It is Christmas, merry Christmas, as we have been duly informed this morning by every inhabitant of Donaldson Manor, from Col. Donaldson to the pet and baby Sophy Dudley, who was taught the words but yesterday, for the occasion. Last evening our readings were interrupted, for all were busy in preparing for this important day. Miss Donaldson was superintending jellies and blanc-manges, custards and Charlottes des Russes; Col. and Mrs. Donaldson were preparing gifts for their servants, not one of whom was forgotten, and Annie and I, and, by his own special request, Mr. Arlington, were arranging in proper order the gifts of that most considerate, mirthful and generous of spirits, Santa Claus. This morning the sun rose as clear and bright as though it, too, rejoiced in the joy of humanity; but long before the sun had showed himself, little feet were pattering from room to room, and childish voices shouting in the unchecked exuberance of delight. I sometimes doubt whether the children are so happy as I am, on such occasions. One incident that occurred this morning would have been enough, in my opinion, to repay all the time, the trouble, and the gold, which Santa Claus, or his agents, had expended on their preparations. Aroused by the voices of the children, I threw on a dressing-gown and hastened to the room appropriated to their patron saint, which I entered at one door just as little Eva Dudley appeared at another. Without being in the least a beauty, Eva has the most charming face I know; merry and bright as Puck's, or as her own life, which from its earliest dawn has been joyous as a bird's carol. She gazed now with eager delight on the toys exhibited by her brothers and sisters, without, apparently, one thought of herself, till Robert said, "But see here, Eva, look at your own."

As her eyes rested on the large baby-house, with its folding-doors open to display the furniture of the parlors, and the two dolls, mother and daughter, seated at a table on which stood a neat china breakfasting set, she clasped her dimpled hands in silent ecstasy for half a minute, then rising to her utmost height on her rosy little toes, she exclaimed, "Oh, isn't I a happy little woman!"

Dear Eva! a little girl's heart would not have seemed to her large enough to contain such a rapture.

Our party has been augmented since breakfast by the arrival of several families of Donaldsons—some of whom live at too great a distance for visits at any other time than Christmas, when all who stand in any conceivable, or I was about to say inconceivable, degree of relationship to the Donaldsons of Donaldson Manor, are expected to be here. Among this host of uncles and aunts and cousins, I was really grateful for my own prefix of aunt, and I heard Mr. Arlington whisper a request to Robert to call him uncle—a title to which I have no doubt he would willingly make good his claim.

In the midst of this general hilarity, the religious character of the day was not forgotten, and all the family and some of the visitors attended the morning services in the church. We know that there are those who, doubting the testimony on which the Christian world has agreed to observe the 25th of December as the birthday into our mortal life of the world's Saviour, and the era from which man may date his hopes of a happy immortality, consider the religious observances of this day a sheer superstition. On such a controversy I could say but little, and I should be very unwilling so say that little here; but I would ask if it can be wrong in the opinion of any—nay, if it be not right, very right, in the opinion of all—to celebrate once in the year an event so solemn and so joyous to our race; and whether any day can be better for such a purpose, than that which has been for centuries associated with it wherever the Angel's song of "Peace on earth and good will to man" has been heard? Another class of objectors there are who complain that a day so sacred should be desecrated, as they express it, by revelry and mirth. To their objection I should not have a word of reply, if it were limited to a condemnation of that wild uproar and senseless jollity by which men sometimes make fools or brutes of themselves; but when they condemn the cheerfulness that has its home and its birthplace in a grateful heart, when they frown upon the happy family gathering once more within the old walls that had echoed to their childish gambols, calling up by the spells of association, from the dim recesses of the past, the very tones and looks of the mother that watched their cradled sleep, and the father that guided their first tottering steps in the pursuit of truth; tones and looks by which, if by any thing, the cold, selfish spirit of the world to whose dominion they have yielded, may be exorcised, and the loving and generous spirit of their earlier life may again enter within them; when they declare these things inconsistent with the Christian's joyful commemoration of that event to which he owes his earthly blessings as well as his heavenly hopes. I can only pity them for their want of harmony with the Great Spirit of the Universe, the spirit of Love and Joy.

Our Christmas was continued and concluded in the same spirit in which it was commenced—the spirit of kindly affection to Man and devout gratitude to Heaven. Those guests whose homes were distant remained for the night, and in the evening, before any of our party had left us, Col. Donaldson called on Robert Dudley to repeat a poem winch he had learned at his request for the occasion. Robert was a little abashed at first at being brought forward so conspicuously; but he is a manly, intelligent boy, and his voice soon gathered strength and firmness, and his eyes lost their downward tendency, and kindled with earnest feeling, as he recited those beautiful lines of Charles Sprague, entitled—

THE FAMILY MEETING.