. Many of the games and
ceremonials of Christmas have entirely disappeared, and, like the
sherris sack of old Falstaff, are become matters of speculation and
dispute among commentators. They flourished in times full of spirit and
lustihood, when men enjoyed life roughly, but heartily and vigorously;
times wild and picturesque, which have furnished poetry with its richest
materials, and the drama with its most attractive variety of characters
and manners. The world has become more worldly. There is more of
dissipation, and less of enjoyment. Pleasure has expanded into a
broader, but a shallower stream, and has forsaken many of those deep and
quiet channels where it flowed sweetly through the calm bosom of
domestic life. Society has acquired a more enlightened and elegant tone;
but it has lost many of its strong local peculiarities, its home-bred
feelings, its honest fireside delights. The traditionary customs of
golden-hearted antiquity, its feudal hospitalities, and lordly
wassailings, have passed away with the baronial castles and stately
manor-houses in which they were celebrated. They comported with the
shadowy hall, the great oaken gallery, and the tapestried parlour, but
are unfitted to the light showy saloons and gay drawing-rooms of the
modern villa.

[Illustration]

Shorn, however, as it is, of its ancient and festive honours, Christmas
is still a period of delightful excitement in England. It is gratifying
to see that home-feeling completely aroused which seems to hold so
powerful a place in every English bosom. The preparations making on
every side for the social board that is again to unite friends and
kindred; the presents of good cheer passing and repassing, those tokens
of regard, and quickeners of kind feelings; the evergreens distributed
about houses and churches, emblems of peace and gladness; all these have
the most pleasing effect in producing fond associations, and kindling
benevolent sympathies. Even the sound of the waits, rude as may be their
minstrelsy, breaks upon the mid-watches of a winter night with the
effect of perfect harmony. As I have been awakened by them in that still
and solemn hour, "when deep sleep falleth upon man," I have listened
with a hushed delight, and connecting them with the sacred and joyous
occasion, have almost fancied them into another celestial choir,
announcing peace and good-will to mankind.

[Illustration]

How delightfully the imagination, when wrought upon by