Come gather here.
Let not the useless sorrow
Pursue you night and morrow,
If e'er you hoped, hope now--
Take heart, uncloud your faces,
And join in our embraces
Under the Holly-bough.

MACKAY

[Illustration: THE HOLLY CART.]

* * * * *

THE UNIVERSE.

To us who dwell on its surface, the earth is by far the most extensive
orb that our eyes can any where behold; but, to a spectator placed on
one of the planets, it looks no larger than a spot. To beings who dwell
at still greater distances, it entirely disappears. That which we call
alternately the morning and the evening star, as in the one part of the
orbit she rides foremost in the procession of night, in the other ushers
in and anticipates the dawn, is a planetary world, which, with the
five others that so wonderfully vary their mystic dance, are in
themselves dark bodies, and shine only by reflection; have fields, and
seas, and skies of their own; are furnished with all accommodations for
animal subsistence, and are supposed to be the abodes of intellectual
life. All these, together with our earthly habitation, are dependent on
the sun, receive their light from his rays, and derive their comfort
from his benign agency. The sun, which seems to us to perform its daily
stages through the sky, is, in this respect, fixed and immovable; it is
the great axle about which the globe we inhabit, and other more spacious
orbs, wheel their stated courses. The sun, though apparently smaller
than the dial it illuminates, is immensely larger than this whole earth,
on which so many lofty mountains rise, and such vast oceans roll. A line
extending from side to side through the centre of that resplendent orb,
would measure more than 800,000 miles: a girdle formed to go round its
circumference, would require a length of millions. Are we startled at
these reports of philosophers? Are we ready to cry out in a transport of
surprise, "How mighty is the Being who kindled such a prodigious fire,
and keeps alive from age to age such an enormous mass of flame!" Let us
attend our philosophic guides, and we shall be brought acquainted with
speculations more enlarged and more inflaming. The sun, with all its
attendant planets, is but a very little part of the grand machine of the
universe; every star, though in appearance no bigger than the diamond
that glitters upon a lady's ring, is really a vast globe like the s