Chapter V: Part 5

"We may find it in the wintry boughs, as they cross the cold blue sky,
While soft on icy pool and stream the pencilled shadows lie,
When we look upon their tracery, by the fairy frost-work bound,
Whence the flitting red-breast shakes a shower of blossoms to
the ground."

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:--

"One silent night hath passed, and lo,
How beautiful the earth is now!
All aspect of decay is gone,
The hills have put their vesture on,
And clothed is the forest bough.

"Say not 'tis an unlovely time!
Turn to the wide, white waste thy view;
Turn to the silent hills that rise
In their cold beauty to the skies,
And to those skies intensely blue.

. . . . . . .

"Walk now among the forest trees:
Saidst thou that they were stripped and bare?
Each heavy bough is bending down
With snowy leaves and flowers,--the crown
Which Winter regally doth wear.

"'Tis well; thy summer garden ne'er
Was lovelier, with its birds and flowers,
Than is this silent place of snow,
With feathery branches drooping low,
Wreathing around thee shadowy bowers!"

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:

A WINTER LANDSCAPE.

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,--

"To the sobered soul,
The silence of the wintry scene;
When Nature shrouds her in her trance,
In deep tranquillity.

"Not undelightful now to roam
The wild heath sparkling on the sight;
Not undelightful now to pace
The forest's ample rounds,

"And see the spangled branches shine,
And snatch the moss of many a hue,
That varies the old tree's brown bark,
Or o'er the gray-stone spreads."

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,"--

"Rosemary and rue, which keep
Seeming and savor all the winter long."

"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.

"Appropinquat ecce! felix
Hora gaudiorum,
Post grave tedium,
Advenit omnium
Meta petita laborum.
Domum, domum, dulce domum!
Domum, domum, dulce domum!
Dulce, dulce, dulce domum!
Dulce domum resonemus.

"Musa! libros mitte, fessa;
Mitte pensa dura,
Mitte negotium,
Jam datur otium,
Mea mittito cura!
Domum, domum, etc.

. . . . . . .

"Heus, Rogere, fer caballos;
Eja nunc eamus,
Limen amabile,
Matris et oscula,
Suaviter et repetamus
Domum, domum, etc.

"Concinamus ad Penates,
Vox et audiatur;
Phosphore! quid jubar,
Segnius emicans,
Gaudia nostra moratur.
Domum, domum, etc."

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.

In making the annexed sketch we presume that Mr. Seymour must have had in mind, and intended to illustrate by "modern instances," that class of "wise saws" such as "Birds of a feather flock together," "Tell me the company, and I will tell you the man," and others which tend generally to show that men are apt to catch the hues of surrounding objects, and take the features of their associates. If this was not his design, we have only the alternative conclusion, that he had drawn turkeys till he could draw nothing else, and till his best efforts at representing "the human face divine" resulted in what the Scotch call a "bubbly-jock." Some poet, in describing the perfections of his mistress's countenance, speaks of it as conveying the impression that she "had looked on heaven, and caught its beauty." Our friend the guard of this coach seems to have looked on those turkeys of which he has charge till he has "caught their beauty." It is impossible to conceive that the breath which he is pouring into that horn of his should issue in any other form of sound than that of a gobble. The coachman is clearly a turkey in disguise; and the old-looking figure that sits behind him, with something like a sausage round its neck, is probably his father. As for the swan with two necks that floats on the panel of the coach-door, it is a strange-looking bird at any time, but looks considerably more strange in its present situation. It is unquestionably out of place, and forms no fitting cognizance for a Norfolk coach at Christmas time.

Norfolk must be a noisy county. There must be a "pretty considerable deal" of gabble towards the month of November in that English Turkistan. But what a silence must have fallen upon its farmyards since Christmas has come round! Turkeys are indisputably born to be killed. That is an axiom. It is the end of their training, as it ought to be (and, in one sense, certainly _is_) of their desires. And such being the destiny of this bird, it may probably be an object of ambition with a respectable turkey to fulfil its fate at the period of this high festival. Certain it is that at no other time can it attain to such dignities as belong to the turkey who smokes on the well-stored table of a Christmas dinner,--the most honored dish of all the feast. Something like an anxiety for this promotion is to be inferred from the breathless haste of the turkey of which our artist has here given us a sketch, in its pursuit of the coach which has started for London without it. The picture is evidently a portrait. There is an air of verisimilitude in the eager features, and about the action altogether, of the bird, which stamps it genuine. In its anxiety it has come off without even waiting to be killed; and at the rate after which it appears to be travelling, is, we think, likely enough to come up with a heavily laden coach. We hope, however, that it is not in pursuit of the particular coach which we have seen on its way to the "Swan with two Necks," because we verily believe there is no room on _that_ conveyance for a single additional turkey, even if it should succeed in overtaking it.

One of the most striking signs of the season, and which meets the eye in all directions, is that which arises out of the ancient and still familiar practice of adorning our houses and churches with evergreens during the continuance of this festival. The decorations of our mantel-pieces, and in many places of our windows, the wreaths which ornament our lamps and Christmas candles, the garniture of our tables, are alike gathered from the hedges and winter gardens; and in the neighborhood of every town and village the traveller may meet with some such sylvan procession as is here represented, or some group of boys returning from the woods laden with their winter greenery, and like the sturdy ambassador in the plate, engaged in what we have heard technically called "bringing home Christmas" This symptom of the approaching festivity is mentioned by Gay in his "Trivia":--

"When Rosemary and Bays, the poet's crown,
Are bawl'd in frequent cries through all the town,
Then judge the festival of Christmass near,--
Christmass, the joyous period of the year!
Now with bright holly all the temples strow;
With Lawrel green, and sacred Misletoe."

The practice of these decorations, which is recommended to modern times by its own pleasantness and natural beauty, is of very high antiquity, and has been ascribed by various writers to various sources. They who are desirous of tracing a Christian observance to a Christian cause remind us of those figurative expressions in the prophets which speak of the Messiah as the "Branch of righteousness," etc., and describe by natural allusions the fertility which should attend his coming. "The Lord shall comfort Zion," says Isaiah: "he will comfort all her waste places; and he will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord." Again, "The glory of Lebanon shall come unto thee, the fir tree, the pine tree, and the box together, to beautify the place of my sanctuary; and I will make the place of my feet glorious." And Nehemiah, on an occasion of rejoicing, orders the people, after the law of Moses, to "go forth unto the mount and fetch olive branches, and pine branches, and myrtle branches, and palm branches, and branches of thick trees," and to make booths thereof, "every one upon the roof of his house, and in their courts, and in the courts of the house of God," and in the streets; "and all the congregation of them that were come again out of the captivity" sat under these booths, "and there was very great gladness." A writer in the "Gentleman's Magazine" asks if this custom may not be referred, as well as that of the palms on Palm Sunday, to that passage in the Scripture account of Christ's entry into Jerusalem which states that the multitude "cut down branches from the trees, and strawed them in the way."

The practice, however, of introducing flowers and branches amongst the tokens of festivity seems, and very naturally, to have existed universally and at all times. It was, as we know, a pagan manifestation of rejoicing and worship, and is forbidden on that express ground in early councils of the Christian Church. Hone, in his "Every-Day Book," quotes Polydore Virgil to the effect that "trymming of the temples with hangynges, flowres, boughes, and garlondes, was taken of the heathen people, whiche decked their idols and houses with suche array;" and it came under the list of abominations denounced by the Puritans for the same reason. The practice was also in use amongst the nations both of Gothic and Celtic origin; and Brand quotes from Dr. Chandler's "Travels in Greece" a very beautiful superstition, mentioned as the reason of this practice, amongst the votaries of Druidism. "The houses," he says, "were decked with evergreens in December, that the sylvan spirits might repair to them and remain unnipped with frost and cold winds until a milder season had renewed the foliage of their darling abodes."

In England the practice, whencesoever derived, has existed from the very earliest days, and, in spite of outcry and prohibition, has come down in full vigor to our own. In former times, as we learn from Stow, in his "Survey of London," not only were our houses and churches decorated with evergreens, but also the conduits, standards, and crosses in the streets; and in our own day they continue to form a garniture not only of our temples and our houses, but constitute a portion of the striking display made at this festive season in our markets and from the windows of our shops. Holly forms a decoration of the shambles, and every tub of butter has a sprig of rosemary in its breast.

The plants most commonly in use for this purpose appear to have generally been the holly, the ivy, the laurel, the rosemary, and the mistletoe; although the decorations were by no means limited to these materials. Brand expresses some surprise at finding cypress included in the list, as mentioned in the tract called "Round about our Coal-Fire," and observes that he "should as soon have expected to have seen the _yew_ as the cypress used on this joyful occasion." The fact, however, is that yew _is_ frequently mentioned amongst the Christmas decorations, as well as box, pine, fir, and indeed the larger part of the Christmas plants which we have enumerated in a former chapter. The greater number of these appear to have been so used, not on account of any mystic meanings supposed to reside therein, but simply for the sake of their greenery or of their rich berries. Stow speaks of the houses being decked with "whatsoever the year afforded to be green;" and Sandys observes that "at present great variety is observed in decorating our houses and buildings, and many flowers are introduced that were unknown to our ancestors, but whose varied colors add to the cheerful effect; as the chrysanthemum, satin-flower, etc., mingling with the red berry of the holly and the mystic mistletoe. In the West of England," he adds, "the myrtle and laurustinum form a pleasing addition." There is a very beautiful custom which we find mentioned in connection with the subject of evergreens as existing at this season of the year in some parts of Germany and Sicily. A large bough is set up in the principal room, the smaller branches of which are hung with little presents suitable to the different members of the household. "A good deal of innocent mirth and spirit of courtesy," it is observed, "is produced by this custom."

Herrick, however (a poet amid whose absurd conceits and intolerable affectation there are samples of the sweetest versification and touches of the deepest pathos, and who amongst a great deal that is liable to heavier objections still, has preserved many curious particulars of old ceremonies and obsolete superstitions), carries this custom of adorning our houses with evergreens over the entire year, and assigns to each plant its peculiar and appropriate season. To Christmas he appoints those which we have stated to be most commonly used on that occasion, but insists upon a change of decoration on the eve of Candlemas Day:--

"Down with the rosemary, and so
Down with the baies and misletoe;
Down with the holly, ivie, all
Wherewith you drest the Christmas hall;
That so the superstitious find
Not one least branch there left behind;"

and he urges the maids to the careful performance of this charge by the following threat:--

"For look! how many leaves there be
Neglected there, maids, trust to me,
So many goblins you shall see."

The plant by which he orders these to be replaced for Candlemas Day is box, whose turn is to continue--

"Until the dancing Easter Day
Or Easter's Eve appeare."

Then the box is to make way for "the crisped yew;" which is to be succeeded at Whitsuntide by birch and the flowers of the season; and these again are to yield to the--

"Green rushes, then, and sweetest bents,
With cooler oken boughs;"

whose reign continues till the period again comes round of preparation for Christmas. We believe that it is still usual in many parts of England to suffer the Christmas greens to remain in the windows of our churches, and sometimes of our houses, until Candlemas Eve.

Of those plants, then, which are considered as containing meanings that make them appropriate decorations for the Christmas-tide, or which have for any reason been peculiarly devoted to that season, the laurel, or bay, may be dismissed in a few words. Since the days of the ancient Romans this tree has been at all times dedicated to all purposes of joyous commemoration, and its branches have been used as the emblems of peace and victory and joy. Of course its application is obvious to a festival which includes them all, which celebrates "peace on earth," "glad tidings of great joy," and a triumph achieved over the powers of evil and the original curse by the coming of the Saviour.

We may add that, besides forming a portion of the household decorations, it is usual in some places to fling branches and sprigs of laurel on the Christmas fire, and seek for omens amid the curling and crackling of its leaves:--

"When laurell spirts i' th' fire, and when the hearth
Smiles to itselfe and guilds the roofe with mirth;
When up the Thyrse is rais'd, and when the sound
Of sacred orgies flyes around, around,"

says Herrick. At the two English universities the windows of the college chapels are still carefully decked with laurel at the season of Christmas.

The holly is a plant of peculiar veneration at this period of the year,--so much so as to have acquired to itself by a popular metonymy the name of the season itself, being vulgarly called "Christmas." It is no doubt recommended to the general estimation in which it is held by the picturesque forms of its dark, glossy leaves and the brilliant clusters of its rich red berries. There is in the Harleian Manuscripts a very striking carol of so remote a date as the reign of Henry VI., which is quoted by most of the writers on this subject, and gives a very poetical statement of the respective claims of this plant and of the ivy to popular regard. The inference from the second and fourth verses (taken in connection with the authorities which place it amongst the plants used for the Christmas ornaments) would seem to be, that while the former was employed in the decorations within doors, the latter was confined to the exteriors of buildings. Mr. Brand, however, considers those passages to allude to its being used as a vintner's sign and infers from others of the verses that it was also amongst the evergreens employed at funerals. It runs thus:--

"Nay, Ivy! nay, it shall not be, I wys;
Let Holy hafe the maystry, as the manner ys.

"Holy stond in the halle, fayre to behold;
Ivy stond without the dore: she ys ful sore a cold.
Nay, Ivy! etc.

"Holy and hys mery men they dawnsyn and they syng.
Ivy and hur maydenys they wepyn and they wryng.
Nay, Ivy! etc.

"Ivy hath a lyve; she laghtyt with the cold:
So mot they all hafe that wyth Ivy hold.
Nay, Ivy! etc.

"Holy hat berys as rede as any rose,
The foster the hunters kepe hem from the doos.
Nay, Ivy! etc.

"Ivy hath berys as blake as any slo;
Ther com the oule and ete hym as she goo.
Nay, Ivy! etc.

"Holy hath byrdys a ful fayre flok,
The Nyghtyngale, the Poppingy, the gayntyl Lavyrok.
Nay, Ivy! etc.

"Good Ivy, what byrdys ast thou?
Non but the howlet that kreye 'How, how!'
Nay, Ivy! nay, hyt shal not, etc."

We had some thoughts of modernizing the orthography, and very slightly the diction, of this curious old ballad; but it reads best in its own quaint garb, and even those of our friends who are not in the habit of perusing ancient writings will find scarcely any difficulty in making it out.

The rosemary, besides its rich fragrance, and probably _because_ thereof, was supposed to possess many occult virtues, and was used for the sake of one or other of them on occasions both of rejoicing and of mourning. It was believed to clear the head, to strengthen the memory, and to make touching appeals to the heart. For these reasons it was borne both at weddings and at funerals. Herrick says:--

"Grow for two ends, it matters not at all,
Be 't for my bridal or my burial."

"There's rosemary," says Ophelia; "that's for remembrance: pray you, love, remember;" and the custom of decking the corpse with this flower, as well as that of flinging its sprigs into the grave, would naturally spring out of this touching superstition. Its presence at bridals would seem to suggest that it was dedicated to hope as well as to memory. We have in Shakspeare's play of "Romeo and Juliet" allusions to the use of this herb on both of these important but very different occasions, which allusions are affecting from the application of both to the same young girl. The first, which refers to the joyous celebration, occurs in an interview between Romeo and the Nurse of Juliet, in which arrangements are making for the secret marriage, where the garrulous old woman observes, as hinting at Juliet's willingness, "She hath the prettiest sententious of it, of you and rosemary, that it would do you good to hear it." The second is in that scene in which Juliet is supposed to be dead:

"_Friar._ Come, is the bride ready to go to church?
_Capulet._ Ready to go, but never to return!"

And is inserted amongst the holy father's exhortations to resignation:--

"Dry up your tears, and stick your rosemary
On this fair corse; and, as the custom is,
In all her best array bear her to church."

Independently of the beautiful suggestion to remembrance which is made by its enduring perfume, that precious perfume itself would recommend this herb, for reasons less fine, as "strewings fitt'st for graves." The fact of its being in bloom at this season would naturally introduce the rosemary, with all its fine morals, into the Christmas celebrations; and such customs as that which prescribed that the wassail-bowl should be stirred with a sprig of this plant before it went round amongst friends, seem to have a very elegant reference to its secret virtues ("that's for remembrance," perhaps), and suggest that the revellings of the season in those old times were mingled with the best and most refined feelings of our nature.

But the mistletoe, the mystic mistletoe, where is the man whose school-boy days are gone by, in whom that word conjures up no merry memories?

"Oh, the mistletoe-bough!" who hath not, at the name, thronging visions of sweet faces that looked sweetest in those moments of their startled beauty beneath the pendent bough! If the old spells with which superstition has invested the mistletoe have lost some of their power over me, it hath now another, which in earlier days I knew not of,--the power to restore the distant and to raise the dead. I am to laugh no more as I have laughed of old beneath the influence of that mystic cognizance of the gay Christmas-tide; but even now as I write thereof, look in upon my heart bright portraits, traced with a skill which no mortal pencil shall achieve,--faces on which the earth hath long lain, and others from whom the wide spaces of the world have separated me for many a weary year; and, heavier far, some to whom _unkindness_ hath made me too long a stranger! There they rise and stand, one by one, beneath the merry snare, each with the heightened beauty on her cheek, which is the transient gift of the sacred bough!

O M----! how very fair is thine image in the eye of memory, and how has thy going away changed all things for me! The bright and the beautiful lie still about,--still bright and beautiful even to me,--but in another manner than when thou wert here. All things are tinged with thy loss. All fair things have a look, and all sweet sounds a tone, of mourning since thou leftest me. How long it seems, as if ages, instead of years, of the grave had grown between us, as if, indeed, I had known thee in some former and far-removed state of being! I do not love to think of thee as dead, I strive to think of thee rather as of one whom I have left behind in the quiet valley of our youth and our love,--from whom I have wandered forth and lost my way amid the mazes of the world. But where is the clew that should lead me back to thee? There may have been fairer (sweeter never) things than thou in this fair world, but my heart could never be made to believe or understand it. Had I known thee only in that world, I might not so have marked thy beauty; but thou wert with me when the world left me. In the flood of the sunshine, when a thousand birds are about us, we go upon our way with a sense that there is melody around, but singling perhaps no one note to take home to the heart and make a worship of. But the one bird that sings to us in the dim and silent night--oh! none but they on whom the night has fallen can know how dear its song becomes, filling with its music all the deserted mansions of the lonely soul. But the bird is dead, the song is hushed, and the houses of my spirit are empty and silent and desolate!

And thou whom the grave hath not hidden, nor far distance removed, from whom I parted as if it were but yesterday, and yet of whom I have already learned to think as of one separated from me by long years of absence and death, as if it were very long since I had beheld thee,--as if I gazed upon thee from a far distance across the lengthened and dreary alleys of the valley of the dead! Physically speaking, thou art still within my reach; and yet art thou to me as if the tomb or the cloister had received thee, and made of thee (what the world or the grave makes of all things we have loved) a dream of the night, a phantom of the imagination, an angel of the memory, a creation of the hour of shadows! Whatever may be thy future fortunes, however thy name may hereafter be borne to my mortal ear, my heart will ever refuse to picture _thee_ but as one who died in her youth!

And _thou_!--thou too art there, with thy long fair hair and that harp of thine which was so long an ark of harmony for me. "Alas! we had been friends in youth." But _all_ things bring _thee_ back, and I am haunted yet, and shall be through the world, by the airs which thou wert wont to sing me long ago. I remember that even in those days, at times, in the silent night, when broken snatches of melodies imperfectly remembered stole through the chambers of my heart,--ever in the sweet tones in which it had learned to love them,--I have asked myself if the ties that bound us might ever be like those passing and half-forgotten melodies; if the time could ever come when they should be like an old song learned in life's happier day, and whose memory has been treasured, to make us weep in the years when the heart has need to be soothed by weeping; if there would ever be a day when thy name might be sounded in mine ear as the name of a stranger! And that day has long since come,--

"For whispering tongues will poison truth."

How truly may we be said to live but in the past and in the future,--to have our hearts made up of memory and of hope, for which the present becomes, hour after hour, more and more of a void! And alas! is it not true, as a consequence, that the more they are occupied with memory, the less room have they for hope? And thus the one is ever gaining upon the other, and the dark waters of memory are hourly spreading upon that shore where hope had room to build her edifices and to play about them, till at length they cover all, and hope, having "no rest for the sole of her foot," flies forward to a higher and a better shore!

And such are my visions of the mistletoe; these are amongst the spirits that rise up to wait upon my memory,--"they and the other spirits" of the mystic bough! But brighter fancies has that charmed branch for many of our readers, and merrier spirits hide amid its leaves. Many a pleasant tale could we tell of the mistletoe-bough which might amuse our readers more than the descriptions to which we are confined, if the limits of our volume would permit. But already our space is scarcely sufficient for our purpose. We think we can promise our readers in another volume a series of tales connected with the traditions and superstitions which are detailed in the present, and which may serve as illustrations of the customs of the Christmas-tide.

Some of the names by which this remarkable plant were formerly called are, "misselden," "misseldine," and, more commonly, "missel." Old Tusser tells us that,--

"If snow do continue, sheep hardly that fare,
Crave mistle and ivy;"

and Archdeacon Nares says "the missel-thrush" is so designated "from feeding on its berries." From the generality of the examples in which this plant is mentioned by the name of "missel," it is suggested to us, by Mr. Crofton Croker that the additional syllable given to the name now in common use is a corruption of the old _tod_, and that mistletoe, or mistletod, implies a _bush_, or bunch, of missel, such as is commonly hung up at Christmas. He quotes in support of this suggestion the corresponding phrase of "ivy-tod," which occurs frequently in the writings of the Elizabethan age. If this be so, the expression "the mistletoe-bough" includes a tautology; but as it is popularly used, we retain it for the instruction of such antiquarians of remote future times as may consult our pages for some account of the good old customs which are disappearing so fast, and may fail to reach their day.