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 feelings through the entire season, to temper its extravagances and regulate its mirth. The worship of the shepherds-the lamentation in Rama, and the weeping of Rachael 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.

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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 (O 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 for ever.— "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 birth-place 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 reädjusts 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 had 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 burnt-òut brand of the Yule log,-to rekindle 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 the 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, to 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—

For lo! the fiery horses of the sun,

Thro' 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 midwinter. "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 sha

dows 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 cruel! season, bidding me with-hold
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