The day and eve which precede the New Year are marked, in England, by few outward observances, save such as are common to the season; and it is in the peculiar trains of thought to which they give rise that they have a character of their own.

In Scotland, on the other hand, the festival of this season is, since the Reformation, nearly limited to these two days; and the last day of the year is distinguished both by omens and by customs peculiar to itself. In Mr. Stewart's "Popular Superstitions of the Highlands," there is an account of some of these omens, as they were gathered, at no distant period, in that land of mist and mystery; and a singular example may be mentioned in the auguries drawn from what was called the Candlemas bull. The term Candlemas, which has been given to this season, in Scotland and elsewhere, is supposed to have had its origin in some old religious ceremonies which were performed by candle light; and the bull was a passing cloud, which in Highland imagination assumed the form of that animal, and from whose rise or fall, or motions generally on this night, the seer prognosticated good or bad weather. Something of the same kind is mentioned in Sir John Sinclair's "Statistical Account of Scotland," who explains more particularly the auguries gathered from the state of the atmosphere on New Year's Eve. The superstition in question, however, is not peculiar to the Highlands of Scotland, but shared with the northern European nations in general, most of whom assigned portentous qualities to the winds of New Year's Eve.

It is on this night that those Scottish mummers, the Guisars, to whom we have already more than once alluded, still go about the streets, habited in antic dresses, having their faces covered with vizards and carrying cudgels in their hands. The doggerel lines repeated by these masquers, as given by Mr. Callender, in a paper contributed by him to the Transactions of the Antiquarian Society of Scotland, are as follows:—

Some ancient superstitions are likewise alluded to in the old dialogue of Dives and Pauper, as being in force at the beginning of the year, and which appear to have had a like origin with the Highland ones above described. As an example, mention may be made of the practice of "setting of mete or drynke by nighte on the benche, to fede Alholde or Gobelyn."

We must not forget to observe that Brand speaks of an ancient custom, which he says is still retained in some parts of England, in which young women go about on this eve carrying a wassail-bowl, and singing certain verses from door to door, which custom has certainly some analogy with the hogmanay practice in Scotland. And we may further state, while we are in the way of tracing resemblances, that the het pint, which, in Scotland, was formerly carried about the streets at the midnight of the New Year's coming in, and which was composed of ale, spirits, sugar, and nutmeg or cinnamon, is neither more nor less, though it was borne about in a kettle, than a Scottish version of the wassail-bowl.

In Ritson's collection of ancient songs, there is a very spirited carol given at length, which appears to have been sung by these English wassail mummers, in honor of their bowl; but which some of its verses prove to be a Twelfth-night song, and show, therefore, that a similar practice marked the night of the Epiphany. It begins right heartily:—

We believe that most of the customs which, up to a recent period, filled the streets of Edinburgh with mirth and bustle, on the eve of the New Year, have met with discouragement, and of late fallen into disuse, in consequence of some outrages which were committed under their shelter, in the year 1811. We presume, however, that there are still many places of the northern kingdom, in which the youth waits impatiently for the striking of the midnight hour, that he may be the earliest to cross the threshold of his mistress, and the lassie listens eagerly, from the moment when its chiming has ceased, to catch the sound of the first-foot on the floor:—

Considerable importance was formerly, and probably is still, attached to this custom. The welfare of a family, particularly of the fairer portion of its members, was supposed to depend much on the character of the person who might first cross the threshold, after the mid-hour of this night had sounded. Great care was therefore taken to exclude all improper persons; and when the privilege of the season is taken into consideration (that viz., of the hearty kiss above mentioned), it is probable that the maidens themselves might consider it desirable to interfere after their own fashion in the previous arrangements which were to secure the priority of admission to an unobjectionable guest.

But our space does not permit us to inquire at length in the present volume into any other customs than those which belong to an English Christmas season. We have only been able occasionally to advert to others, even amongst our own sister nations, when they helped to throw light upon those which on this occasion are our immediate subject. We must therefore return at once to the only general and conspicuous observance of this eve in England, viz., that which is commonly called "seeing the New Year in."

It is almost impossible for man on this day to be insensible to the "still small voices" that call upon him for a gathering up of his thoughts. In the very midst of the house of mirth, a shadow passes through the heart and summons it to a solemn conference. The skeleton who sits at all feasts, though overlooked at most from long habit, gets power on this day to wave his hand, and points emphatically, with his "slow-moving finger," to the long record whose burthen is "passing away!" The handwriting of Time comes visibly out upon the wall; and the spirit pauses to read its lessons, and take an account of the wrecks which it registers and the changes which it announces. Properly speaking, every day is the commencement of a new year, and the termination of an old one; but it is only, as we have said at the beginning of this book, by these emphatic markings that man is attracted to a consideration of a fact, whose daily recurrence at once makes its weighty importance and causes it to be forgotten, as if it were of none!

But on this particular day, no man fails to remember that—

No doubt it is in the name of his own private affections that man is first summoned to that review, which the wise will end by thus extending; and the first reckoning which each will naturally take is that of the treasures which may have been lost or gained to himself in the year which is about to close. Through many, many a heart, that summons rings in the low, sweet, mournful voice of some beloved one, whom in that bereaving space we have laid in the "narrow house;" and then it will happen (for man is covetous of his griefs, when his attention is once called to them) that the ghost which took him out into the churchyard to visit its own tomb, will end by carrying him round its dreary precincts and showing him all the graves that he has planted from his childhood. There will be hours on a day like this to many, and in some year or another to most, when the cheerful hopes which are also of the natural spirit of the season would contend in vain with the memories which it conjures up, but for that furthest and brightest hope which lies beyond the rest, and which is at this moment typified and shadowed forth by the returning sun and the renewing year.

We cannot refrain from pausing here, to quote for our readers a few exquisite and affecting lines written in the seventeenth century by Henry King, Bishop of Chichester, to one such beloved remembrancer, and in the cheering spirit of that same precious hope. We fancy they are very little known.

There are in the last volume of poems published by Mr. Tennyson, some beautiful verses, in which the natural thoughts that inevitably haunt this season of change are touchingly expressed, as they arise even in the young breast of one for whom "seasons and their change" are immediately about to be no more. We are in a mood which tempts us to extract them.

And it is wholesome that the mournful reflections which the period suggests should be indulged, but not to the neglect of its more cheerful influences. The New Year's Eve is in all quarters looked upon as a time of rejoicing; and perhaps no night of this merry season is more universally dedicated to festivity. Men are for the most part met in groups to hail the coming year with propitiatory honors; and copious libations are poured to its honor, as if to determine it to look upon us with a benignant aspect. We generally spend our New Year's Eve in some such group; but, we confess, it is not every class of wassailers that will suit us for the occasion. The fact is, after all our resolves to work up our minds to the pitch of gladness, aye, and notwithstanding our success, too, there are other feelings that will intrude in spite of us; and we like to find ourselves in a party where their presence is not looked upon as a marrer of the revels. When fitly associated for such a night, we find the very feelings in question for the most part to harmonize very delightfully with the predominant spirit of the time, producing a sort of mixed sensation which is full of luxury and tenderness. Bye the by, we have no great wish to have for our companions at any time those precisians who insist greatly on the external solemnities. "Ye are sae grave, nae doubt ye're wise," says Burns. But for ourselves, gentlemen, our sympathies lie with those who can be made to understand that the garb of even folly may by possibility be at times worn by those who conceal beneath it more sickness of the heart, as well as more wisdom, than shall ever be dreamt of in your philosophy,—who know, in fact, that that same folly is sometimes the very saddest thing in the world; that the jingle of the cap and bells is too often but a vain device, like that of the ancient Corybantes, to drown the "still small" sounds whose wailing is yet heard over all.

And on the night before us, of all nights in the year, the smile and the laugh go freely round, but ever and anon there is, as it were, the echo of a far sigh. A birth in which we have a mighty interest is about to take place, but every now and then comes to the heart the impression of low whispering and soft treading in the back-ground, as of those who wait about a death-bed. We are in a state of divided feelings, somewhat resembling his whose joy at the falling of a rich inheritance is dashed by tender recollections of the friend by whose departure it came. Let Mr. Tennyson explain for us why this is so:—

Occasionally, too, there will come a thought across us, in these hours, which cannot be made to harmonize with the feelings we are seeking to encourage, and has the unpleasing effect of a discord. It is felt at times, for instance, to be a sort of indecency that we should be looking out merrily for the New Year, when the old one is perishing by our side, and, for an instant, the heart's joyous issues are thrown back upon it. And then, again, the looker forward to hail the "coming guest" will suddenly fix his eyes upon the veil which shrouds that face; and the chill of a moment will creep over his heart, as he speculates on what it may conceal, or, gazing on the sealed book which the New Year carries in his hand, asks himself how many of those who sit with him on this night about the social table, may have their names written in its last page! Thoughts like these, however, are instantly treated like informers, and ducked, as they deserve to be, in the wassail-bowl.

But, in any case, we have never failed to observe that, as the midnight hour draws near, a hush falls upon these assemblies; and when men rise to usher in the new comer, it is for the most part in silence. We do not believe that moment is ever a merry one. The blithe spirits of the night stand still. The glasses are full,—but so is the heart, and the eye is strained upon the finger of the dial whose notes are to sound the arrival, as if held there by a spell. We do not think that any man, of all that group whom our artist has represented, could turn his face away from the dial, even by an effort; and he who could, would be out of place in any assembly of which we made one, unless we were out of place ourselves. The instant the solemn sounds of the midnight chime have ceased, the bells from a thousand steeples lift up their merry voices, but they never, at that moment, found a true echo in our hearts; and the shout which rises from the wassail table, in answer, has ever seemed to us to want much of the mirth to which it makes such boisterous pretension.

But this oppressive sensation soon passes away; and the glad bells of the spirit, like those of the steeples, ring freely out. When the old year is fairly withdrawn, when we have ceased to hear the sound of the falling earth upon its coffin-lid, when the heir stands absolutely in our presence, and the curtain which hides his features has begun slowly to rise (while the gazer on that curtain can discover, as yet, nothing of the dark things that lie behind, and the hopes which the New Year brings are seen through it, by their own light),—then does the heart shake off all that interfered with its hearty enjoyment, and then "comes in the sweet o' the night!" We are, ourselves, of that party in the plate; and it will be late, we promise you, before we separate. One song to the past! and then, "shall we set about some revels?"—as our old friend, Sir Andrew, hath it.

And now are we in the humor, this New Year's morning, for keeping such vigils as they did in Illyria; for "were we" too "not born under Taurus?" No advocates do we mean to be for those whose zeal in symposiac matters, like that of Bardolph, "burns in their noses;" but occasions there are, and this is one, when we hold it lawful to sound the wassail-bowl to some considerable depth. Like honest Isaak Walton, we love to keep within the bounds of "such mirth as does not make friends ashamed to look on one another, next morning;" but we feel that we may venture to be a little intemperate, in the present instance, and yet hold our heads up, even if we should chance to meet one of those gentry whom Burns presumes to be wise, because they "are sae grave." What says Innocentius?—and he was a Father of the Church; "Fecundi calices, quem non fecere disertum?" "Carry Master Silence to bed!" therefore, for we are about to be talkative, and expect to be answered. No man need sit with us longer than he likes: but it is the opening of another year, and we must see more of it. We find much virtue in Sir Toby's excellent reasoning, that "not to be abed after midnight is to be up betimes;" and have no sympathy for those who would insist, to-day, with the stolid Sir Andrew, that "to be up late is to be up late." "A false conclusion!" says Sir Toby; and so say we. So fill the glasses, once more, from the wassail-bowl, and let us "rouse the night-owl" in another "catch!"

But alas! it is later than we thought, and the owl is gone to bed; for we hear the cry of that other bird whom Herrick calls "the Bellman of the night:"—