended. The population are gathered together in groups at the corners of streets or about the doors of ale-houses, and the mingling voices of the speakers and the sound of the merry laugh come sharp and ringing through the clear frosty air. There is the appearance, every way, of a season of transition. The only conspicuous evidence of the business of life going forward with a keen and steady view to its ordinary objects, exists in the abundant displays made at the windows of every shopkeeper, in every village along the road. Vehicles of all kinds are in motion; stage-coach, post-chaise, and private carriage are alike filled with travellers passing in all directions to their several places of assembling, and give glimpses of faces bright with the re-awakened affections that are radiating on all sides to common centres. Everywhere hearts are stirred and pulses quickened by pleasant anticipations; and many a current of feelings which for the rest of the year has wandered only in the direction of the world's miry ways and been darkened by its pollutions, met by the memories of the season and turned back from its unpleasing course, is flowing joyously back by every highway into the sweet regions of its pure and untainted spring.

But of all wayfarers who are journeying towards the haunts of Christmas, who so happy as the emancipated school-boy? And of all vehicles that are carrying contributions of mirth to that general festival, what vehicle is so richly stored therewith as the post-chaise that holds a group of these young travellers? The glad day which has been the subject of speculation so long before, and has been preceded by days which, in their imaginary calendar, are beyond any question the very longest days of all the year, has at length arrived, after seeming as if it never would arrive, and the long restrained and hourly increasing tide of expectation has at length burst its barriers, and is rushing forward with no little noise, into the sea of fruition. "Eja! quid silemus?" says the well-known breaking-up song of the Winchester boys; and the sentiment therein expressed is wide awake (as everything must be, on this morning, that lies within any reasonable distance of their voices) in the breast of every school-boy, at all schools.

And away they go well inclined to act up to the injunctions of the ancient song. "Concinamus, O Sodales!" Our readers will do well on the present occasion to translate the verb by its English equivalent,—to shout. "Vox et audiatur!"—small doubt of that! That deaf-looking old woman by the way-side must be "very deaf indeed" if the sounds of that merriment have failed at least to reach her ears,—though they may get no further; for she looks like one of those in whom all the avenues by which mirth reaches the heart, where they have not been closed at their external outlets by the infirmities of age, are choked up within by the ruins of that heart itself. But the entire progress of these glad hearts to-day is in the nature of a triumph, and all objects in its course are ministers to their unreflecting mirth. Theirs is the blessed age, and this its most privileged day, when the spirit can extract from all things the chyle of cheerfulness. That urchin who is flinging alms (a most gracious act in childhood!) is doing so to the sound of his merry neighbor's trumpet; and yet the act performed and the duty remembered, amid all the heydey and effervescence of the spirits, has not lost its gracefulness for the frolicsome mood by which it is attended. There are men in this world who dispense their charities to the flourish of their own trumpets; and though they are practised performers on that instrument, and play with considerable skill, the effect is unpleasing and the act a mockery. Away go the light-hearted boys! away past the aged and the poor,—as happiness has long since done, and the happy have long continued to do!—awaking the shrill echoes of the road and all its adjacent fields with the sound of their revelry. Every school-boy knows the programme. Flags flying, horns blowing, racing against rival chaises, taunts from the foremost, cheers from the hindmost, all sorts of practical jokes upon each other and upon all they meet and all they pass, and above all, the loud, ringing laugh,—the laugh of boyhood, so unlike all other laughter, that comes out clear and distinct, direct from the heart, stopping nowhere on its way, not pausing to be questioned by the judgment nor restrained by the memory, presenting no hollowness nor flatness to the nicest attention, betraying no under-tone to the finest ear, giving true and unbroken "echoes to the seat where mirth is throned," born spontaneously of that spirit, and excited so often by causes too minute for older eyes to see. And it is in this very causelessness that consists the spell of childhood's laughter, and the secret of youth's unmingled joy. We seldom begin to seek reasons for being gay till we have had some for being grave; and the search after the former is very apt to bring us upon more of the latter. There are tares among that wheat. The moment we commence to distrust our light-heartedness, it begins to evade us. From the day when we think it necessary to reason upon our enjoyments, to philosophize upon our mirth, to analyze our gladness, their free and unmingled character is gone. The toy is taken to pieces to see of what it was composed, and can no more be put together in the same perfect form. They who have entered upon the paths of knowledge, or gone far into the recesses of experience, like the men of yore who ventured to explore the cave of Trophonius, may perhaps find something higher and better than the light-heartedness they lose, but they smile never more as they smiled of old. The fine, clear instrument of the spirit that we bring with us from heaven is liable to injury from all that acts upon it here; and the string that has once been broken or disordered, repair it as we may, never again gives out the precise tone which it did before. The old man,—nay, even the young man,—let him be as merry as he may, and laugh as long and loudly as he will, never laughs as the school-boy laughs.

But of all this, and all the slumbering passions yet to be awakened in those young breasts, and of many a grief to come, there is no token to darken the joy of to-day. The mighty pleasures towards which they are hastening have as yet never "broken the word of promise to their hope." The postilions are of their party, and even he with the bottle-nose, who seems to be none of the youngest, is a boy for the nonce. The very horses appear to have caught the spirit of the occasion, and toss their heads and lay their haunches to the ground and fling out their forelegs as if they drew the car of Momus. The village boys return them shout for shout, fling up their hats as the triumph approaches, and follow it till their breath fails. The older passer-by returns their uproarious salute, taking no umbrage at their mischievous jokes and impish tricks, and turning, as the sounds of the merry voices die in the distance, to a vision of the days when he too was a boy, and an unconscious rehearsal of the half-forgotten song of "Dulce, dulce domum!"

And then the "limen amabile," and the "matris oscula," and the "Penates," towards which they are advancing; the yearning hearts that wait within those homes to clasp them; the bright eyes that are even now looking out from windows to catch the first token of "their coming, and look brighter when they come;" the quiet halls that shall ring to-night to their young voices; and the lanes and alleys whose echoes they shall awaken to-morrow, and still more loudly when the ice comes; and, above all, the Christmas revelries themselves! The whole is one crowded scene of enjoyment, across whose long extent the happy school-boy has as yet caught no glimpse of that black Monday which forms the opposite and distant portal of this haunted time.

Amongst the signs of the time that are conspicuous upon the roads the traveller whose journeyings bring him towards those which lead into the metropolis will be struck by the droves of cattle that are making their painful way up to the great mart for this great festival. But a still more striking, though less noisy, Christmas symptom forms a very amusing object to him who leaves London by such of its highways as lead eastward. There is little exaggeration in the accompanying picture of a Lynn or Bury coach on its town-ward journey with its freight of turkeys at the Christmas season. Nay, as regards the freightage itself, the artist has kept himself within bounds. Many a time have we seen a Norfolk coach with its hampers piled on the roof and swung from beneath the body, and its birds depending, by every possible contrivance, from every part from which a bird could be made to hang. Nay, we believe it is not unusual with the proprietors, at this season, to refuse inside passengers of the human species, in favor of these Oriental gentry, who "pay better;" and on such occasions of course they set at defiance the restriction which limits them to carrying "four insides." Within and without, the coaches are crammed with the bird of Turkey; and a gentleman town-ward bound, who presented himself at a Norwich coach-office at such a time, to inquire the "fare to London," was pertly answered by the bookkeeper, "Turkeys." Our readers will acquit us of exaggeration when we tell them that Mr. Hone, in his "Every-Day Book," quotes from an historical account of Norwich an authentic statement of the amount of turkeys which were transmitted from that city to London between a Saturday morning and the night of Sunday, in the December of 1793, which statement gives the number as one thousand seven hundred, the weight as nine tons, two hundredweight, and two pounds, and the value as £680. It is added that in the two following days these were followed by half as many more. We are unable to furnish the present statistics of the matter; but in forty years which have elapsed since that time the demand, and of course the supply, must have greatly increased; and it is probable that the coach-proprietors find it convenient to put extra carriages on the road for these occasions.