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 woe is me for Post-and-paire! And although Carol, and Minced-pie, and New-year'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 welcome to us as often as they come. It shall be a heavy dispensation 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,—

Of the various causes which contribute to the mingled festival of the Christmas-tide, there are some which have their origin in feelings, and are the remains of observances that existed previously to that event from which the season now derives its name. After the establishment of Christianity, its earliest teachers, feeling the impossibility of replacing at once those pagan commemorations which had taken long and deep root in the constitution of society and become identified with the feelings of nations, endeavored rather to purify them from their uncleanness, and adapt them to the uses of the new religion. By this arrangement, many an object of pagan veneration became an object of veneration to the early Christians; and the polytheism of papal Rome (promoted, in part, by this very compromise, working in the stronghold of the ancient superstition) became engrafted upon the polytheism of the heathen. At a later period, too, the Protestant reformers of that corrupted worship found themselves, from a similar impossibility, under a similar necessity of retaining a variety of Catholic observances; and thus it is that festival customs still exist amongst us which are the direct descendants of customs connected with the classic or druidical superstitions, and sports which may be traced to the celebrations observed of old in honor of Saturn or of Bacchus.

Amongst those celebrations which have thus survived the decay of the religions with which they were connected, by being made subservient to the new faith (or purified forms) which replaced them, that which takes place at the period of the new year—placed as that epoch is in the neighborhood of the winter solstice—stands conspicuous. Bequeathed as this ancient commemoration has been, with many of its forms of rejoicing, by the pagan to the Christian world, it has been by the latter thrown into close association with their own festival observances in honor of the first great event in the history of their revelation; and while the old observances and the feelings in which they originated have thus been preserved to swell the tide of Christian triumph, their pedigree has been overlooked amid the far higher interest of the observances by whose side they stand, and their ancient titles merged in that of the high family into which they have been adopted.

In most nations of ancient or modern times, the period of what is popularly called the winter solstice appears to have been recognized as a season of rejoicing. The deepening gloom and increasing sterility which have followed the downward progress of the sun's place in heaven would generally dispose the minds of men to congratulation at the arrival of that period when, as experience had taught them, he had reached his lowest point of influence with reference to them; and the prospects of renewed light, and warmth, and vegetation offered by what was considered as his returning march, would naturally be hailed by the signs of thanksgiving and the voice of mirth. The Roman Saturnalia, which fell at this period, were accordingly a season of high festivity, honored by many privileges and many exemptions from ill. The spirit of universal mirth and unbounded license was abroad, and had a free charter. Friends feasted together, and the quarrels of foes were suspended. No war was declared and no capital executions were permitted to take place during this season of general good-will; and the very slave, beneath its genial influence, regained for a moment the moral attitude of a man, and had a right to use the tongue which God had given him, for its original purpose of expressing his thoughts. Not only in the spirit of the time but in many of the forms which it took, may a resemblance be traced to the Christmas rejoicings of later days. The hymns in honor of Saturn were the Roman representatives of the modern carol; and presents passed from friend to friend, as Christmas gifts do in our day. (It may be observed here that the interchange of gifts and the offering of donations to the poor appear to have been, at all periods of rejoicing or delivery, from the earliest times, one of the modes by which the heart manifested its thankfulness; and our readers may be referred for a single example, where examples abound, to the directions recorded in the Book of Esther, as given by Mordecai to the Jews in Shushan, for celebrating their escape from the conspiracy of Haman: that on the anniversaries of "the days wherein the Jews rested from their enemies, and the month which was turned unto them from sorrow to joy and from mourning into a good day, they should make them days of feasting and joy, and of sending portions one to another and gifts to the poor.") But a more striking resemblance still between the forms observed during the days of the Saturnalia and those by which the Christmas festival was long illustrated may be noticed in the ruler, or king, who was appointed, with considerable prerogatives, to preside over the sports of the former. He is the probable ancestor of that high potentate who, under the title of Christmas Prince, Lord of Misrule, or Abbot of Unreason, exercised a similar sway over the Christmas games of more recent times, and whose last descendant—the Twelfth-night King—still rules with a diminished glory over the lingering revelries of a single night.

In the Northern nations of ancient Europe the same period of the year was celebrated by a festival in honor of the God Thor, which, like the Roman Saturnalia and the festival of our own times, was illustrated by the song, the dance, and the feast, executed after their barbarous fashion, and mingled with the savage rites of their own religion. The name of this celebration—Yule, Jule, Iul, or Iol—has given rise to many disputes amongst antiquaries as to its derivation, whose arguments, however, we need not report for the benefit of our readers till judgment shall have been finally pronounced. When that time shall arrive, we undertake to publish a new edition of the present work, for the purpose of giving our readers an abstract of the pleadings and acquainting them with the ultimate decision. In the mean time, we will let Sir Walter Scott inform them how—

Amongst other traces of the northern observances which have descended to our times, and of which we shall have occasion hereafter to speak, the name of the festival itself has come down, and is still retained by our Scottish brethren, as well as in some parts of England.

The Christian festival of the Nativity, with which these ancient celebrations have been incorporated, appears to have been appointed at a very early period after the establishment of the new religion. Its first positive footsteps are met with in the second century, during the reign of the Emperor Concordius; but the decretal epistles furnish us with traces of it more remote. At whatever period, however, its formal institution is to be placed, there can be no doubt that an event so striking in its manner and so important in itself would be annually commemorated amongst Christians from the days of the first apostles, who survived our Lord's resurrection. As to the actual year of the birth of Christ, as well as the period of the year at which it took place, great uncertainty seems to exist, and many controversies have been maintained. One of the theories on the subject, held to be amongst the most probable, places that event upwards of five years earlier than the vulgar era, which latter, however, both as regards the year and season of the year, was a tradition of the primitive Church. In the first ages of that Church, and up till the Council of Nice, the celebration of the Nativity and that of the Epiphany were united on the 25th of December, from a belief that the birth of Christ was simultaneous with the appearance of the star in the East which revealed it to the Gentiles. The time of the year at which the Nativity fell has been placed, by contending opinions, at the period of the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles, at that of the Passover, and again at that of the Feast of the Expiation, whose date corresponds with the close of our September. Clemens Alexandrinus informs us that it was kept by many Christians in April, and by others in the Egyptian month Pachon, which answers to our May. Amongst the arguments which have been produced against the theory that places its occurrence in the depth of winter, one has been gathered from that passage in the sacred history of the event which states that "there were shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flocks by night." It is an argument, however, which does not seem very conclusive in a pastoral country and Eastern climate. Besides the employment which this question has afforded to the learned, it has, in times of religious excitement, been debated with much Puritanical virulence and sectarian rancor. For the purposes of commemoration, however, it is unimportant whether the celebration shall fall or not at the precise anniversary period of the event commemorated; and the arrangement which assigns to it its place in our calendar fixes it at a season when men have leisure for a lengthened festivity, and when their minds are otherwise wholesomely acted upon by many touching thoughts and solemn considerations.

From the first introduction of Christianity into these islands, the period of the Nativity seems to have been kept as a season of festival, and its observance recognized as a matter of state. The Wittenagemots of our Saxon ancestors were held under the solemn sanctions and beneficent influences of the time; and the series of high festivities established by the Anglo-Saxon kings appear to have been continued, with yearly increasing splendor and multiplied ceremonies, under the monarchs of the Norman race. From the court the spirit of revelry descended by all its thousand arteries throughout the universal frame of society, visiting its furthest extremities and most obscure recesses, and everywhere exhibiting its action, as by so many pulses, upon the traditions and superstitions and customs which were common to all or peculiar to each. The pomp and ceremonial of the royal observance were imitated in the splendid establishments of the more wealthy nobles, and more faintly reflected from the diminished state of the petty baron. The revelries of the baronial castle found echoes in the hall of the old manor-house; and these were, again, repeated in the tapestried chamber of the country magistrate or from the sanded parlor of the village inn. Merriment was everywhere a matter of public concernment; and the spirit which assembles men in families now congregated them by districts then.

Neither, however, were the feelings wanting which connected the superstitions of the season with the tutelage of the roof-tree, and mingled its ceremonies with the sanctities of home. Men might meet in crowds to feast beneath the banner of the baron, but the mistletoe hung over each man's own door. The black-jacks might go round in the hall of the lord of the manor; but they who could had a wassail-bowl of their own. The pageantries and high observances of the time might draw men to common centres or be performed on a common account, but the flame of the Yule-log roared up all the individual chimneys of the land. Old Father Christmas, at the head of his numerous and uproarious family, might ride his goat through the streets of the city and the lanes of the village, but he dismounted to sit for some few moments by each man's hearth; while some one or another of his merry sons would break away, to visit the remote farm-houses or show their laughing faces at many a poor man's door. For be it observed, this worthy old gentleman and his kind-hearted children were no respecters of persons. Though trained to courts, they had ever a taste for a country life. Though accustomed in those days to the tables of princes, they sat freely down at the poor man's board. Though welcomed by the peer, they showed no signs of superciliousness when they found themselves cheek-by-jowl with the pauper. Nay, they appear even to have preferred the less exalted society, and to have felt themselves more at ease in the country mansion of the private gentleman than in the halls of kings. Their reception in those high places was accompanied, as royal receptions are apt to be, by a degree of state repugnant to their frank natures; and they seem never to have been so happy as when they found themselves amongst a set of free and easy spirits,—whether in town or country,—unrestrained by the punctilios of etiquette, who had the privilege of laughing just when it struck them to do so, without inquiring wherefore, or caring how loud.

Then, what a festival they created! The land rang with their joyous voices, and the frosty air steamed with the incense of the good things provided for their entertainment. Everybody kept holiday but the cooks; and all sounds known to the human ear seemed mingled in the merry pÆan, save the gobble of the turkeys. There were no turkeys,—at least they had lost their "most sweet voices." The turnspits had a hard time of it, too. That quaint little book which bears the warm and promising title of "Round about our Coal Fire" tells us that "by the time dinner was over they would look as black and as greasy as a Welsh porridge-pot." Indeed, the accounts of that time dwell with great and savory emphasis upon the prominent share which eating and drinking had in the festivities of the season. There must have been sad havoc made amongst the live-stock. That there are turkeys at all in our days is only to be accounted for upon the supposition of England having been occasionally replenished with that article from the East; and our present possession of geese must be explained by the well-known impossibility of extinguishing the race of the goose. It is difficult to imagine a consumption equal to the recorded provision. Men's gastronomic capacities appear to have been enlarged for the occasion, as the energies expand to meet great emergencies. "The tables," says the same racy authority above quoted, "were all spread from the first to the last; the sirloyns of beef, the minc'd-pies, the plumb-porridge, the capons, turkeys, geese, and plumb-puddings were all brought upon the board; and all those who had sharp stomachs and sharp knives eat heartily and were welcome, which gave rise to the proverb,—

Now, all men in those days appear to have had good stomachs, and, we presume, took care to provide themselves with sharp knives. The only recorded instance in which we find a failure of the latter is that portentous one which occurred, many a long day since, in the court of King Arthur, when the Christmas mirth was so strangely disturbed by the mischievous interference of the Boy with the Mantle. Under the test introduced by that imp of discord and which appears to have "taken the shine out of" the monarch's own good sword Excalibur itself, there was found but one knight, of all the hungry knights who sat at that Round Table, whose weapon was sharp enough to carve the boar's head or hand steady enough to carry the cup to his lip without spilling the lamb's wool; and even he had a very narrow escape from the same incapacities. But then, as we have said, this was at court, and under the influence of a spell (with whose nature we take it for granted that our readers are acquainted,—and, if not, we refer them to the Percy Ballads); and it is probable that, in those early as in later days, tests of such extreme delicacy were of far more dangerous introduction in the courts of kings than amongst assemblies of more mirth and less pretension. We could by no means feel sure that the intrusion, in our own times, of a similar test into a similar scene might not spoil the revels.

But to return. The old ballads which relate to this period of the year are redolent of good things, and not to be read by a hungry man with any degree of equanimity. Of course they are ex post facto ballads, and could only have been written under the inspiration of memory, at a time when men were at leisure to devote their hands to some other occupation than that of cooking or carving. But it is very difficult to understand how they ever found—as it appears they did—their mouths in a condition to sing them at the season itself. There is one amongst those ballads, of a comparatively modern date, printed in Evans's collection, which we advise no man to read fasting. It is directed to be sung to the tune of "The Delights of the Bottle," and contains in every verse a vision of good things, summed up by the perpetually recurring burthen of

"Diet the chief!"—by which we are to understand that this promising muster-roll merely includes the names of some of the principal viands,—the high-commissioned dishes of the feast,—leaving the subalterns, and the entire rank and file which complete the goodly array, unmentioned. It must have been a very ingenious or a very strong-minded mouse which could contrive to be starved under such circumstances. The ballad is long, and we can only afford to give our readers "tastings" of its good things. It is everywhere full of most gracious promise:—

In Ellis's edition of Brand's "Popular Antiquities" an old Christmas song is quoted from "Poor Robin's Almanack" for 1695, which gives a similar enumeration of Christmas dainties, but throws them into a form calculated for more rapid enunciation, as if with a due regard to the value of those moments at which it was probably usual to sing it. The measure is not such a mouthful as that of the former one which we have quoted. It comes trippingly off the tongue; and it is not impossible that, in those days of skilful gastronomy, it might have been sung eating. We will quote a couple of the verses, though they include the same commissariat truths as that from which we have already extracted; and our readers will observe, from the ill-omened wish which concludes the second of these stanzas, in what horror the mere idea of fasting had come to be held, since it is the heaviest curse which suggested itself to be launched against those who refused to do homage to the spirit of the times:—

The same author quotes, from a manuscript in the British Museum, an Anglo-Norman carol of the early date of the thirteenth century, and appends to it a translation by the late Mr. Douce, the following verse of which translation informs us (what, at any rate, might well be supposed, namely) that so much good eating on the part of the ancient gentleman, Christmas, would naturally suggest the propriety of good drinking, too:—

In a "Christmas Carroll," printed at the end of Wither's "Juvenilia," a graphic account is given of some of the humors of Christmas, among which the labors of the kitchen are introduced in the first verse, with a due regard to their right of precedency, and in words which, if few, are full of suggestion:—

We must present our readers with another quotation from an old ballad, entitled "Time's Alteration; or, The Old Man's Rehearsal, what brave dayes he knew a great while agone, when his old cap was new," which appears to have been written after the times of the Commonwealth. And this extract we are induced to add to those which have gone before, because, though it deals with precisely the same subjects, it speaks of them as of things gone by, and is written in a tone of lamentation, in which it is one of the purposes of this chapter to call upon our readers to join. We are sorry we cannot give them directions as to the tune to which it should be sung,—further than that it is obviously unsuited to that of the "Delights of the Bottle," prescribed for the joyous ballad from which we first quoted on this subject; and that, whatever may be the tune, we are clear that the direction as to time should be the same as that which Mr. Hood prefixes to his song of the Guildhall Giants; namely, "Dinner-time and mournful":—

Can our readers bear, after this sad ditty, to listen to the enumeration of good things described by Whistlecraft to have been served up at King Arthur's table on Christmas day? If the list be authentic, there is the less reason to wonder at the feats of courage and strength performed by the Knights of the Round Table.

But we cannot pursue this matter further. It is not to be treated with any degree of calmness before dinner, and we have not dined. We must proceed to less trying parts of our subject.

Of the earnest manner in which our ancestors set about the celebration of this festival, the mock ceremonial with which they illustrated it, the quaint humors which they let loose under its inspiration, and the spirit of fellowship which brought all classes of men within the range of its beneficent provisions, we have a large body of scattered evidence, to be gleaned out of almost every species of existing record, from the early days of the Norman dynasty down to the times of the Commonwealth. The tales of chroniclers, the olden ballads, the rolls of courts, and the statute-book of the land, all contribute to furnish the materials from which a revival of the old pageantry must be derived, if men should ever again find time to be as merry as their fathers were.

The numberless local customs of which the still remaining tradition is almost the sole record, and which added each its small contingent to the aggregate of commemoration, would certainly render it a somewhat difficult matter to restore the festival in its integrity; and, to be very candid with our readers, we believe we may as well confess, at the onset, what will be very apparent to them before we have done, that many of the Christmas observances (whether general or local) are to be recommended to their notice rather as curious pictures of ancient manners than as being at all worthy of imitation by us who "are wiser in our generation." Sooth to say, we dare not let our zeal for our subject lead us into an unqualified approbation of all the doings which it will be our business to record in these pages, though they seem to have made all ranks of people very happy in other days;—and that is no mean test of the value of any institution. Really earnest as we are in the wish that the sentiment of the season could be restored in its amplitude, we fear that many of the fooleries by which it exhibited itself could not be gravely proposed as worthy amusements for a nation of philosophers.

Still these very absurdities furnish the strongest evidences of the right good-will with which men—ay, grave and learned men—surrendered themselves to the merry spirit of the time, of that entire abandonment which forgot to make a reservation of their outward dignities and gave them courage to "play the fool." Our readers need scarcely be told that it must be a man of a very strong mind, or a man who could not help it, who should dare to make a jack-pudding of himself in these days, when all his fellows are walking about the world with telescopes in their hands and quadrants in their pockets. No doubt it would have a somewhat ridiculous effect to-day to see the members of the bar dancing a galliard or a coranto, in full costume, before the Benchers, notwithstanding that certain ancient forms are still retained in their halls which have all the absurdity of the exploded ones without any of their fun; and unquestionably we should think it rather strange to see a respectable gentleman capering through the streets on a pasteboard hobby-horse,—in lieu of the figurative hobby-horses on which most men still exhibit,—although even that, we think, would offer an object less ungracious than a child with an anxious brow and "spectacles on nose." The great wisdom of the world is, we presume, one of the natural consequences of its advancing age; and though we are quite conscious that some of its former pranks would be very unbecoming, now that it is getting into years, and "knows so much as it does," yet we are by no means sure that we should not have been well content to have our lot cast in the days when it was somewhat younger. They must have been very pleasant times! Certain it is that the laugh of the humbler classes, and of the younger classes, would be all the heartier, that it was echoed by the powerful and the aged; the mirth of the ignorant more free and genial, that the learned thought no scorn of it. For all that appears, too, the dignities of those days suffered no detriment by their surrender to the spirit of the times, but seem to have resumed all their functions and privileges, when it had exhausted itself, with unimpaired effect. Philosophers had due reverence, without erecting themselves always on stilts for the purpose of attracting it; and names have come down to us which are esteemed the names of grave and learned and wise men,—even in this grave and learned and wise age,—who, nevertheless, appear in their own to have conducted themselves at times very like children.

From the royal Household-Books which exist, and from the Household-Books of noble families (some of which have been printed for better preservation), as also from the other sources to which we have alluded, Mr. Sandys, in the very valuable introduction to his collection of Christmas carols, already mentioned, has brought together a body of valuable information,—both as to the stately ceremonies and popular observances by which the season continued to be illustrated, from an early period up to the time of its decline, amid the austerities of the civil war. To this careful compilation we shall be occasionally indebted for some curious particulars which had escaped ourselves, amid the multiplied and unconnected sources from which our notes for this volume had to be made. To those who would go deeper into the antiquarian part of the subject than suits the purpose of a popular volume, we can recommend that work, as containing the most copious and elaborate synopsis of the existing information connected therewith which we have found in the course of our own researches. It would be impossible, however, in a paper of that length—or, indeed, in a volume of any moderate size—to give an account of all the numerous superstitions and observances of which traces are found, in an extended inquiry, to exist,—throwing light upon each other and contributing to the complete history of the festival. We have therefore gleaned from all quarters those which appear to be the most picturesque and whose relation is the most obvious, with a view, as much as possible, of generalizing the subject and presenting its parts in relation to an intelligible whole.

As we shall have occasion, in our second part, to speak of those peculiar feelings and customs by which each of the several days of the Christmas festival is specially illustrated, we shall not at present pause to go into any of the details of the subject, although continually tempted to do so by their connection with the observations which we are called upon to make. The purpose of the present chapter is rather to insist generally, and by some of its more striking features, upon the high and lengthened festivity with which this portion of the year was so long and so universally welcomed, and to seek some explanation of the causes to which the diminution of that spirit, and the almost total neglect of its ancient forms, are to be ascribed.

As early as the twelfth century we have accounts of the spectacles and pageants by which Christmas was welcomed at the court of the then monarch Henry II.; and from this period the wardrobe rolls and other Household-Books of the English kings furnish continual evidences of the costly preparations made for the festival. Many extracts from these books have been made by Mr. Sandys and others, from which it appears that the mirth of the celebration, and the lavish profusion expended upon it, were on the increase from year to year, excepting during that distracted period of England's history when these, like all other gracious arrangements and social relations, were disturbed by the unholy contests between the houses of the rival roses. There is, however, a beautiful example of the sacred influence of this high festival mentioned by Turner in his History of England, showing that its hallowed presence had power, even in those warlike days, to silence even the voice of war,—of all war save that most impious of (what are almost always impious) wars, civil war. During the siege of Orleans, in 1428, he says: "The solemnities and festivities of Christmas gave a short interval of repose. The English lords requested of the French commanders that they might have a night of minstrelsy, with trumpets and clarions. This was granted; and the horrors of war were suspended by melodies, that were felt to be delightful."

In the peaceful reign of Henry VII., the nation, on emerging from that long and unnatural struggle, appears to have occupied itself, as did the wise monarch, in restoring as far as was possible, and by all means, its disrupted ties, and rebaptizing its apostate feelings; and during this period the festival of Christmas was restored with revived splendor and observed with renewed zeal. The Household-Book of that sovereign, preserved in the chapter-house at Westminster, contains numerous items for disbursements connected with the Christmas diversions, in proof of this fact.

The reign of Henry VIII. was a reign of jousts and pageants till it became a reign of blood; and accordingly the Christmas pageantries prepared for the entertainment of that execrable monarch were distinguished by increased pomp and furnished at a more profuse expenditure. The festivities of Eltham and Greenwich figure in the pages of the old chroniclers; and the account books at the chapter-house abound in payments made in this reign, for purposes connected with the revels of the season.

We shall by and by have occasion to present our readers with some curious particulars, illustrative of the cost and pains bestowed upon this court celebration during the short reign of the young monarch Edward VI.

Not all the gloom and terror of the sanguinary Mary's reign were able entirely to extinguish the spirit of Christmas rejoicing throughout the land, though the court itself was too much occupied with its auto-da-fÉ spectacles to have much time for pageants of less interest.

Our readers, we think, need scarcely be told that the successor of this stern and miserable queen (and, thank God! the last of that bad family) was sure to seize upon the old pageantries, as she did upon every other vehicle which could in any way be made to minister to her intolerable vanity, or by which a public exhibition might be made, before the slaves whom she governed, of her own vulgar and brutal mind. Under all the forms of ancient festival observance, some offering was presented to this insatiable and disgusting appetite,—and that, too, by men entitled to stand erect, by their genius or their virtues, yet whose knees were rough with kneeling before as worthless an idol as any wooden god that the most senseless superstition ever set up for worship. From all the altars which the court had reared to old Father Christmas of yore, a cloud of incense was poured into the royal closet, enough to choke anything but a woman,—that woman a queen, and that queen a Tudor. The festival was preserved, and even embellished; but the saint, as far as the court was concerned, was changed. However, the example of the festivity to the people was the same; and the land was a merry land, and the Christmas time a merry time, throughout its length and breadth, in the days of Queen Elizabeth.

Nay, out of this very anxiety to minister to the craving vanity of a weak and worthless woman—the devices to which it gave rise and the laborers whom it called into action—have arisen results which are not amongst the least happy or important of those by its connection with which the Christmas festival stands recommended. Under these impulses, the old dramatic entertainments—of which we shall have occasion to speak more at large hereafter—took a higher character and assumed a more consistent form. The first regular English tragedy, called "Ferrex and Porrex," and the entertainment of "Gammer Gurton's Needle," were both productions of the early period of this queen's reign; and amid the crowd of her worshippers (alas that it is so!) rose up—with the star upon his forehead which is to burn for all time—the very first of all created beings, William Shakespeare. These are amongst the strange anomalies which the world, as it is constituted, so often presents, and must present at times, constitute it how we will. Shakespeare doing homage to Queen Elizabeth! The loftiest genius and the noblest heart that have yet walked this earth, in a character merely human, bowing down before this woman with the soul of a milliner and no heart at all! The "bright particular star" humbling itself before the temporal crown! The swayer of hearts, the ruler of all men's minds, in virtue of his own transcendent nature, recognizing the supremacy of this overgrown child, because she presided over the temporalities of a half emancipated nation, by rights derived to her from others and sanctioned by no qualities of her own!

And yet if to the low passions of this vulgar queen, and the patronage which they led her to extend to all who could best minister to their gratification, we owe any part of that development by which this consummate genius expanded itself, then do we stand in some degree indebted to her for one of the greatest boons which has been bestowed upon the human race; and as between her and mankind in general (for the accounts between her and individuals, and still more that between her and God, stand uninfluenced by this item) there is a large amount of good to be placed to her credit. Against her follies of a day there would have to be set her promotion of a wisdom whose lessons are for all time; against the tears which she caused to flow, the human anguish which she inflicted, and the weary, pining hours of the captives whom she made, would stand the tears of thousands dried away, many and many an aching heart beguiled of its sorrow, and many a captive taught to feel that

To any one who will amuse himself by looking over the Miracle Plays and Masques, which were replaced by the more regular forms of dramatic entertainment, and will then regale himself by the perusal of "Gammer Gurton's Needle" or "Ferrex and Porrex," which came forward with higher pretensions in the beginning of this reign, there will appear reason to be sufficiently astonished at the rapid strides by which dramatic excellence was attained before its close and during the next, even without taking Shakespeare into the account at all. Put when we turn to the marvels of this great magician, and find that in his hands not only were the forms of the drama perfected, but that, without impeding the action or impairing the interest invested in those forms, and besides his excursions into the regions of imagination and his creations out of the natural world he has touched every branch of human knowledge and struck into every train of human thought; that without learning, in the popular sense, he has arrived at all the results and embodied all the wisdom which learning is only useful if it teaches; that we can be placed in no imaginable circumstances and under the influence of no possible feelings of which we do not find exponents,—and such exponents!—"in sweetest music," on his page; and above all, when we find that all the final morals to be drawn from all his writings are hopeful ones, that all the lessons which all his agents—joy or sorrow, pain or pleasure—are made alike to teach are lessons of goodness—it is impossible to attribute all this to aught but a revelation, or ascribe to him any character but that of a prophet. Shakespeare knew more than any other mere man ever knew; and none can tell how that knowledge came to him. "All men's business and bosoms" lay open to him. We should not like to have him quoted against us on any subject. Nothing escaped him, and he never made a mistake (we are not speaking of technical ones). He was the universal interpreter into language of the human mind, and he knew all the myriad voices by which nature speaks. He reminds us of the vizier in the Eastern story, who is said to have understood the languages of all animals. The utterings of the elements, the voices of beasts and of birds, Shakespeare could translate into the language of men; and the thoughts and sentiments of men he rendered into words as sweet as the singing of birds. If the reign of Elizabeth had been illustrated only by the advent of this great spirit, it might itself have accounted for some portion of that prejudice which (illustrated, as in fact it was, by much that was great and noble) blinds men still—or induces them to shut their eyes—to the true personal claims and character of that queen.

But we are digressing, again, as who does not when the image of Shakespeare comes across him? To return:—

The court celebrations of Christmas were observed throughout the reign of the first James; and the Prince Charles himself was an occasional performer in the pageantries prepared for the occasion, at great cost. But at no period do they appear to have been more zealously sought after, or performed with more splendor, than during that which immediately preceded the persecution, from whose effects they have never since recovered into anything like their former lustihood. In the early years of Charles the First's reign, the court pageants of this season were got up with extraordinary brilliancy,—the king with the lords of his court, and the queen with her ladies, frequently taking parts therein. This was the case in 1630-31; and at the Christmas of 1632-33 the queen, says Sandys, "got up a pastoral in Somerset House, in which it would seem she herself took a part. There were masques at the same time, independently of this performance, the cost of which considerably exceeded £2,000, besides that portion of the charge which was borne by the office of the revels and charged to the accounts of that department." In the same year, we learn that a grant of £450 was made to George Kirke, Esq., gentleman of the robes, for the masking attire of the king and his party. In 1637 there is a warrant, under the privy seal, to the same George Kirke for £150, to provide the masking dress of the king; and, in the same year, another to Edmund Taverner for £1,400 towards the expenses of a masque to be presented at Whitehall on the ensuing Twelfth Night. We have selected these from similar examples furnished by Sandys, in order to give our readers some idea of the sums expended in these entertainments, which sums will appear very considerable when estimated by the difference between the value of money in our days and that of two hundred years ago. Several of the masques presented at court during this reign, and the preceding ones, were written by Ben Jonson.

During the whole of this time, the forms of court ceremonial appear to have been aped, and the royal establishments imitated as far as possible, by the more powerful nobles; and the masques and pageantries exhibited for the royal amusement were accordingly reproduced or rivalled by them at their princely mansions in the country. Corporate and other public bodies caught the infection all over the land; and each landed proprietor and country squire endeavored to enact such state in the eyes of his own retainers, as his means would allow. The sports and festivities of the season were everywhere taken under the protection of the lord of the soil; and all classes of his dependants had a customary claim upon the hospitalities which he prepared for the occasion. The masques of the court and of the nobles were imitated in the mummings of the people,—of which we give a representation here, and which we shall have occasion particularly to describe hereafter,—they having survived the costly pageants of which they were the humble representatives. The festival was thus rendered a universal one, and its amusements brought within the reach of the indigent and the remote. The peasant, and even the pauper, were made, as it were, once a year sharers in the mirth of their immediate lord, and even of the monarch himself. The laboring classes had enlarged privileges during this season, not only by custom, but by positive enactment; and restrictive acts of Parliament, by which they were prohibited from certain games at other periods, contained exceptions in favor of the Christmas-tide. Nay, folly was, as it were, crowned, and disorder had a license! Sandys quotes from Leland the form of a proclamation given in his "Itinerary" as having been made by the sheriff of York, wherein it is declared that all "thieves, dice-players, carders" (with some other characters by name that are usually repudiated by the guardians of order) "and all other unthrifty folke, be welcome to the towne, whether they come late or early, att the reverence of the high feast of Youle, till the twelve dayes be passed." The terms of this proclamation were, no doubt, not intended to be construed in a grave and literal sense, but were probably meant to convey something like a satire upon the unbounded license of the season which they thus announce.

There are very pleasant evidences of the care which was formerly taken, in high quarters, that the poor should not be robbed of their share in this festival. The yearly increasing splendor of the royal celebrations appears at one time to have threatened that result, by attracting the country gentlemen from their own seats, and thereby withdrawing them from the presidency of those sports which were likely to languish in their absence. Accordingly, we find an order, in 1589, issued to the gentlemen of Norfolk and Suffolk, commanding them "to depart from London before Christmas, and to repair to their countries, there to keep hospitality amongst their neighbors." And similar orders appear to have been from time to time necessary, and from time to time repeated.

Amongst those bodies who were distinguished for the zeal of their Christmas observances, honorable mention may be made of the two English universities; and we shall have occasion hereafter to show that traces of the old ceremonials linger still in those their ancient haunts. But the reader who is unacquainted with this subject would scarcely be prepared to look for the most conspicuous celebration of these revels, with all their antics and mummeries, in the grave and dusty retreats of the law. Such, however, was the case. The lawyers beat the doctors hollow. Their ancient halls have rung with the sounds of a somewhat barbarous revelry; and the walls thereof, had they voices, could tell many an old tale, which the present occupants might not consider as throwing any desirable light upon the historical dignities of the body to which they belong. Our readers, no doubt, remember a certain scene in "Guy Mannering," wherein the farmer Dinmont and Colonel Mannering are somewhat inconsiderately intruded upon the carousals of Mr. Counsellor Pleydell at his tavern in the city of Edinburgh and find that worthy lawyer in what are called his "altitudes," being deeply engaged in the ancient and not very solemn pastime of "High Jinks." Their memory may probably present the counsellor "enthroned as a monarch in an elbow-chair placed on the dining-table, his scratch-wig on one side, his head crowned with a bottle-slider, his eye leering with an expression betwixt fun and the effects of wine," and recall, assisted by the jingle, some of the high discourse of his surrounding court:—

Now, if our readers shall be of opinion—as Colonel Mannering and the farmer were—that the attitude and the occupation were scarcely consistent with the dignity of a gentleman whom they had come to consult on very grave matters, we may be as much to blame as was the tavern-waiter on that occasion, in introducing them to the revels of the Inns of Court. We will do what we can to soften such censure by stating that there certainly appears at times to have arisen a suspicion, in the minds of a portion of the profession, that the wig and gown were not figuring to the best possible advantage on these occasions. For, in the reign of the first James, we find an order issued by the benchers of Lincoln's Inn, whereby the "under barristers were, by decimation, put out of commons because the whole bar offended by not dancing on Candlemas Day preceding, according to the ancient order of the society, when the judges were present;" and this order is accompanied by a threat "that, if the fault were repeated, they should be fined or disbarred."

There seems to have been a contest between the four Inns of Court as to which should get up these pageantries with the greatest splendor, and occasionally a struggle between the desire of victory and the disinclination, or perhaps inability, to furnish the heavy cost at which that victory was to be secured. Most curious particulars on these subjects are furnished by the accompt-books of the houses: by the "Gesta Grayorum" (which was published for the purpose of describing a celebrated Christmas kept at Gray's Inn in 1594, and had its title imitated from the then popular work called the "Gesta Romanorum"); by Dugdale, in his "Origines Juridiciales,"; and by Nichols, in his "Progresses of Queen Elizabeth." For some time Lincoln's Inn appears to have carried it all its own way, having been first on the ground. The Christmas celebrations seem to have been kept by this society from as early a period as the reign of Henry VI.; although it was not until the reign of Henry VIII. that they began to grow into celebrity, or at least that we have any account of their arrangements. When, however, the societies of the two Temples, and that of Gray's Inn, began, with a laudable jealousy, to contest the palm of splendor, the necessary expenditure appears occasionally to have "given them pause." Accordingly, they held anxious meetings, at the approach of the season, to decide the important question whether Christmas should be kept that year or not; and one of the registers of the society of Lincoln's Inn, bearing date the 27th of November, in the twenty-second year of the reign of Henry VIII. contains the following order: "Yt is agreed that if the two Temples do kepe Chrystemas, then Chrystemas to be kept here; and to know this, the Steward of the House ys commanded to get knowledge, and to advertise my master by the next day at night."

There is a curious story told in Baker's Chronicle of an awkward predicament into which the society of Gray's Inn brought themselves by a play which they enacted amongst their Christmas revels of 1527. The subject of this play was to the effect that "Lord Governance was ruled by Dissipation and Negligence; by whose evil order Lady Public-Weal was put from Governance." Now, if these gentlemen did not intend, by this somewhat delicate moral, any insinuation against the existing state of things (which, being lawyers, and therefore courtiers, there is good motive to believe they did not), it is, at all events, certain that, as lawyers, they ought to have known better how to steer clear of all offence to weak consciences. That respectable minister, Cardinal Wolsey, felt himself (as we think he had good right to do) greatly scandalized at what, if not designed, was, by accident, a palpable hit; and, in order to teach the gentlemen of Gray's Inn that they were responsible for wounds given, if they happened to shoot arrows in the dark, he divested the ingenious author, Sergeant Roe, of his coif, and committed him to the Fleet, together with one of the actors, of the name of Moyle,—in order to afford them leisure for furnishing him with a satisfactory explanation of the matter.

In Dugdale's "Origines Juridiciales," we have an account of a magnificent Christmas which was kept at the Inner Temple, in the fourth year of Queen Elizabeth's reign; at which the Lord Robert Dudley, afterwards Earl of Leicester, presided, under the mock-title of Palaphilos, Prince of Sophie, High Constable Marshal of the Knights Templars, and Patron of the honorable order of Pegasus. A potentate with such a title would have looked very foolish without a "tail;" and accordingly he had for his master of the game no less a lawyer than Christopher Hatton, afterwards Lord Chancellor of England, with four masters of the revels, a variety of other officers, and fourscore persons forming a guard. Gerard Leigh, who was so fortunate as to obtain the dignity of a knight of Pegasus, describes, as an eye-witness, in his "Accidence of Armorie," the solemn fooleries which were enacted on the occasion by these worthies of the sword and of the gown.

Of course, it was not to be expected that such shrewd courtiers as lawyers commonly are, if they had ever kept Christmas at all, should fail to do so during the reign of this virgin queen, when its celebration offered them such admirable opportunities for the administration of that flattery which was so agreeable to her Majesty, and might possibly be so profitable to themselves. We have great pleasure in recording a speech made by her Majesty on one of these occasions, nearly so much as two centuries and a half ago, but which for its great excellence has come down to our days. The gentlemen of Gray's Inn (their wits, probably, a little sharpened by the mistake which they had made in her father's time) had ventured upon a dramatic performance again; and, in the course of a masque which they represented before the queen's Majesty, had administered to her copious draughts of that nectar on which her Majesty's vanity was known to thrive so marvellously. They appear, however, with a very nice tact, to have given her no more of it on this occasion than was sufficient to put her Majesty into spirits, without intoxicating her, for by this period of her life it took a great deal of that sort of thing to intoxicate the queen's Majesty; and the effect was of the pleasantest kind, and could not fail to be most satisfactory to the gentlemen of Gray's Inn. For after the masque was finished (in which we presume there had been a little dancing by the lawyers who, would, as in duty bound, have stood on their wigs to please her Majesty), and on the courtiers attempting, in their turn, to execute a dance, her Majesty was most graciously pleased to exclaim, "What! shall we have bread and cheese after a banquet?"—meaning thereby, we presume, to imply that the courtiers could not hope to leap as high or, in any respect, to cut such capers as the lawyers had done. Now, this speech of the virgin queen we have reported here less for the sake of any intrinsic greatness in the thought or elegance in the form than because, out of a variety of speeches by her Majesty, which have been carefully preserved, we think this is about as good as any other, and has the additional recommendation (which so few of the others have) of exhibiting the virgin queen in a good humor. And, further, because having recorded the disgrace into which the gentlemen of Gray's Inn danced themselves, in the lifetime of her illustrious father, it is but right that we should likewise record the ample indemnification which they must have considered themselves to have received, at the lips of his virgin daughter.

The celebrations at the Inns of Court were from time to time continued, down to the period of the civil troubles which darkened the reign of Charles I.; and so lately as the year 1641, when they had already commenced, we find it recorded by Evelyn, in his Memoirs, that he was elected one of the comptrollers of the Middle Temple revellers, "as the fashion of the young students and gentlemen was, the Christmas being kept this yeare with greate solemnity." During this reign, we discover the several societies lessening their expenses by a very wise compromise of their disputes for supremacy; for in the eighth year thereof the four Inns of Court provided a Christmas masque in conjunction, for the entertainment of the court, which cost the startling sum of £24,000 of the money of that day, and in return King Charles invited one hundred and twenty gentlemen of the four Inns to a masque at Whitehall on the Shrove-Tuesday following.

That our readers may form some idea of the kind of sports which furnished entertainment to men of no less pretension than Hatton and Coke and Crewe, we will extract for them a few more particulars of the ceremonies usually observed at the grand Christmases of the Inner Temple, before quitting this part of the subject.

In the first place, it appears that on Christmas Eve there was a banquet in the hall, at which three masters of the revels were present, the oldest of whom, after dinner and supper, was to sing a carol, and to command other gentlemen to sing with him; and in all this we see nothing which is not perfectly worthy of all imitation now. Then, on each of the twelve nights, before and after supper were revels and dancing; and if any of these revels and dancing were performed in company with the fair sex (which, on the face of the evidence, doth not appear), then we have none of the objections to urge against them which we have ventured to insinuate against the solemn buffooneries, to which the bar was fined for refusing to surrender itself, in the time of James I. Neither do we find anything repugnant to our modern tastes in the announcement that the breakfasts of the following mornings were very substantial ones, consisting of brawn, mustard, and malmsey, which the exhaustion of the previous night's dancing might render necessary; nor that all the courses were served with music, which we intend that some of our own shall be this coming Christmas. But against most of that which follows we enter our decided protest, as not only very absurd in itself, but eminently calculated to spoil a good dinner.

On St. Stephen's Day, we learn that, after the first course was served in, the constable marshal was wont to enter the hall (and we think he had much better have come in, and said all he had to say beforehand) bravely arrayed with "a fair rich compleat harneys, white and bright and gilt, with a nest of fethers, of all colours, upon his crest or helm, and a gilt pole ax in his hand," and, no doubt, thinking himself a prodigiously fine fellow. He was accompanied by the lieutenant of the Tower, "armed with a fair white armour," also wearing "fethers," and "with a like pole ax in his hand," and of course also thinking himself a very fine fellow. With them came sixteen trumpeters, preceded by four drums and fifes, and attended by four men clad in white "harneys," from the middle upwards, having halberds in their hands, and bearing on their shoulders a model of the Tower, and each and every one of these latter personages, in his degree, having a consciousness that he, too, was a fine fellow. Then all these fine fellows, with the drums and music, and with all their "fethers" and finery, went three times round the fire, whereas, considering that the boar's head was cooling all the time, we think once might have sufficed. Then the constable marshal, after three courtesies, knelt down before the Lord Chancellor, with the lieutenant doing the same behind him, and then and there deliberately proceeded to deliver himself of an "oration of a quarter of an hour's length," the purport of which was to tender his services to the Lord Chancellor, which, we think, at such a time he might have contrived to do in fewer words. To this the Chancellor was unwise enough to reply that he would "take farther advice therein," when it would have been much better for him to settle the matter at once, and proceed to eat his dinner. However, this part of the ceremony ended at last by the constable marshal and the lieutenant obtaining seats at the Chancellor's table, upon the former giving up his sword: and then enter, for a similar purpose, the master of the game, apparelled in green velvet, and the ranger of the forest, in a green suit of "satten," bearing in his hand a green bow, and "divers" arrows, "with either of them a hunting-horn about their necks, blowing together three blasts of venery." These worthies, also, thought it necessary to parade their finery three times around the fire; and having then made similar obeisances, and offered up a similar petition in a similar posture, they were finally inducted into a similar privilege.

But though seated at the Chancellor's table, and no doubt sufficiently roused by the steam of its good things, they were far enough as yet from getting anything to eat, as a consequence; and the next ceremony is one which strikingly marks the rudeness of the times. "A huntsman cometh into the hall, with a fox, and a purse-net with a cat, both bound at the end of a staff, and with them nine or ten couple of hounds, with the blowing of hunting-horns. And the fox and the cat are set upon by the hounds, and killed beneath the fire." "What this 'merry disport' signified (if practised) before the Reformation," says a writer in Mr. Hone's Year Book, "I know not. In 'Ane compendious boke of godly and spiritual songs, Edinburgh, 1621, printed from an old copy,' are the following lines, seemingly referring to some such pageant:—

After these ceremonies, the welcome permission to betake themselves to the far more interesting one of an attack upon the good things of the feast appears to have been at length given; but at the close of the second course the subject of receiving the officers who had tendered their Christmas service was renewed. Whether the gentlemen of the law were burlesquing their own profession intentionally or whether it was only an awkward hit, like that which befell their brethren of Gray's Inn, does not appear. However, the common serjeant made what is called "a plausible speech," insisting on the necessity of these officers "for the better reputation of the Commonwealth;" and he was followed, to the same effect, by the king's serjeant-at-law till the Lord Chancellor silenced them by desiring a respite of further advice, which it is greatly to be marvelled he had not done sooner. And thereupon he called upon the "ancientest of the masters of the revels" for a song,—a proceeding to which we give our unqualified approbation.

So much for the dinner. After supper, the constable marshal again presented himself, if possible finer than before, preceded by drums,—as so fine a man ought to be,—and mounted on a scaffold borne by four men. After again going thrice round the hearth, he dismounted from his elevation, and having set a good example by first playing the figurant himself for the edification of the court, called upon the nobles, by their respective Christmas names, to do the same. Of the styles and titles which it was considered humorous to assume on such occasions, and by which he called up his courtiers to dance, our readers may take the following for specimens:—

"Sir Francis Flatterer, of Fowlehurst, in the county of Buckingham."

"Sir Randle Rackabite, of Rascall Hall, in the county of Rabchell."

"Sir Morgan Mumchance, of Much Monkery, in the county of Mad Popery."

And so on, with much more of the same kind, which we are sure our readers will spare us, or rather thank us for sparing them. The ceremonies of St. John's Day were, if possible, more absurd than those by which St. Stephen was honored; but, that we may take leave of the lawyers on good terms, and with a word of commendation, we will simply add that the concluding one is stated to be that on the Thursday following "the Chancellor and company partook of dinner of roast beef and venison pasties, and at supper of mutton and hens roasted," which we take to have been not only the most sensible proceeding of the whole series, but about as sensible a thing as they or anybody else could well do.

So important were these Christmas celebrations deemed by our ancestors, and such was the earnestness bestowed upon their preparation, that a special officer was appointed for that purpose, and to preside over the festival with large privileges, very considerable appointments, and a retinue which in course of time came to be no insignificant imitation of a prince's. We are of course speaking at present of the officer who was appointed to the superintendence of the Christmas ceremonials at court. The title by which this potentate was usually distinguished in England was that of "Lord of Misrule," "Abbot of Misrule," or "Master of Merry Disports;" and his office was, in fact, that of a temporary "Master of the Revels" (which latter title was formerly that of a permanent and distinguished officer attached to the household of our kings). Accordingly we find that amongst those of the more powerful nobles who affected an imitation of the royal arrangements in their Christmas establishments, this Christmas officer (when they appointed one to preside over their private Christmas celebrations) was occasionally nominated as their "Master of the Revels." In the Household-Book of the Northumberland family, amongst the directions given for the order of the establishment, it is stated that "My lorde useth and accustomyth yerly to gyf hym which is ordynede to be the Master of the Revells yerly in my lordis hous in cristmas for the overseyinge and orderinge of his lordschips Playes, Interludes, and Dresinge that is plaid befor his lordship in his hous in the xijth dayes of Cristenmas, and they to have in rewarde for that caus yerly, xxs." In the Inns of Court, where this officer formed no part of a household, but was a member elected out of their own body for his ingenuity, he was commonly dignified by a title more appropriate to the extensive authority with which he was invested, and the state with which he was furnished for its due maintenance; namely, that of "Christmas Prince," or sometimes "King of Christmas." He is the same officer who was known in Scotland as the "Abbot of Unreason," and bears a close resemblance to the "Abbas Stultorum," who presided over the Feast of Fools in France, and the "AbbÉ de la MalgourvernÉ," who ruled the sports in certain provinces of that kingdom. In a note to Ellis's edition of Brand's "Popular Antiquities," we find a quotation from Mr. Warton (whose "History of English Poetry" we have not at hand) in which mention is made of an "AbbÉ de Liesse," and a reference given to Carpentier's Supplement to Du Cange, for the title "Abbas LÆtitiÆ." We mention these, to enable the antiquarian portion of our readers to make the reference for themselves. Writing in the country, we have not access to the works in question, and could not, in these pages, go farther into the matter if we had.

We have already stated that the "Lord of Misrule" appears to bear a considerable resemblance to that ruler or king who was anciently appointed to preside over the sports of the Roman Saturnalia; and we find on looking farther into the subject, that we are corroborated in this view by one who, of course, asserts the resemblance for the purpose of making it a matter of reproach. The notorious Prynne, in his "Histrio-Mastix," affirms (and quotes Polydore Virgil to the same effect) that "our Christmas lords of Misrule, together with dancing, masques, mummeries, stage-players, and such other Christmas disorders, now in use with Christians, were derived from these Roman Saturnalia and Bacchanalian festivals; which," adds he, "should cause all pious Christians eternally to abominate them." We should not, however, omit to mention that by some this officer has been derived from the ancient ceremony of the Boy-Bishop. Faber speaks of him as originating in an old Persico-Gothic festival in honor of Buddha: and Purchas, in his "Pilgrimage," as quoted in the Aubrey manuscripts, says, that the custom is deduced from the "Feast in Babylon, kept in honour of the goddess Dorcetha, for five dayes together; during which time the masters were under the dominion of their servants, one of which is usually sett over the rest, and royally cloathed, and was called Sogan, that is, Great Prince."

The title, however, by which this officer is most generally known is that of Lord of Misrule. "There was," says Stow, "in the feast of Christmas, in the king's house, wheresoever he was lodged, a Lord of Misrule, or Master of merry Disports; and the like had ye for the house of every nobleman of honour or good worship, were he spiritual or temporal. Among the which the Mayor of London and either of the Sheriffs had their several Lords of Misrule ever contending, without quarrel or offence, which should make the rarest pastimes to delight the beholders."

Of the antiquity of this officer in England, we have not been able to find any satisfactory account; but we discover traces of him almost as early as we have any positive records of the various sports by which the festival of this season was supported. Polydore Virgil speaks of the splendid spectacles, the masques, dancings, etc., by which it was illustrated as far back as the close of the twelfth century; and it is reasonable to suppose that something in the shape of a master of these public ceremonies must have existed then, to preserve order as well as furnish devices, particularly as the hints for the one and the other seem to have been taken from the celebrations of the heathens. As early as the year 1489 Leland speaks of an Abbot of Misrule "that made much sport, and did right well his office." Henry the Seventh's "boke of paymentis," preserved in the Chapter House, is stated by Sandys to contain several items of disbursement to the Lord of Misrule (or Abbot, as he is therein sometimes called) for different years "in rewarde for his besynes in Christenmes holydays," none of which exceeded the sum of £6. 13s. 4d. This sum—multiplied as we imagine it ought to be by something like fifteen, to give the value thereof in our days—certainly affords no very liberal remuneration to an officer whose duties were of any extent; and we mention it that our readers may contrast it with the lavish appointments of the same functionary in after times. Henry, however, was a frugal monarch, though it was a part of his policy to promote the amusements of the people; and from the treasures which that frugality created, his immediate successors felt themselves at liberty to assume a greater show. In the subsequent reign, the yearly payments to the Lord of Misrule had already been raised as high as £15 6s. 8d.; and the entertainments over which he presided were furnished at a proportionably increased cost.

It is not, however, until the reign of the young monarch, Edward the Sixth, that this officer appears to have attained his highest dignities; and during the subsequent reign we find him playing just such a part as might be expected from one whose business it was to take the lead in revels such as we have had occasion to describe; namely, that of arch-buffoon.

In Hollinshed's Chronicle, honorable mention is made of a certain George Ferrers, therein described as a "lawyer, a poet, and an historian," who supplied the office well in the fifth year of Edward the Sixth, and who was rewarded by the young king with princely liberality. This George Ferrers was the principal author of that well-known work, the "Mirrour for Magistrates;" and Mr. Kempe, the editor of the recently published "Loseley Manuscripts," mentions his having been likewise distinguished by military services, in the reign of Henry the Eighth. It appears that the young king having fallen into a state of melancholy after the condemnation of his uncle, the Protector, it was determined to celebrate the approaching Christmas festival with more than usual splendor, for the purpose of diverting his mind; and this distinguished individual was selected to preside over the arrangements.

The publication of the "Loseley Manuscripts" enables us to present our readers with some very curious particulars, illustrative at once of the nature of those arrangements, and of the heavy cost at which they were furnished. By an order in council,—dated the 31st of September, 1552, and addressed to Sir Thomas Cawarden, at that time Master of the King's Revels,—after reciting the appointment of the said George Ferrers, the said Sir Thomas is informed that it is his Majesty's pleasure "that you se hym furneshed for hym and his bande, as well in apparell as all other necessaries, of such stuff as remayneth in your office. And whatsoever wanteth in the same, to take order that it be provided accordinglie by yo^r discretion."

For the manner in which the Lord of Misrule availed himself of this unlimited order, we recommend to such of our readers as the subject may interest a perusal of the various estimates and accounts published by Mr. Kempe from the manuscripts in question. Were it not that they would occupy too much of our space, we should have been glad to introduce some of them here, for the purpose of conveying to the reader a lively notion of the gorgeousness of apparel and appointment exhibited on this occasion. We must, however, present them with some idea of the train for whom these costly preparations were made, and of the kind of mock court with which the Lord of Misrule surrounded himself.

Amongst these we find mention made of a chancellor, treasurer, comptroller, vice-chamberlain, lords-councillors, divine, philosopher, astronomer, poet, physician, apothecary, master of requests, civilian, disard (an old word for clown), gentleman-ushers, pages of honor, sergeants-at-arms, provost-marshal, under-marshal, footmen, messengers, trumpeter, herald, orator; besides hunters, jugglers, tumblers, band, fools, friars (a curious juxtaposition, which Mr. Kempe thinks might intend a satire), and a variety of others. None seem in fact to have been omitted who were usually included in the retinue of a prince; and over this mock court the mock monarch appears to have presided with a sway as absolute, as far as regarded the purposes of his appointment, as the actual monarch himself over the weightier matters of the state. But the most curious part of these arrangements is that by which (as appears from one of the lists printed from these manuscripts) he seems to have been accompanied in his processions by an heir-at-law, and three other children, besides two base sons. These two base sons, we presume, are bastards; and that the establishment of a potentate could not be considered complete without them. The editor also mentions that he was attended by an almoner, who scattered amongst the crowd during his progresses, certain coins made by the wire-drawers; and remarks that if these bore the portrait and superscription of the Lord of Misrule, they would be rare pieces in the eye of a numismatist.

The following very curious letter, which we will give entire, will furnish our readers with a lively picture of the pageantries of that time, and of the zeal with which full-grown men set about amusements of a kind which are now usually left to children of a smaller growth. Playing at kings is in our day one of the sports of more juvenile actors. The letter is addressed by Master George Ferrers to Sir Thomas Cawarden; and gives some account of his intended entry at the court at Christmas, and of his devices for furnishing entertainment during the festival.

In other letters from this Lord of Misrule to the Master of the Revels he applies for eight visors for a drunken masque, and eight swords and daggers for the same purpose; twelve hobby-horses, two Dryads, and Irish dresses for a man and woman; and seventy jerkins of buckram, or canvas painted like mail, for seventy "hakbuturs," or musketeers of his guard.

Such are some of the testimonies borne by the parties themselves to their own right pleasant follies, and the expense at which they maintained them; and to these we will add another, coming from an adverse quarter, and showing the light in which these costly levities had already come to be regarded by men of sterner minds so early as the reign of Elizabeth. The following very curious passage is part of an extract made by Brand, from a most rare book entitled "The Anatomie of Abuses,"—the work of one Phillip Stubs, published in London in 1585,—and gives a quaint picture of the Lord of Misrule and his retainers, as viewed through Puritan optics.

"Firste," says Master Stubs, "all the wilde heades of the parishe conventynge together, chuse them a grand Capitaine (of mischeef) whom they innoble with the title of my Lorde of Misserule, and hym they crown with great solemnitie, and adopt for their kyng. This kyng anoynted, chuseth for the twentie, fourtie, three score, or a hundred lustie guttes like to hymself, to waite uppon his lordely majestie, and to guarde his noble persone. Then every one of these his menne he investeth with his liveries of greene, yellowe or some other light wanton colour. And as though that were not (baudie) gaudy enough I should saie, they bedecke themselves with scarffes, ribons, and laces, hanged all over with golde rynges, precious stones, and other jewelles: this doen, they tye about either legge twentie or fourtie belles with rich handkercheefes in their handes, and sometymes laied acrosse over their shoulders and neckes, borrowed for the moste parte of their pretie Mopsies and loovyng Bessies, for bussyng them in the darcke. Thus thinges sette in order, they have their hobbie horses, dragons, and other antiques, together with their baudie pipers, and thunderyng drommers, to strike up the Deville's Daunce withall" (meaning the Morris Dance), "then marche these heathen companie towardes the church and churche yarde, their pipers pipyng, drommers thonderyng, their stumppes dauncyng, their belles iynglyng, their handkerchefes swyngyng about their heades like madmen, their hobbie horses and other monsters skyrmishyng amongst the throng: and in this sorte they goe to the churche (though the minister bee at praier or preaÇhyng) dauncyng and swingyng their handkercheefes over their heades, in the churche, like devilles incarnate, with suche a confused noise that no man can heare his owne voice. Then the foolishe people, they looke, they stare, they laugh, they fleere, and mount upon formes and pewes, to see these goodly pageauntes, solemnized in this sort."

At the Christmas celebration held at Gray's Inn in 1594, to which we have already alluded, the person selected to fill the office of Christmas Prince was a Norfolk gentleman of the name of Helmes, whose leg, like that of Sir Andrew Aguecheek, appears "to have been formed under the star of a galliard." He is described as being "accomplished with all good parts, fit for so great a dignity, and also a very proper man in personage, and very active in dancing and revelling." The revels over which this mock monarch presided were, as our readers will remember, exhibited before Queen Elizabeth; and it was the exquisite performance of this gentleman and his court which her Majesty described as bearing the same relation for excellence to those of her own courtiers which a banquet does to bread and cheese. We must refer such of our readers as are desirous of informing themselves as to the nature and taste of the devices which could make her Majesty so eloquent, to the "Gesta Grayorum;" contenting ourselves with giving them such notion thereof, as well as of the high dignities which appertained to a Lord of Misrule, as may be conveyed by a perusal of the magnificent style and titles assumed by Mr. Henry Helmes on his accession. They were enough to have made her Majesty jealous, if she had not been so good-natured a queen; for looking at the philosophy of the thing, she was about as much a mock monarch as himself, and could not dance so well. To be sure, she was acknowledged by this potentate as Lady Paramount; and to a woman like Elizabeth, it was something to receive personal homage from—

"The High and Mighty Prince Henry, Prince of Purpoole, Archduke of Stapulia and Bernardia; Duke of High and Nether Holborn; Marquis of St. Giles and Tottenham; Count Palatine of Bloomsbury and Clerkenwell; Great Lord of the Cantons of Islington, Kentish Town, Paddington, and Knightsbridge; Knight of the most Heroical Order of the Helmet, and Sovereign of the same"!

It is admitted that no man can be a great actor who has not the faculty of divesting himself of his personal identity, and persuading himself that he really is, for the time, that which he represents himself to be; his doing which will go far to persuade others into the same belief. Now as her Majesty has pronounced upon the excellence of Mr. Henry Helmes's acting, and if we are therefore to suppose that that gentleman had contrived to mystify both himself and her, she would naturally be not a little vain of so splendid a vassal. But seriously, it is not a little amusing to notice the good faith with which these gentlemen appear to have put on and worn their burlesque dignities, and the real homage which they not only expected, but actually received. If the tricks which they played during their "brief authority," were not of that mischievous kind which "make the angels weep," they were certainly fantastic enough to make those who are "a little lower than the angels" smile. A Lord Mayor in his gilt coach seems to be a trifle compared with a Lord of Misrule entering the city of London in former days; and the following passage from Warton's "History of English Poetry," exhibits amusingly enough the sovereign functions seriously exercised by this important personage, and the homage, both ludicrous and substantial, which he sometimes received:—

"At a Christmas celebrated in the hall of the Middle Temple, in the year 1635, the jurisdiction privileges and parade of this mock monarch are thus circumstantially described. He was attended by his Lord Keeper, Lord Treasurer with eight white staves, a Captain of his Band of Pensioners and of his guard, and with two Chaplains who were so seriously impressed with an idea of his regal dignity that, when they preached before him on the preceding Sunday in the Temple Church, on ascending the pulpit they saluted him with three low bows. He dined both in the Hall and in his Privy Chamber under a cloth of Estate. The pole-axes for his Gentlemen Pensioners were borrowed of Lord Salisbury. Lord Holland, his temporary justice in Eyre, supplies him with venison on demand; and the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs of London with wine. On Twelfth-day, at going to Church, he received many petitions which he gave to his Master of Requests; and like other kings he had a favourite, whom—with others, gentlemen of high quality—he knighted at returning from Church."

The Christmas Prince on this occasion was Mr. Francis Vivian, who expended from his own private purse the large sum of £2,000 in support of his dignities. Really, it must have tried the philosophy of these gentlemen to descend from their temporary elevation, into the ranks of ordinary life. A deposed prince like that high and mighty prince, Henry, Prince of Purpoole, must have felt, on getting up on the morrow of Candlemas-day, some portion of the sensations of Abou Hassan on the morning which succeeded his Caliphate of a day, when the disagreeable conviction was forced upon him that he was no longer Commander of the Faithful, and had no further claim to the services of Cluster-of-Pearls, Morning-Star, Coral-Lips or Fair-Face. In the case, however, of Mr. Francis Vivian, it is stated that after his deposition he was knighted by the king,—by way, we suppose, of breaking his fall.

In Wood's "AthenÆ Oxonienses," mention is made of a very splendid Christmas ceremonial observed at St. John's College, Oxford, in the reign of our first James, which was presided over by a Mr. Thomas Tooker, whom we elsewhere find called "Tucker." From a manuscript account of this exhibition, Wood quotes the titles assumed by this gentleman in his character of Christmas Prince; and we will repeat them here, for the purpose of showing that the legal cloisters were not the only ones in which mirth was considered as no impeachment of professional gravity, and that humor (such as it is) was an occasional guest of the wisdom which is proverbially said to reside in wigs—of all denominations. From a comparison of these titles with those by which Mr. Henry Helmes illustrated his own magnificence at Gray's Inn, our readers may decide for themselves upon the relative degrees of the wit which flourished beneath the shelter of the respective gowns. Though ourselves a Cantab, we have no skill in the measurement of the relations of small quantities. Of the hearty mirth in each case there is little doubt; and humor of the finest quality could have done no more than produce that effect, and might probably have failed to do so much. The appetite is the main point. "The heart's all," as Davy says. A small matter made our ancestors laugh, because they brought stomachs to the feast of Momus. And, Heaven save the mark! through how many national troubles has that same joyous temperament (which is the farthest thing possible from levity,—one of the phases of deep feeling,—) helped to bring the national mind! The "merry days" of England were succeeded by what may be called her "age of tears,"—the era of the sentimentalists, when young gentlemen ceased to wear cravats, and leaned against pillars in drawing-rooms in fits of moody abstraction or under the influence of evident inspiration, and young ladies made lachrymatories of their boudoirs, and met together to weep, and in fact went through the world weeping. Amid all its absurdity, there was some real feeling at the bottom of this too; and therefore it, too, had its pleasure. But there is to be an end of this also. Truly are we falling upon the "evil days" of which we may say we "have no pleasure in them." Men are neither to laugh nor smile, now, without distinctly knowing why. We are in the age of the philosophers.—All this time, however, Mr. Thomas Tucker is waiting to have his style and titles proclaimed; and thus do we find them duly set forth:—

"The most magnificent and renowned Thomas, by the favor of Fortune, Prince of Alba Fortunata, Lord of St. John's, High Regent of the Hall, Duke of St. Giles's, Marquis of Magdalen's, Landgrave of the Grove, Count Palatine of the Cloysters, Chief Bailiff of Beaumont, High Ruler of Rome, Master of the Manor of Walton, Governor of Gloucester Green, sole Commander of all Titles, Tournaments, and Triumphs, Superintendent in all Solemnities whatever."

From these titles,—as well as from those which we have already mentioned as being assumed by the courtiers of the illustrious Prince of Sophie, our readers will perceive that alliteration was an esteemed figure in the rhetoric of the revels.

In order to give our readers a more lively idea of this potentate, we have, as the frontispiece to our second part, introduced a Lord of Misrule to preside over the Christmas sports therein described. Although the titles with which we have there invested him are taken from the "Gesta Grayorum," the dress in which the artist has bestowed him is not copied from any one of the particular descriptions furnished by the different records. He is intended to represent the ideal of a Christmas prince, and not the portrait of any particular one of whom we have accounts. The artist's instructions were therefore confined to investing him with a due magnificence (referring to the records only so far as to keep the costume appropriate) and with a complacent sense of his own finery and state, and we think that Mr. Seymour has succeeded very happily in catching and embodying the mock heroic of the character. The Prince of Purpoole, or His Highness of Sophie, must have looked just such a personage as he has represented.

We must not omit to observe that a corresponding officer appears to have formerly exercised his functions at some of the colleges at Cambridge, under the more classical title of Imperator. And we must further state that at Lincoln's-Inn, in the early times of their Christmas celebrations, there appear to have been elected (besides the Lord of Misrule, and, we presume, in subordination to him) certain dignitaries exercising a royal sway over the revelries of particular days of the festival. In the account given by Dugdale of the Christmas held by this society in the ninth year of the reign of Henry VIII., mention is made—besides the Marshal and (as he is there called) the Master of the Revels—of a King chosen for Christmas day, and an officer for Childermas day having the title of King of the Cockneys. A relic of this ancient custom exists in the Twelfth Night King, whom it is still usual to elect on the festival of the Epiphany, and of whom we shall have occasion to speak at length in his proper place.

The length of the period over which the sway of this potentate extended does not seem to be very accurately defined, or rather it is probable that it varied with circumstances. Strictly speaking, the Christmas season is in our day considered to terminate with Twelfth Night, and the festival itself to extend over that space of time of which this night on one side and Christmas eve on the other are the limits. In ancient times, too, we find frequent mention of the twelve days of Christmas. Thus the George Ferrers of whom we have spoken, is appointed "to be in his hyness household for the twelve days;" and he dates one of his communications to Sir Thomas Cawarden, "From Greenwich y^e second of January and y^e ix^th day of o^r rule." In the extract from the Household-Book of the Northumberland family which we have already quoted, mention is also made of the "Playes, Interludes and Dresinge that is plaid befor his lordship in his hous in the xijth dayes of Christenmas." Stow, however, says that "these Lords beginning their rule at Allhallond Eve, continued the same till the morrow after the Feast of the Purification, commonly called Candlemas day;" and that during all that time there were under their direction "fine and subtle disguisings, masks and mummeries, with playing at cards for counters, nayles and points in every house, more for pastimes than for gaine." This would give a reign of upwards of three months to these gentlemen. Dugdale, in describing the revels of the Inner Temple speaks of the three principal days being All-hallows, Candlemas, and Ascension days,—which would extend the period to seven months; and the masque of which we have spoken as forming the final performance of the celebrated Christmas of 1594, described in the "Gesta Grayorum," is stated to have been represented before the queen at Shrovetide. At the Christmas exhibition of St. John's college, Oxford, held in 1607, Mr. Thomas Tucker did not resign his office till Shrove-Tuesday; and the costly masque of which we have spoken as being presented by the four Inns of Court to Charles I., and whose title was "The Triumph of Peace," was exhibited in February of 1633. In Scotland, the rule of the Abbot of Unreason appears to have been still less limited in point of time; and he seems to have held his court and made his processions at any period of the year which pleased him. These processions, it appears, were very usual in the month of May (and here we will take occasion to observe parenthetically, but in connection with our present subject, that the practice at all festival celebrations of selecting some individual to enact a principal and presiding character in the ceremonial is further illustrated by the ancient May King, and by the practice, not yet wholly forgotten, of crowning on the first of that month a Queen of the May. This subject we shall have occasion to treat more fully when we come to speak in some future volume of the beautiful customs of that out-of-doors season).

From what we have stated, it appears probable that the officer who was appointed to preside over the revels so universally observed at Christmas time, extended, as a matter of course, his presidency over all those which—either arising out of them or unconnected therewith—were performed at more advanced periods of the succeeding year; that in fact, the Christmas prince was, without new election, considered as special master of the revels till the recurrence of the season. It is not necessary for us to suppose that the whole of the intervals lying between such stated and remote days of celebration were filled up with festival observances; or that our ancestors, under any calenture of the spirits, could aim at extending Christmas over the larger portion of the year. It is, however, apparent that although the common observances of the season were supposed to fall within the period bounded by the days of the Nativity and the Epiphany, the special pageantries with a view to which the Lords of Misrule were appointed in the more exalted quarters were in years of high festival spread over a much more extended time, and that their potential dignities were in full force, if not in full display, from the eve of All-hallows to the close of Candlemas day. It is stated in Drake's "Shakspeare and his Times," that the festivities of the season, which were appointed for at least twelve days, were frequently extended over a space of six weeks; and our readers know from their own experience that, even in these our days of less prominent and ceremonial rejoicing, the holiday-spirit of the season is by no means to be restrained within the narrower of those limits. The Christmas feeling waits not for Christmas day. The important preparations for so great a festival render this impossible. By the avenues of most of the senses, the heralds of old Father Christmas have long before approached to awake it from its slumber. Signal notes which there is no mistaking, have been played on the visual and olfactory organs for some time past, and the palate itself has had foretastes of that which is about to be. From the day on which his sign has been seen in the heavens, the joyous influences of the star have been felt and the moment the school-boy arrives at his home he is in the midst of Christmas. And if the "coming events" of the season "cast their shadows before," so, amid all its cross-lights it would be strange if there were no reflections flung behind. The merry spirit which has been awakened and suffered to play his antics so long is not to be laid by the exorcism of a word. After so very absolute and unquestioned a sway, it is not to be expected that Momus should abdicate at a moment's notice. Accordingly, we find that, any thing enacted to the contrary notwithstanding, the genial feelings of the time and the festivities springing out of them contrive to maintain their footing throughout the month of January; and Christmas keeps lingering about our homes till he is no longer answered by the young glad voices to whom he has not as yet begun to utter his solemn warnings and expound his sterner morals, and for whom his coming is hitherto connected with few memories of pain. Till the merry urchins have gone back to school there will continue to be willing subjects to the Lord of Misrule.

In Scotland, the Abbot of Unreason was frequently enacted by persons of the highest rank; and James V. is himself said to have concealed his crown beneath the mitre of the merry abbot. As in England, his revels were shared by the mightiest of the land; but they appear to have been of a less inoffensive kind and to have imitated more unrestrainedly the license of the Roman Saturnalia than did the merry-makings of the South. The mummeries of these personages (a faint reflection of which still exists in the Guisars whom we shall have to mention hereafter), if less costly than those of their brethren in England, were not less showy; and though much less quaint, were a great deal more free. "The body-guards of the Abbot of Unreason were all arrayed in gaudy colors bedecked with gold or silver lace, with embroidery and silken scarfs, the fringed ends of which floated in the wind. They wore chains of gold or baser metal gilt and glittering with mock jewels. Their legs were adorned and rendered voluble by links of shining metal hung with many bells of the same material twining from the ankle of their buskins to their silken garters, and each flourished in his hand a rich silk handkerchief brocaded over with flowers. This was the garb of fifty or more youths, who encircled the person of the leader. They were surrounded by ranks, six or more in depth, consisting of tall, brawny, fierce-visaged men covered with crimson or purple velvet bonnets, and nodding plumes of the eagle and the hawk, or branches of pine, yew, oak, fern, boxwood, or flowering heath. Their jerkins were always of a hue that might attract the eye of ladies in the bower or serving-damsels at the washing-green. They had breeches of immense capacity so padded or stuffed as to make each man occupy the space of five in their natural proportions; and in this seeming soft raiment they concealed weapons of defence or offence, with which to arm themselves and the body-guard if occasion called for resistance. To appearance, they had no object but careless sport and glee,—some playing on the Scottish harp, others blowing the bagpipes or beating targets for drums, or jingling bells. Whenever the procession halted they danced, flourishing about the banners of their leader. The exterior bands perhaps represented in dumb show or pantomime the actions of warriors or the wildest buffoonery; and these were followed by crowds who, with all the grimaces and phrases of waggery, solicited money or garniture from the nobles and gentry that came to gaze upon them. Wherever they appeared, multitudes joined them, some for the sake of jollity, and not a few to have their fate predicted by spae-wives, warlocks, and interpreters of dreams, who invariably were found in the train of the Abbot of Unreason."

In England, not only was this merry monarch appointed over the revelries of the great and the opulent, but—as of most of the forms of amusement over which he presided, so of the president himself—we find a rude imitation in the Christmas celebrations of the commonalty. Nor was the practice confined to towns or left exclusively in the hands of corporate or public bodies. The quotation which we have already made from Stubs's "Anatomie of Abuses," refers to a rustic Lord of Misrule; and while the antics which took place under his governance do not seem to have risen much above the performances of the morris-dancers, the gaudiness of the tinsel attire paraded by him and his band forms an excellent burlesque of the more costly finery of their superiors. Nay, the amusements themselves exhibit nearly as much wisdom as those of the court (with less of pretension), and we dare say created a great deal more fun at a far less cost. As to the Scottish practices, our readers will not fail to observe from our last quotation that the lordly Abbot and his train were little better than a set of morris-dancers themselves, and that so much of their practices as was innocent differed nothing from those which Stubs and his brother Puritans deemed so ridiculous in a set of parish revellers. In fact, the Lord of Misrule seems to have set himself up all over the land; and many a village had its master Simon who took care that the sports should not languish for want of that unity of purpose and concentration of mirth to which some directing authority is so essential.

We have already stated, and have made it quite apparent in our descriptions, that the Christmas celebrations of the more exalted classes are not put forward for the consideration of our readers on the ground of any great wisdom in the matter or humor in the manner of those celebrations themselves. But we claim for them serious veneration, in right of the excellence of the spirit in which they originated, and the excellence of the result which they produced. The very extravagance of the court pageantries—their profuse expenditure and grotesque displays—were so many evidences of the hearty reception which was given to the season in the highest places, and so many conspicuous sanctions under which the spirit of unrestrained rejoicing made its appeals in the lowest. This ancient festival of all ranks, consecrated by all religious feelings and all moral influences; this privileged season of the lowly; this Sabbath of the poor man's year,—was recognized by his superiors with high observance and honored by his governors with ceremonious state. The mirth of the humble and uneducated man received no check from the assumption of an unseasonable gravity or ungenerous reserve on the part of those with whom fortune had dealt more kindly, and to whom knowledge had opened her stores. The moral effect of all this was of the most valuable kind. Nothing so much promotes a reciprocal kindliness of feeling as a community of enjoyment; and the bond of good will was thus drawn tighter between those remote classes, whose differences of privilege, of education, and of pursuit, are perpetually operating to loosen it, and threatening to dissolve it altogether. There was a great deal of wisdom in all this; and the result was well worth producing even at the cost of much more folly than our ancestors expended on it. We deny that spectacles and a wig are the inseparable symbols of sapience; and we hold that portion of the world to be greatly mistaken which supposes that wisdom may not occasionally put on the cap and bells, and under that disguise be wisdom still! The ancient custom which made what was called a fool a part of the establishment of princes, and gave him a right in virtue of his bauble to teach many a wise lesson and utter many a wholesome truth—besides its practical utility, contained as excellent a moral and was conceived in as deep a spirit as the still more ancient one of the skeleton at a feast. "Cucullus non facit monachum," says one of those privileged gentry, in the pages of one who, we are sure, could have enacted a Christmas foolery with the most foolish, and yet had "sounded all the depths and shallows" of the human mind, and was himself the wisest of modern men. "Better a witty fool than a foolish wit." There is a long stride from the wisdom of that sneering philosopher who laughed at his fellows to his who on proper occasions can laugh with them; and in spite of all that modern philosophy may say to the contrary, there was in the very extravagances of Coke and Hatton, and other lawyers and statesmen of past times—if they aimed at such a result as that which we have mentioned, and in so far as they contributed thereto—more real wisdom than all which they enunciated in their more solemn moods, or have put upon record in their books of the law.

In the same excellent spirit, too, everything was done that could assist in promoting the same valuable effect; and while the pageantries which were prepared by the court and by other governing bodies furnished a portion of the entertainments by which the populace tasted the season in towns, and sanctioned the rest, care was taken in many ways (of which we have given an example) that the festival should be spread over the country, and provision made for its maintenance in places more secluded and remote. A set of arrangements sprang up which left no man without their influence; and figuratively and literally, the crumbs from the table of the rich man's festival were abundantly enjoyed by the veriest beggar at his gate. The kindly spirit of Boaz was abroad in all the land, and every Ruth had leave to "eat of the bread and dip her morsel in the vinegar." At that great harvest of rejoicing, all men were suffered to glean; and they with whom at most other seasons the world had "dealt very bitterly"—whose names were Mara, and who ate sparingly of the bread of toil—gleaned "even among its sheaves," and no man reproached them. The old English gentleman, like the generous Bethlehemite in the beautiful story, even scattered that the poor might gather, and "commanded his young men saying, ... 'Let fall also some of the handfuls of purpose for them and leave them, that they may glean them, and rebuke them not.'" And the prayer of many a Naomi went up in answer, "Blessed be he that did take knowledge of thee;" "blessed be he of the Lord!"

In a word, the blaze of royal and noble celebration was as a great beacon to the land, seen afar off by those who could not share in its warmth or sit under the influence of its immediate inspirations. But it was answered from every hill-top and repeated in every valley of England; and each man flung the Yule log on his own fire at the cheering signal. The hearth, according to Aubrey, at the first introduction of coals, was usually in the middle of the room; and he derives from thence the origin of the saying, "round about our coal fire." But whether the huge fagot crackled and flustered within those merry circles or flared and roared up the ample chimneys,—all social feelings, and all beautiful superstitions and old traditions and local observances awoke at the blaze; and from their thousand hiding-places crept out the customs and ceremonials which crowd this festal period of the year, and of which it is high time that we should proceed to give an account in these pages. The charmed log that (duly lighted with the last year's brand, which, as we learn from Herrick, was essential to its virtue) scared away all evil spirits, attracted all beneficent ones. The 'squire sat in the midst of his tenants as a patriarch might amid his family, and appears to have had no less reverence, though he compounded the wassail-bowl with his own hands and shared it with the meanest of his dependants. The little book from which we have more than once quoted by the title of "Round about our Coal-fire," furnishes us with an example of this reverence too ludicrous to be omitted. Its writer tells us that if the 'squire had occasion to ask one of his neighbors what o'clock it was, he received for answer a profound bow and an assurance that it was what o'clock his worship pleased,—an answer, no doubt, indicative of profound respect, but not calculated to convey much useful information to the inquirer. In fine, however, while the glad spirit of the season covered the land, hospitality and harmony were everywhere a portion of that spirit. The light of a common festival shone for once upon the palace and the cottage, and the chain of a universal sympathy descended unbroken through all ranks, from the prince to the peasant and the beggar.

The ceremonies and superstitions and sports of the Christmas season are not only various in various places, but have varied from time to time in the same. Those of them which have their root in the festival itself are for the most part common to all, and have dragged out a lingering existence even to our times. But there are many which, springing from other sources, have placed themselves under its protection or, naturally enough, sought to associate themselves with merry spirits like their own. Old Father Christmas has had a great many children in his time, some of whom he has survived; and not only so, but in addition to his own lawful offspring the generous old man has taken under his patronage and adopted into his family many who have no legitimate claim to that distinction by any of the wives to whom he has been united,—neither by the Roman lady, his lady of the Celtic family, nor her whom he took to his bosom and converted from the idolatry of Thor. His family appears to have been generally far too numerous to be entertained at one time in the same establishment, or indeed by the same community, and to have rarely travelled therefore in a body.

In Ben Jonson's Masque of Christmas, to which we have already alluded, the old gentleman is introduced "attired in round hose, long stockings, a close doublet, a high-crowned hat with a broach, a long thin beard, a truncheon, little ruffs, white shoes, his scarfs and garters tied cross, and his drum beaten before him," and is accompanied by the following members of his fine family: Miss-rule, Caroll, Minced-pie, Gamboll, Post-and-Pair (since dead), New Year's Gift, Mumming, Wassail, Offering, and Baby-Cake,—or Baby-Cocke, as we find him elsewhere called, but who we fear is dead too, unless he may have changed his name, for we still find one of the family bearing some resemblance to the description of him given by Ben Jonson.

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!

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:—

And again in No. 38:—

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:—

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.