ristian is
less happy than the Pagan, and at times I think he is so, it arises from
the reproach of the Christian's unreached ideal, and from the stings of
his finer and more scrupulous conscience. His whole moral organisation
is finer, and he must pay the noble penalty of finer organisations.

Once again, for the purpose of taking away all solitariness of feeling,
and of connecting myself, albeit only in fancy, with the proper gladness
of the time, let me think of the comfortable family dinners now being
drawn to a close, of the good wishes uttered, and the presents made,
quite valueless in themselves, yet felt to be invaluable from the
feelings from which they spring; of the little children, by sweetmeats
lapped in Elysium; and of the pantomime, pleasantest Christmas sight of
all, with the pit a sea of grinning delight, the boxes a tier of beaming
juvenility, the galleries, piled up to the far-receding roof, a mass of
happy laughter which a clown's joke brings down in mighty avalanches. In
the pit, sober people relax themselves, and suck oranges, and quaff
ginger-pop; in the boxes, Miss, gazing through her curls, thinks the
Fairy Prince the prettiest creature she ever beheld, and Master, that to
be a clown must be the pinnacle of human happiness: while up in the
galleries the hard literal world is for an hour sponged out and
obliterated; the chimney-sweep forgets, in his delight when the policeman
comes to grief, the harsh call of his master, and Cinderella, when the
demons are foiled, and the long parted lovers meet and embrace in a
paradise of light and pink gauze, the grates that must be scrubbed
tomorrow. All bands and trappings of toil are for one hour loosened by
the hands of imaginative sympathy. What happiness a single theatre can
contain! And those of maturer years, or of more meditative temperament,
sitting at the pantomime, can extract out of the shifting scenes meanings
suitable to themselves; for the pantomime is a symbol or adumbration of
human life. Have we not all known Harlequin, who rules the roast, and
has the pretty Columbine to himself? Do we not all know that rogue of a
clown with his peculating fingers, who brazens out of every scrape, and
who conquers the world by good humour and ready wit? And have we not
seen Pantaloons not a few, whose fate it is to get all the kicks and lose
all the halfpence, to fall through all the trap doors, break their shins
over all the barrows, and be forever