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shall never be put together again on earth—many a lost treasure and many a perished hope,—

"Hopes that were angels in their birth,

But perished young, like things of earth."

Happy, happy days were they :-"O! their record is lively in my soul!" and there is a happiness, still, in looking back to them :

"Ye are dwelling with the faded flowers,

Ye are with the suns long set,

But oh! your memory, gentle hours,
Is a living vision yet!"

Yet are they, for the most part, eras to count our losses by. Beside them, in the calendar of the heart, is written many a private note, not to be read without bitter tears:—

"There's many a lad I loved is gone,
And many a lass grown old;

And when, at times, I think thereon,
My weary heart grows cold."

"Oh! the mad days that I have spent," says old Justice Shallow, "and to see how many of mine old acquaintance are dead!” Yet still, we love these commemorations; and hail them, each and all, as the year restores them to us, shorn and scarred as they are. And though, many and many a time, the welcome has faltered on our lips, as we "turned from all they brought to all they could not bring," still, by God's help, we will enjoy them, as yet we may,—drawing closer to us, and with the more reason, the friends that still remain, and draining, to the last,

“One draught, in memory of many

A joyous banquet past."

The revels of merry England are fast subsiding into silence, and her many customs wearing gradually away. The affectations and frivolities of society, as well as its more grave and solemn pursuits, the exigencies of fashion, and the tongue of the pedagogue, are alike arrayed against them; and one by one, they are retreating from the great assemblies where mankind "most do congregate," to hide themselves in remote solitudes and rural nooks. In fact, that social change which has enlarged and

filled the towns, at the expense of the country,-which has annihilated the yeomanry of England, and drawn the estated gentleman from the shelter of his ancestral oaks, to live upon their produce, in the haunts of dissipation,-has been, in itself, the circumstance most unfavorable to the existence of many of them, which delight in bye-ways and sheltered places,-which had their appropriate homes in the old manor house, or the baronial hall. Yet do they pass lingeringly away. Traces of most of them still exist, and from time to time re-appear, even in our cities and towns; and there are probably scarcely any which have not found some remote district or other, of these islands, in which their influence is still acknowledged, and their rites are duly performed. There is something in the mind of man which attaches him to ancient superstitions, even for the sake of their antiquity,—and endears to him old traditions, even because they are old. We cannot readily shake off our reverence for that which our fathers have reverenced so long, even where the causes in which that reverence originated are not very obvious or not very satisfactory. We believe that he who shall aid in preserving the records of these vanishing observances, ere it be too late, will do good and acceptable service, in his generation: and such contribution to that end as we have in our power, it is the purpose of these volumes to bestow. Of that taste for hunting out the obsolete, which originates in the mere dry spirit of antiquarianism, or is pursued as a display of gladiatorial skill in the use of the intellectual weapons, we profess ourselves no admirers. But he who pursues in the track of a receding custom, which is valuable, either as an historical illustration, or because of its intrinsic beauty, moral or picturesque, is an antiquarian of the beneficent kind; and he who assists in restoring observances which had a direct tendency to propagate a feeling of brotherhood and a spirit of benevolence, is a higher benefactor still. Right joyous festivals there have been amongst us, which England will be none the merrier—and kindly ones which she will be none the better-for losing. The following pages will give some account of that season, which has, at all times, since the establishment of Christianity, been most crowded with observances; and whose celebration is, still, the most conspicuous and universal with us, as well as throughout the whole of Christendom.

THE CHRISTMAS SEASON.

"This book of Christmas is a sound and good persuasion for gentlemen, and all wealthy men to keep a good Christmas."

A HA! CHRISTMAS! BY T. H. LONDON. 1647.

*

"Any man or woman *that can give any knowledge, or tell any tidings, of an old, old, very old grey-bearded gentleman, called Christmas, who was wont to be a verie familiar ghest, and visite all sorts of people, both pore and rich, and used to appeare in glittering gold, silk, and silver, in the Court, and in all shapes in the Theater in Whitehall, and had ringing, feasts, and jollitie in all places, both in the citie and countrie, for his comming: whosoever can tel what is become of him, or where he may be found, let them bring him back againe into England."

* * *

AN HUE AND CRY AFTER CHRISTMAS.

IN Ben Jonson's "Mask of Christmas," presented before the court in 1616,-wherein the ancient gentleman, so earnestly inquired after in one of the quotations which heads this chapter, and a number of his children, compose the dramatis personæ—that venerable personage (who describes himself as "Christmas, Old Christmas, Christmas of London, and Captain Christmas") is made to give a very significant hint to some parties, who fail to receive him with due ceremony: which hint we will, in all courtesy, bestow upon our readers.—"I have seen the time you have wished for me," says he,.... " and now you have me, they would not let me in. I must come another time!—a good jest! as if I could come more than once a year!" Over and over again, too, has this same very pregnant argument been enforced in the words of the old ballad, quoted in the " Vindication of Christmas,”

"Let's dance and sing, and make good cheer,
For Christmas comes but once a year!”—

Now if this suggestion was full of grave meaning, in the days of Jonson,-when the respectable old man was, for the most part, well received and liberally feasted,—when he fed, with his laughing children, at the tables of princes, and took tribute at the hands of kings,-when he showed, beneath the snows of his reverend head, a portly countenance (the result of much revelling), an eye in which the fire was unquenched, and a frame from which little of the lustihood had yet departed, we confess that we feel its import to be greatly heightened in these our days, when the patriarch himself exhibits undeniable signs of a failing nature, and many of his once rosy sons are evidently in the different stages of a common decline. A fine and a cheerful family the old man had: and never came they within any man's door, withTo us, out well repaying the outlay incurred on their account. at all times, their "coming was a gladness;"—and we feel that we could not, without a pang, see their honest and familiar faces rejected from our threshold, with the knowledge that the course of their wanderings could not return them to us under a period so protracted as that of twelve whole months.

In that long space of time, besides the uncertainty of what may happen to ourselves, there is but too much reason to fear, that, unless a change for the better should take place, some one or more of the neglected children may be dead. We could not but have apprehensions that the group might never return to us entire. Death has already made much havoc amongst them, since the days of Ben Jonson. Alas, for Baby cocke! and wo is me for Postand-paire! And, although Carol, and Minced-pie, and Newyear's Gift, and Wassail, and Twelfth-cake, and some others of the children, appear still to be in the enjoyment of a tolerably vigorous health, yet we are not a little anxious about Snap-dragon, and our mind is far from being easy on the subject of Hot-cockles. It is but too obvious that, one by one, this once numerous and pleasant family are falling away; and, as the old man will assuredly not survive his children, we may yet, in our day, have to join in the heavy lamentation of the lady, at the sad result of the above "Hue and Cry." -“But is old, old, good old Christmas gone?-nothing but the hair of his good, grave old head and beard left!"-For these reasons, he and his train shall be wel

It shall be a heavy dispensa

come to us, as often as they come. tion under which we will suffer them to pass by our door, unhailed and if we can prevail upon our neighbors to adopt our example, the veteran and his offspring may yet be restored. They are dying for lack of nourishment. They have been used to live on most bountiful fare,--to feed on chines and turkeys, and drink of the wassail-bowl. The rich juices of their constitution are not to be maintained-far less re-established-at a less generous rate; and though we will, for our parts, do what lies in our power, yet it is not within the reach of any private gentleman's exertions or finances, to set them on their legs again. It should be made a national matter of; and as the old gentleman, with his family, will be coming our way, soon after the publication of the present volume, we trust we may be the means of inducing some to receive them with the ancient welcome, and feast them after the ancient fashion.

To enable our readers to do this with due effect, we will endeavor to furnish them with a programme of some of the more important ceremonies observed by our hearty ancestors on the occasion; and to give them some explanation of those observances which linger still,—although the causes in which their institution originated are becoming gradually obliterated, and although they themselves are falling into a neglect, which augurs too plainly of their final and speedy extinction.

It is, alas! but too true that the spirit of hearty festivity in which our ancestors met this season, has been long on the decline; and much of the joyous pomp with which it was once received, has, long since, passed away. Those "divers plente of plesaunces," in which the genius of mirth exhibited himself,—

"About zule, when the wind blew cule,
And the round tables began,"

have sent forward to these dull times of ours but few, and those sadly degenerated, representatives. The wild barbaric splendor, the unbridled "mirth and princely cheare"-with which, upon the faith of ancient ballads, we learn that "ages long ago," King Arthur kept Christmas "in merry Carleile," with Queen Guenever "that bride soe bright of blee❞—the wholesale hospitality,

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