natures which leads them to sport with awful and hallowed things; and there are base minds which delight to revenge on the illustrious dead the abject homage and grovelling servility which they pay to the living. 5 The coffin of Edward the Confessor has been broken open, and his remains despoiled of their funereal ornaments; the sceptre has been stolen from the hand of the imperious Elizabeth, and the effigy of Henry the Fifth lies headless. Not a royal monument but bears 10 some proof how false and fugitive is the homage of

mankind. Some are plundered, some mutilated, some covered with ribaldry and insult - all more or less outraged and dishonored!

The last beams of day were now faintly streaming 15 through the painted windows in the high vaults above me; the lower parts of the abbey were already wrapped in the obscurity of twilight. The chapels and aisles grew darker and darker. The effigies of the kings faded into shadows, the marble figures of the monuments assumed 20 strange shapes in the uncertain light, the evening breeze crept through the aisles like the cold breath of the grave, and even the distant footfall of a verger traversing the Poets' Corner had something strange and dreary in its sound. I slowly retraced my morning's walk, and as I 25 passed out at the portal of the cloisters, the door closing with a jarring noise behind me filled the whole building with echoes.

I endeavored to form some arrangement in my mind of the objects I had been contemplating, but found they 30 were already fallen into indistinctness and confusion.

Names, inscriptions, trophies, had all become confounded in my recollection, though I had scarcely taken my foot from off the threshold. What, thought I, is this vast assemblage of sepulchres but a treasury of humiliation;

a huge pile of reiterated homilies on the emptiness of renown and the certainty of oblivion! It is indeed the empire of death; his great shadowy palace where he sits in state mocking at the relics of human glory, and spreading dust and forgetfulness on the monuments of 5 princes. How idle a boast, after all, is the immortality of a name ! Time is ever silently turning over his pages; we are too much engrossed by the story of the present to think of the characters and anecdotes that gave interest to the past; and each age is a volume thrown aside to 10 be speedily forgotten. The idol of to-day pushes the hero of yesterday out of our recollection; and will in turn be supplanted by his successor of to-morrow. "Our fathers," says Sir Thomas Browne, "find their graves in our short memories, and sadly tell us how we may be 15 buried in our survivors." History fades into fable, fact becomes clouded with doubt and controversy, the inscription moulders from the tablet, the statue falls from the pedestal. Columns, arches, pyramids - what are they but heaps of sand? and their epitaphs, but 20 characters written in the dust? What is the security of a tomb, or the perpetuity of an embalmment? The remains of Alexander the Great have been scattered to the wind, and his empty sarcophagus is now the mere curiosity of a museum. "The Egyptian mummies, which 25 Cambyses or time hath spared, avarice now consumeth; Mizraim cures wounds, and Pharaoh is sold for balsams." 1

What then is to insure this pile which now towers above me from sharing the fate of mightier mauso- 30 leums? The time must come when its gilded vaults which now spring so loftily shall lie in rubbish beneath the feet; when instead of the sound of melody and

1 Sir T. Browne.

praise, the wind shall whistle through the broken arches and the owl hoot from the shattered tower when the garish sunbeam shall break into these gloomy mansions of death, and the ivy twine round the fallen column; 5 and the foxglove hang its blossoms about the nameless urn, as if in mockery of the dead. Thus man passes away; his name perishes from record and recollection; his history is as a tale that is told, and his very monument becomes a ruin.1

1 For notes on Westminster Abbey, see Appendix.

CHRISTMAS

But is old, old, good old Christmas gone? Nothing but the hair of his good, gray old head and beard left? Well, I will have that, seeing I cannot have more of him. HUE AND CRY AFTER CHRISTMAS.

A man might then behold

At Christmas, in each hall

Good fires to curb the cold,

And meat for great and small.

The neighbors were friendly bidden,

And all had welcome true,

The poor from the gates were not chidden

When this old cap was new.

OLD SONG.

NOTHING in England exercises a more delightful spell over my imagination than the lingerings of the holiday customs and rural games of former times. They recall the pictures my fancy used to draw in the May morning of life, when as yet I only knew the world through books, 5 and believed it to be all that poets had painted it; and they bring with them the flavor of those honest days of yore, in which, perhaps with equal fallacy, I am apt to think the world was more home-bred, social, and joyous than at present. I regret to say that they are daily 10 growing more and more faint, being gradually worn away by time, but still more obliterated by modern fashion. They resemble those picturesque morsels of Gothic architecture which we see crumbling in various parts of the country, partly dilapidated by the waste of 15 ages, and partly lost in the additions and alterations of later days. Poetry, however, clings with cherishing fondness about the rural game and holiday revel from

which it has derived so many of its themes

as the ivy winds its rich foliage about the Gothic arch and mouldering tower, gratefully repaying their support by clasping together their tottering remains, and, as it 5 were, embalming them in verdure.

Of all the old festivals, however, that of Christmas' awakens the strongest and most heartfelt associations. There is a tone of solemn and sacred feeling that blends with our conviviality, and lifts the spirit to a state of 10 hallowed and elevated enjoyment. The services of the Church about this season are extremely tender and inspiring. They dwell on the beautiful story of the origin of our faith, and the pastoral scenes that accompanied its announcement. They gradually increase in fervor and 15 pathos during the season of Advent, until they break forth in full jubilee on the morning that brought peace and good-will to men. I do not know a grander effect of music on the moral feelings than to hear the full choir and the pealing organ performing a Christmas 20 anthem in a cathedral, and filling every part of the vast pile with triumphant harmony.

It is a beautiful arrangement, also, derived from days of yore, that this festival which commemorates the announcement of the religion of peace and love 25 has been made the season for gathering together of family connections, and drawing closer again those bands of kindred hearts, which the cares and pleasures and sorrows of the world are continually operating to cast loose; of calling back the children of a family 30 who have launched forth in life and wandered widely asunder, once more to assemble about the paternal hearth, that rallying place of the affections, there to grow young and loving again among the endearing mementos of childhood.