f quiet joyousness, of peace
and good will, that pervaded the lessons of the day, the collect, the
hymns, the sermon.

It was this spiritual aspect of Christmas that Percy felt to be
hardly sufficiently regarded, or at least dwelt on, nowadays, and he
sometimes wondered whether the modern Christmas had not been in some
degree inspired and informed by Charles Dickens. He had for that
writer a very sincere admiration, though he was inclined to think that
his true excellence lay not so much in faithful portrayal of the life
of his times, or in gift of sustained narration, or in those scenes of
pathos which have moved so many hearts in so many quiet homes, as in
the power of inventing highly fantastic figures, such as Mr. Micawber
or Mr. Pickwick. This view Percy knew to be somewhat heretical, and,
constitutionally averse from the danger of being suspected of "talking
for effect," he kept it to himself; but, had anyone challenged him to
give his opinion, it was thus that he would have expressed himself.
In regard to Christmas, he could not help wishing that Charles Dickens
had laid more stress on its spiritual element. It was right that the
feast should be an occasion for good cheer, for the savoury meats, the
steaming bowl, the blazing log, the traditional games. But was not
the modern world, with its almost avowed bias towards materialism, too
little apt to think of Christmas as also a time for meditation, for
taking stock, as it were, of the things of the soul? Percy had heard
that in London nowadays there was a class of people who sate down
to their Christmas dinners in public hotels. He did not condemn this
practice. He never condemned a thing, but wondered, rather, whether
it were right, and could not help feeling that somehow it was not.
In the course of his rare visits to London he had more than once
been inside of one of the large new hotels that had sprung up--these
"great caravanseries," as he described them in a letter to an
old school-fellow who had been engaged for many years in Chinese
mission work. And it seemed to him that the true spirit of Christmas
could hardly be acclimatised in such places, but found its proper
resting-place in quiet, detached homes, where were gathered together
only those connected with one another by ties of kinship, or of long
and tested friendship.

He sometimes blamed himself for having tended more and more, as the
quiet, peaceful, tranquil years went by, to absent himself from