ties to the poor of the metropolis and
the country districts surrounding Windsor and the other Royal Palaces
were dispensed with the customary generosity. In his "Sketch Book,"
Washington Irving, who was born in the reign of George III. (1783),
and lived on through the reigns of George IV., and William IV., and
the first two decades of the reign of Queen Victoria, gives delightful
descriptions of the

FESTIVITIES OF THE NOBILITY AND GENTRY

of the period, recalling the times when the old halls of castles and
manor houses resounded with the harp and the Christmas Carol and their
ample boards groaned under the weight of hospitality. He had travelled
a good deal on both sides of the Atlantic and he gives a picturesque
account of an old English stage coach journey "on the day preceding
Christmas." The coach was crowded with passengers. "It was also loaded
with hampers of game, and baskets and boxes of delicacies; and hares
hung dangling their long ears about the coachman's box, presents from
distant friends for the impending feast. I had three fine rosy-cheeked
schoolboys for my fellow-passengers inside, full of the buxom health
and manly spirit which I have observed in the children of this
country. They were returning home for the holidays in high glee, and
promising themselves a world of enjoyment. It was delightful to hear
the gigantic plans of the little rogues, and the impracticable feats
they were to perform during their six weeks' emancipation from the
abhorred thraldom of book, birch, and pedagogue."

Then follows Irving's graphic sketch of the English stage coachman,
and the incidents of the journey, during which it seemed "as if
everybody was in good looks and good spirits.

"Game, poultry, and other luxuries of the table, were in brisk
circulation in the villages; the grocers,' butchers,' and fruiterers'
shops were thronged with customers. The house-wives were stirring
briskly about, putting their dwellings in order; and the glossy
branches of holly, with their bright red berries, began to appear at
the windows."

* * * * *

"In the evening we reached a village where I had determined to pass
the night. As we drove into the great gateway of the inn, I saw on one
side the light of a rousing kitchen fire beaming through a window. I
entered, and admired, for the hundredth time, that picture of
convenience, neatness, and broad, honest enjoyment, the kitchen of an
English inn. It was of spacio