thian and well-powdered Fife. And the
effect is not, as in other cities, a thing of half a day; the streets
are soon trodden black, but the country keeps its virgin white; and you
have only to lift your eyes and look over miles of country snow. An
indescribable cheerfulness breathes about the city; and the well-fed
heart sits lightly and beats gaily in the bosom. It is New-year's
weather.

New-year's Day, the great national festival, is a time of family
expansions and of deep carousal. Sometimes, by a sore stroke of fate for
this Calvinistic people, the year's anniversary falls upon a Sunday,
when the public-houses are inexorably closed, when singing and even
whistling is banished from our homes and highways, and the oldest toper
feels called upon to go to church. Thus pulled about, as if between two
loyalties, the Scots have to decide many nice cases of conscience, and
ride the marches narrowly between the weekly and the annual observance.
A party of convivial musicians, next door to a friend of mine, hung
suspended in this manner on the brink of their diversions. From ten
o'clock on Sunday night, my friend heard them tuning their instruments;
and as the hour of liberty drew near, each must have had his music open,
his bow in readiness across the fiddle, his foot already raised to mark
the time, and his nerves braced for execution; for hardly had the
twelfth stroke sounded from the earliest steeple, before they had
launched forth into a secular bravura.

Currant-loaf is now popular eating in all households. For weeks before
the great morning, confectioners display stacks of Scots bun--a dense,
black substance, inimical to life--and full moons of shortbread adorned
with mottoes of peel or sugar-plum, in honour of the season and the
family affections. "Frae Auld Reekie," "A guid New Year to ye a'," "For
the Auld Folk at Hame," are among the most favoured of these devices.
Can you not see the carrier, after half-a-day's journey on pinching
hill-roads, draw up before a cottage in Teviotdale, or perhaps in Manor
Glen among the rowans, and the old people receiving the parcel with
moist eyes and a prayer for Jock or Jean in the city? For at this
season, on the threshold of another year of calamity and stubborn
conflict, men feel a need to draw closer the links that unite them; they
reckon the number of their friends, like allies before a war; and the
prayers grow longer in the morning as the absent are recommended by name
i