Chapter IV: Part 4

In the frontispiece to this volume the artist has represented the old man like another magician, summoning his spirits from the four winds for a general muster; and we hope that the greater part of them will obey his conjuration. The purpose, we believe, is to take a review of their condition and see if something cannot be done to amend their prospects,--in which it is our purpose to assist him. Already some of the children have appeared on the stage; and the rest, we have no doubt, are advancing in all directions. We are glad to see amongst the foremost, as he ought to be, ROAST BEEF,--that English "champion bold" who has driven the invader hunger from the land in many a well-fought fray, and for his doughty deeds was created a knight banneret on one of his own gallant fields so long ago as King Charles's time. We suppose he is the same worthy who, in the Romish calendar, appears canonized by the title of Saint George, where his great adversary Famine is represented under the figure of a dragon. Still following ROAST BEEF, as he has done for many a long year, we perceive his faithful 'squire (bottle-holder if you will) PLUM PUDDING, with his rich round face and rosemary cockade. He is a blackamoor, and derives his extraction from the spice lands. His Oriental properties have however received an English education and taken an English form, and he has long ago been adopted into the family of Father Christmas. In his younger days his name was "PLUMB-PORRIDGE": but since he grew up to be the substantial man he is, it has been changed into the one he now bears, as indicative of greater consistency and strength. His master treats him like a brother; and he has, in return, done good service against the enemy in many a hard-fought field, cutting off all straggling detachments or flying parties from the main body, which the great champion had previously routed. Both these individuals, we think, are looking as vigorous as they can ever have done in their lives, and offer in their well-maintained and portly personages a strong presumption that _they_ at least have at no time ceased to be favorite guests at the festivals of the land.

Near them stands, we rejoice to see, their favorite sister Wassail. She was of a slender figure in Ben Jonson's day, and is so still. If the garb in which she appears has a somewhat antiquated appearance, there is a play of the lip and a twinkle of the eye which prove that the glowing and joyous spirit which made our ancestors so merry "ages long ago," and helped them out with so many a pleasant fancy and quaint device, is not a day older than it was in the time of King Arthur. How should she grow old who bathes in such a bowl? It is her fount of perpetual youth! Why, even mortal hearts grow younger, and mortal spirits lighter, as they taste of its charmed waters. There it is, with its floating apples and hovering inspirations! We see too, that the "tricksy spirit," whose head bears it (and that is more than every head could do) has lost none of his gambols, and that he is still on the best of terms with the Turkey who has been his playfellow at these holiday-times for so many years. The latter, we suppose, has just come up from Norfolk, where Father Christmas puts him to school; and the meeting on both sides seems to be of the most satisfactory kind.

MUMMING also, we see, has obeyed the summons, although he looks as if he had come from a long distance and did not go about much now. We fancy he has become something of a student. Misrule too, we believe, has lost a good deal of his mercurial spirit, and finds his principal resource in old books. He has come to the muster, however, with a very long "feather in his cap," as if he considered the present summons portentous of good fortune. He looks as if he were not altogether without hopes of taking office again. We observe with great satisfaction, that the Lord of Twelfth Night has survived the revolutions which have been fatal to the King of the Cockneys and so many of his royal brethren; and that he is still "every inch a king." Yonder he comes under a state-canopy of cake, and wearing yet his ancient crown. The lady whom we see advancing in the distance we take to be Saint Distaff. She used to be a sad romp; but her merriest days we fear are over, for she is looking very like an old maid. Not far behind her we fancy we can hear the clear voice of Caroll singing as he comes along; and if our ears do not deceive us, the Waits are coming up in another direction. The children are dropping in on all sides.

But what is he that looks down from yonder pedestal in the back-ground upon the merry muster, with a double face? And why, while the holly and the mistletoe mingle with the white tresses that hang over the brow of the one, is the other hidden by a veil? The face on which we gaze is the face of an old man, and a not uncheerful old man,--a face marked by many a scar, by the channels of tears that have been dried up and the deep traces of sorrows past away. Yet does it look placidly down from beneath its crown of evergreens on the joyous crew who are assembled at the voice of Christmas. But what aspect hath that other face which no man can see? Why doth our flesh creep and the blood curdle in our veins as we gaze? What awful mystery doth that dark curtain hide? What may be written on that covered brow, that the old man dare not lift the veil and show it to those laughing children? Much, much, much that might spoil the revels. Much that man might not know and yet bear to abide. That twin face is Janus, he who shuts the gates upon the old year and opens those of the new, he who looks into the past and into the future, and catches the reflections of both, and has the tales of each written on his respective brows. For the past, it is known and has been suffered; and even at a season like this we can pause to retrace the story of its joys and of its sorrows as they are graven on that open forehead,--and from that retrospect, glancing to the future for hope, can still turn to the present for enjoyment. But oh, that veil and its solemn enigmas! On that other brow may be written some secret which, putting out the light of hope, should add the darkness of the future to the darkness of the past, until, amid the gloom before and the gloom behind, the festal lamps of the season, looked on by eyes dim with our own tears, should show as sad as tapers lighted up in the chamber of the dead. God in mercy keep down that veil!

"Such foresight who on earth would crave,
Where knowledge is not power to save?"

It will be our business to introduce to our readers each of the children of old Christmas as they come up in obedience to the summons of their father, reserving to ourselves the right of settling the order of their precedence; and we will endeavor to give some account of the part which each played of old in the revelries of the season peculiarly their own, and of the sad changes which time has made in the natural constitutions, or animal spirits, of some of them. Preparatory, however, to this we must endeavor to give a rapid glance at the causes which contributed to the decay of a festival so ancient and universal and uproarious as that which we have described, and brought into the old man's family that disease to which some of them have already fallen victims, and which threatens others with an untimely extinction.

We have already shown that so early as the reign of Elizabeth the Puritans had begun to lift up their testimony against the pageantries of the Christmas-tide; and the Lord of Misrule, even in that day of his potential ascendancy, was described as little better than the great Enemy of Souls himself. Our friend Stubs (whose denunciations were directed against _all_ amusements which from long usage and established repetition had assumed anything like a form of ceremonial, and who is quite as angry with those who "goe some to the woodes and groves and some to the hilles and mountaines . . . where they spende all the night in pastymes, and in the mornyng they return bringing with them birch bowes and braunches of trees to deck their assemblies withall," in the sweet month of May, as he could possibly be with the Christmas revellers, although the very language in which he is obliged to state the charge against the former was enough to tempt people out "a Maying," and might almost have converted himself) assures the reader of his "Anatomie" that all who contribute "to the maintenaunce of these execrable pastymes" do neither more nor less than "offer sacrifice to the devill and Sathanas." It is probable, however, that the people of those days, who were a right loyal people and freely acknowledged the claim of their sovereigns to an absolute disposition of all their temporalities (any of the common or statute laws of the land notwithstanding), considered it a part of their loyalty to be damned in company with their sovereigns, too, and resolved that so long as these iniquities obtained the royal patronage it was of their allegiance to place themselves in the same category of responsibility. Or perhaps their notion of regal prerogative, which extended so far as to admit its right to mould the national law at its good pleasure, might go the further length of ascribing to it a controlling power over the moral statutes of right and wrong, and of pleading its sanction against the menaces of Master Stubs. Or it may be that Master Stubs had failed to convince them that they were wrong, even without an appeal to the royal dispensation. Certain it is that, in spite of all that Master Stubs and his brethren could say, the sway of the Lord of Misrule, and the revels of his court continued to flourish with increasing splendor during this reign, and, as we have seen, lost no portion of their magnificence during the two next, although in that time had arisen the great champion of the Puritans, Prynne, and against them and their practices had been directed whole volumes of vituperation, and denounced large vials of wrath.

In Scotland, however, where the reformation took a sterner tone than in the southern kingdom, and where, as we have said, the irregularities committed under cover of the Christmas and other ceremonials laid them more justly open to its censure, the effect of this outcry was earlier and far more sensibly felt; and even so early as the reign of Queen Mary an act passed the Scottish Parliament whereby the Abbot of Unreason and all his "merrie disports" were suppressed.

In England, it is true that, according to Sandys, an order of the common council had issued as early as the beginning of _our_ Mary's reign prohibiting the Lord Mayor or Sheriffs from entertaining a Lord of Misrule in any of their houses; but this appears to have been merely on financial grounds, with a view of reducing the corporation expenditure, and to have extended no further.

It was not, however, until after the breaking out of the Civil War that the persecution of the Puritans (who had long and zealously labored not only to resolve the various ceremonials of the season into their pagan elements, but even to prove that the celebration of the Nativity at all was in itself idolatrous) succeeded to any extent in producing that result which the war itself and the consequent disorganization of society must in a great measure have effected even without the aid of a fanatical outcry. In the very first year of that armed struggle the earliest successful blow was struck against the festivities with which it had been usual to celebrate this period of the year, in certain ordinances which were issued for suppressing the performance of plays and other diversions; and in the following year some of the shops in London were for the first time opened on Christmas day, in obedience to the feelings which connected any observance of it with the spirit of popery. By the year 1647 the Puritans had so far prevailed that in various places the parish officers were subjected to penalties for encouraging the decking of churches and permitting divine service to be performed therein on Christmas morning; and in the same year the observance of the festival itself, with that of other holidays, was formally abolished by the two branches of the legislature.

It was found impossible, however, by all these united means, to eradicate the Christmas spirit from the land; and many of its customs and festivities continued to be observed, not only in obscure places, but even in towns, in spite of prohibition and in spite of the disarrangement of social ties. The contest between the Puritan spirit and the ancient spirit of celebration led to many contests; and we have an account--in a little book of which we have seen a copy in the British Museum, entitled "Canterbury Christmas, or a True Relation of the Insurrection in Canterbury"--of the disturbances which ensued in that city upon the Mayor's proclamation, issued in consequence of that Parliamentary prohibition at the Christmas which followed. This said proclamation, it appears, which was made by the city crier, was to the effect "that Christmas day and all other superstitious festivals should be put downe and that a market should be kept upon Christmas day." This order, it goes on to state, was "very ill taken by the country," the people of which neglected to bring their provisions into the town, and gave other tokens of their displeasure of a less negative kind. For, a few of the shopkeepers in the city, "to the number of twelve at the most," having ventured to open their shops in defiance of the general feeling, "they were commanded by the multitude to shut up again; but refusing to obey, their ware was thrown up and down and they at last forced to shut in."

Nor were the revilings of the Puritans against the lovers of Christmas observances suffered to remain unanswered. Many a squib was directed against the Roundheads; and the popular regret for the suppression of their high festival was skilfully appealed to by Royalist politicians and favorers of the ancient religion. The connection between the new condition of things in Church and State and the extinction of all the merriment of the land was carefully suggested in publications that stole out in spite of penalties and were read in defiance of prohibitions. As an example, that curious little tract from which we have more than once quoted under the title of "An Hue and Cry after Christmas," bears the date of 1645; and we shall best give our readers an idea of its character by setting out that title at length, as the same exhibits a tolerable abstract of its contents. It runs thus: "The arraignment, conviction, and imprisoning of Christmas on St. Thomas day last, and how he broke out of prison in the holidayes and got away, onely left his hoary hair and gray beard sticking between two iron bars of a window. With an Hue and Cry after Christmas, and a letter from Mr. Woodcock, a fellow in Oxford, to a malignant lady in London. And divers passages between the lady and the cryer about Old Christmas; and what shift he was fain to make to save his life, and great stir to fetch him back again. Printed by Simon Minc'd Pye for Cissely Plum-Porridge, and are to be sold by Ralph Fidler Chandler at the signe of the Pack of Cards in Mustard Alley in Brawn Street." Besides the allusions contained in the latter part of this title to some of the good things that follow in the old man's train, great pains are taken by the "cryer" in describing him, and by the lady in mourning for him, to allude to many of the cheerful attributes that made him dear to the people. His great antiquity and portly appearance are likewise insisted upon. "For age this hoarie-headed man was of great yeares, and as white as snow. He entered the Romish Kallendar, time out of mind, as old or very neer as Father Mathusalem was,--one that looked fresh in the Bishops' time, though their fall made him pine away ever since. He was full and fat as any divine doctor on them all; he looked under the consecrated lawne sleeves as big as Bul-beefe,--just like Bacchus upon a tunne of wine, when the grapes hang shaking about his eares; but since the Catholike liquor is taken from him he is much wasted, so that he hath looked very thin and ill of late." "The poor," says the "cryer" to the lady, "are sory for" his departure; "for they go to every door a-begging, as they were wont to do (_good Mrs., Somewhat against this good time_); but Time was transformed, _Away, be gone; here is not for you_." The lady, however, declares that she for one will not be deterred from welcoming old Christmas. "No, no!" says she; "bid him come by night over the Thames, and we will have a back-door open to let him in;" and ends by anticipating better prospects for him another year.

And by many a back-door was the old man let in to many a fireside during the heaviest times of all that persecution and disgrace. On the establishment of the Commonwealth, when the more settled state of things removed some of the causes which had opposed themselves to his due reception, the contests of opposition between the revived spirit of festival and the increased sectarian austerity became more conspicuous. There is an order of the Parliament in 1652 again prohibiting the observance of Christmas day, which proves that the practice had revived; and there are examples of the military having been employed to disperse congregations assembled for that purpose. In the "Vindication of Christmas," published about this time, the old gentleman, after complaining bitterly of the manner in which he was "used in the city, and wandering into the country up and down from house to house, found small comfort in any," asserts his determination not to be so repulsed: "Welcome or not welcome," says he, "I am come." In a periodical publication of that day entitled "Mercurius Democritus, or a True and Perfect Nocturnall, communicating many strange wonders out of the World in the Moon, etc.," the public are encouraged to keep Christmas, and promised better days. No. 37 contains some verses to that effect, of which the following are the first two:--

"Old Christmass now is come to town,
Though few do him regard;
He laughs to see them going down,
That have put down his Lord.

"Cheer up, sad heart, crown Christmass bowls,
Banish dull grief and sorrow;
Though you want cloaths, you have rich souls,
The _sun_ may shine to-morrow."

And again in No. 38:--

"A gallant crew, stir up the fire,
The other winter tale,
Welcome, Christmass, 'tis our desire
To give thee more spic'd ale."

On the return of the royal family to England, the court celebrations of Christmas were revived both there and at the Inns of Court; and the Lord of Misrule came again into office. We have allusions to the one and the other in the writings of Pepys and of Evelyn. The nobles and wealthy gentry, too, once more at their country-seats, took under their protection such of the ancient observances as had survived the persecution, and from time to time stole out of their hiding-places under the encouragement of the new order of things. But in none of its ancient haunts did the festival ever again recover its splendor of old. The condition of Charles's exchequer, and the many charges upon it,--arising as well out of the services of his adherents as from his own dissolute life,--left him little chance of imitating the lavish appointments of the court pageantries in the days of Elizabeth and James; and the troubles out of which the nation had emerged had made changes as well in the face of the country as in the condition and character of society, alike opposed to anything like a general and complete revival of the merry doings of yore. In the country, estates had passed into new hands, and the immemorial ties between the ancient families and the tenants of the soil had been rudely severed. Many of the old establishments in which these celebrations had been most zealously observed, were finally broken up; and friends who had met together from childhood around the Christmas fire, and pledged each other year by year in the wassail-bowl, were scattered by the chances of war. But out of this disturbance of the old localities and disruption of the ancient ties of the land, a result still more fatal to these old observances had arisen, promoted besides by the dissipation of manners which the restored monarch had introduced into the country. Men rooted out from their ancestral possessions and looking to a licentious king for compensation, became hangers-on about the court; and others who had no such excuse, seduced by their example and enamoured of the gayeties of the metropolis and the profligacies of Whitehall, abandoned the shelter of the old trees beneath whose shade their fathers had fostered the sanctities of life, and from "country gentlemen" became "men about town." The evils of this practice, at which we have before hinted as one of those to which the decay of rural customs is mainly owing, began to be early felt, and form the topic of frequent complaint and the subject of many of the popular ballads of that day. The song of the "Old and Young Courtier" was written for the purpose of contrasting the good old manners with those of Charles's time; and the effects of the change upon the Christmas hospitalities has due and particular notice therein. We extract it from the Percy collection for our readers, as appropriate to our subject and a sample of the ballads of the time:--

THE OLD AND YOUNG COURTIER.

An old song made by an aged old pate,
Of an old worshipful gentleman who had a greate estate,
That kept a brave old house at a bountifull rate,
And an old porter to relieve the poor at his gate;
Like an old courtier of the Queen's,
And the Queen's old courtier.

With an old lady, whose anger one word assuages;
They every quarter paid their old servants their wages,
And never knew what belong'd to coachmen, footmen, nor pages,
But kept twenty old fellows with blue coats and badges;
Like an old courtier, etc.

With an old study fill'd full of learned old books,
With an old reverend chaplain,--you might know him by his looks,--
With an old buttery hatch worn quite off the hooks,
And an old kitchen, that maintained half-a-dozen old cooks;
Like an old courtier, etc.

With an old hall, hung about with pikes, guns, and bows,
With old swords, and bucklers that had borne many shrewde blows,
And an old frize coat, to cover his worship's trunk hose,
And a cup of old sherry to comfort his copper nose;
Like an old courtier, etc.

With a good old fashion, when Christmasse was come,
To call in all his old neighbours with bagpipe and drum,
With good chear enough to furnish every old room,
And old liquor able to make a cat speak, and man dumb;
Like an old courtier, etc.

With an old falconer, huntsman, and a kennel of hounds,
That never hawked, nor hunted, but in his own grounds,
Who, like a wise man, kept himself within his own bounds,
And when he dyed gave every child a thousand good pounds;
Like an old courtier, etc.

But to his eldest son his house and land he assign'd,
Charging him in his will to keep the old bountifull mind,
To be good to his old tenants, and to his neighbours be kind;
But in the ensuing ditty you shall hear how he was inclined;
Like a young courtier, etc.

Like a flourishing young gallant, newly come to his land,
Who keeps a brace of painted madams at his command,
And takes up a thousand pound upon his father's land,
And gets drunk in a tavern, till he can neither go nor stand;
Like a young courtier, etc.

With a new-fangled lady, that is dandy, nice, and spare,
Who never knew what belong'd to good housekeeping or care,
Who buys gaudy-color'd fans to play with wanton air,
And seven or eight different dressings of other women's hair;
Like a young courtier, etc.

With a new-fashion'd hall, built where the old one stood,
Hung round with new pictures, that do the poor no good,
With a fine marble chimney, wherein burns neither coal nor wood,
And a new smooth shovelboard, whereon no victuals ne'er stood;
Like a young courtier, etc.

With a new study, stuff'd full of pamphlets and plays,
And a new chaplain, that swears faster than he prays,
With a new buttery-hatch that opens once in four or five days,
And a new French cook, to devise fine kickshaws and toys;
Like a young courtier, etc.

With a new fashion, when Christmasse is drawing on,
On a new journey to London straight we all must begone,
And leave none to keep house, but our new porter John,
Who relieves the poor with a thump on the back with a stone;
Like a young courtier, etc.

With a new gentleman usher, whose carriage is compleat,
With a new coachman, footmen, and pages to carry up the meat,
With a waiting-gentlewoman, whose dressing is very neat,
Who when her lady has din'd, lets the servants not eat;
Like a young courtier, etc.

With new titles of honour bought with his father's old gold,
For which sundry of his ancestors' old manors are sold;
And this is the course most of our new gallants hold,
Which makes that good housekeeping is now grown so cold,
Among the young courtiers of the King,
Or the King's young courtiers.

In a word, the old English feeling seemed nearly extinct for a time; and the ancient customs which had connected themselves therewith, one by one fell more or less into disuse. The chain of _universal_ sympathy and _general_ observance, which had long kept the festival together in all its parts, was broken; and the parts fell asunder, and were by degrees lost or overlooked. Let no man say that this is scarcely worth lamenting! Let none imagine that, in the decay of customs useless or insignificant in themselves, there is little to regret! "The affections," says Sterne, "when they are busy that way, will build their structures, were it but on the paring of a nail;" and there is no practice of long observance and ancient veneration--whether among nations or individuals--round which the affections have not in some degree twined themselves, and which are not therefore useful as supports and remembrancers to those affections. There are few of the consequences springing from civil war more lamentable than the disturbance which it gives to the social arrangements, were it but to the meanest of them. It is impossible that customs long identified with the feelings should perish without those feelings (though from their own eternal principle they will ultimately revive and find new modes of action) suffering some temporary injury. It was a beautiful assertion of Dr. Johnson that his feelings would be outraged by seeing an old post rooted up from before his door which he had been used to look at all his life,--even though it might be an incumbrance there. How much more would he have grieved over the removal of a village Maypole, with all its merry memories and all its ancient reverence!

The Christmas festival has languished from those days to this, but never has been, and never will be extinct. The stately forms of its celebration in high places have long since (and, in all probability, forever) passed away. The sole and homely representative of the gorgeous Christmas prince is the mock-monarch of the Epiphany,--the laureate of our times, with his nominal duties, in the last faint shadow of the court bards and masque-makers of yore; and the few lingering remains of the important duties once confided to the master of the royal revels are silently and unostentatiously performed in the office of the Lord Chamberlain of to-day. But the spirit of the season yet survives, and, for reasons which we shall proceed to point out, _must_ survive. True, the uproarious merriment, the loud voice which it sent of old throughout the land, have ceased; and while the ancient sports and ceremonies are widely scattered, many of them have retreated into obscure places, and some perhaps are lost. Still, however, this period of commemoration is everywhere a merry time; and we believe, as we have already said, that most of the children of Father Christmas are yet wandering up and down in one place or another of the land. We call upon all those of our readers who know anything of the "old, old, very old, gray-bearded gentleman" or his family to aid us in our search after them; and with their good help we will endeavor to restore them to some portion of their ancient honors in England.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] The evergreen holly is meant, a bearing peculiarly appropriate to the lord of Christmas sports.

[3] His motto or impress.

FEELINGS OF THE SEASON.

OF all the festivals which crowd the Christian calendar there is none that exercises an influence so strong and universal as that of Christmas; and those varied superstitions, and quaint customs, and joyous observances, which once abounded throughout the rural districts of England, are at no period of the year so thickly congregated or so strongly marked as at this season of unrestrained festivity and extended celebration. The reasons for this are various and very obvious. In the case of a single celebration, which has to support itself by its own solitary influence long, perchance, after the feeling in which it originated has ceased to operate, whose significance is perhaps dimly and more dimly perceived (through the obscurity of a distance, year after year receding further into shadow) by its own unaided and unreflected light, the chances are many that the annually increasing neglect into which its observance is likely to fall, shall finally consign it to an entire obliteration. But a cluster of festivals, standing in a proximate order of succession, at once throwing light upon each other and illustrated by a varied and numerous host of customs, traditions, and ceremonies,--of which, as in a similar cluster of stars, the occasional obscuration of any one or more would not prevent their memory being suggested and their place distinctly indicated by the others,--present greatly multiplied probabilities against their existence being ever entirely forgotten or their observation wholly discontinued. The arrangement by which a series of celebrations--beautiful in themselves, and connected with the paramount event in which are laid the foundations of our religion--are made to fall at a period otherwise of very solemn import (from its being assumed as the close of the larger of those revolutions of time into which man measures out the span of his transitory existence), and the chance which has brought down to the same point and thrown together the traces of customs and superstitions both of a sacred and secular character, uniting with the crowd of Catholic observances, off-shoots from the ancient Saturnalia, remains of old Druidical rites, and glimpses into the mythology of the Northern nations, have written a series of hieroglyphics upon that place of the calendar, which, if they cannot be deciphered in every part, are still, from their number and juxtaposition, never likely to be overlooked.

But though these causes are offered as accounting for the preservation of many customs which, without them, would long since have passed into oblivion, which exist by virtue of the position they occupy on the calendar, yet the more conspicuous celebrations of this season need no such aid and no such arguments. Nothing can be added to their intrinsic interest, and they are too closely connected with the solemn warnings of man's temporal destiny, and linked with the story of his eternal hopes, ever to lose any portion of that influence, a share of which (without thereby losing, as light is communicated without diminution) they throw over all the other celebrations that take shelter under their wing.

In every way, and by many a tributary stream, are the holy and beneficent sentiments which belong to the period increased and refreshed. Beautiful feelings, too apt to fade within the heart of man amid the chilling influences of worldly pursuit, steal out beneath the sweet religious warmth of the season, and the pure and holy amongst the hopes of earth assemble, to place themselves under the protection of that eternal hope whose promise is now, as it were, yearly renewed. Amid the echoes of that song which proclaimed peace on earth and good-will towards men, making no exclusions, and dividing them into no classes, rises up a dormant sense of universal brotherhood in the heart; and something like a distribution of the good things of the earth is suggested in favor of those, destitute here, who are proclaimed as joint participators in the treasure thus announced from heaven. At no other period of the year are the feeling of a universal benevolence and the sense of a common Adam so widely awakened; at no season is the predominant spirit of selfishness so effectually rebuked; never are the circles of love so largely widened.

The very presence of a lengthened festivity--for festivity can never be _solitary_--would, apart from its sacred causes, promote these wholesome effects. The extended space of time over which this festival is spread, the protracted holiday which it creates, points it out for the gathering together of distant friends whom the passing nature of an occasional and single celebration would fail to collect from their scattered places of the world. By this wise and beautiful arrangement the spell of home is still made to cast its sweet and holy influence along the sterile regions as along the bright places of after-life, and from the dark valleys and the sunny hilltops of the world to call back alike the spoiled of fortune and the tired and travel-stained to refresh themselves again and again at the fountain of their calmer hopes and purer feelings. A wise and beautiful arrangement this would be, in whatever season of the year it might be placed! Wise and beautiful is any institution which sets up a rallying-place for the early affections and re-awakens the sacred sympathies of youth,--which, from that well-head of purity and peace, sends forth, as it were, a little river of living waters, to flow with revivifying freshness and soothing murmur along the wastes and wildernesses of after years; which makes of that spring-time of the heart a reservoir of balm, to which in hours of sorrow it can return for joy, and in years of guilt for regeneration; and which, like the widow's cruse of oil, wasteth not in all the ages of the mind's dearth. But how greatly are the wisdom and the beauty of this arrangement increased by the sacred season at which it has been placed! Under the sanctions of religion the covenants of the heart are renewed. Upon the altars of our faith the lamps of the spirit are rekindled. The loves of earth seem to have met together at the sound of the "glad tidings" of the season, to refresh themselves for the heaven which those tidings proclaim. From "Abana and Pharpar" and all the "rivers of Damascus" the affections are returned to bathe in "the waters of Israel." In many a peaceful spot and lowly home,

"Wi' joy unfeigned, brothers and sisters meet,
An' each for other's welfare kindly spiers;"

and as the long-separated look once more into the "sweet, familiar faces," and listen in that restored companionship to strains such as "once did sweet in Zion glide" (even as they listened long ago, and, it may be, with some who are gone from them for ever),--

"Hope springs, 'exulting on triumphant wing'
That thus they all shall meet in future days,
There ever bask in uncreated rays,
No more to sigh or shed the bitter tear,
Together hymning their Creator's praise
In such society, yet still more dear,
While ceaseless time moves round in an eternal sphere."

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,"--

"The hallowed anthem sent to hail
Bethlehem's shepherds in the lonely vale
When Jordan hushed his waves, and midnight still
Watched on the holy towers of Zion's hill."

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,--

"A change" _he may find_ "there, and many a change!
Faces and footsteps and all things strange!
Gone are the heads of the silvery hair,
And the young that were, have a brow of care,
And the place is hushed where the children played!"

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

"A pall,
And a gloom o'ershadowing the banquet-hall,
And a mark on the floor as of life-drops spilt,"

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

"Last of the months, severest of them all.

. . . . . . .

For lo! the fiery horses of the Sun
Through the twelve signs their rapid course have run;
Time, like a serpent, bites his forked tail,
And Winter, on a goat, bestrides the gale;
Rough blows the North-wind near Arcturus' star,
And sweeps, unreined, across the polar bar."

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:--

"It is, methinks, a morning full of fate!
It riseth slowly, as her sullen car
Had all the weights of sleep and death hung at it!
She is not rosy-fingered, but swoln black!
Her face is like a water turned to blood,
And her sick head is bound about with clouds,
As if she threatened night, ere noon of day!
It does not look as it would have a hail
Or health wished in it--as of other morns!"

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.

"With his ice, and snow, and rime,
Let bleak winter sternly come!
There is not a sunnier clime
Than the love-lit winter home."

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.