5 IO Then let not the dark thee cumber; What though the moon does slumber, Will lend thee their light, Like tapers clear without number. Then, Julia, let me woo thee, Thus, thus to come unto me, Thy silvery feet, My soul I'll pour into thee. The song might or might not have been intended in compliment to the fair Julia, for so I found his partner was called; she, however, was certainly unconscious of any such application, for she never looked at the singer, 15 but kept her eyes cast upon the floor. Her face was suffused, it is true, with a beautiful blush, and there was a gentle heaving of the bosom, but all that was doubtless caused by the exercise of the dance; indeed, so great was her indifference, that she amused herself with 20 plucking to pieces a choice bouquet of hothouse flowers, and by the time the song was concluded the nosegay lay in ruins on the floor. The party now broke up for the night with the kindhearted old custom of shaking hands. As I passed 25 through the hall on my way to my chamber, the dying embers of the Yule clog still sent forth a dusky glow, and had it not been the season when "no spirit dares stir abroad," I should have been half tempted to steal from my room at midnight, and peep whether the fairies 30 might not be at their revels about the hearth. My chamber was in the old part of the mansion, the ponderous furniture of which might have been fabricated in the days of the giants. The room was panelled with cornices of heavy carved work, in which flowers and grotesque faces were strangely intermingled; and a row of black-looking portraits stared mournfully at me from the walls. The bed was of rich though faded damask, with a lofty tester, and stood in a niche opposite a bow window. I had scarcely got into bed when a strain of music seemed to break forth in the air just below the window. I listened, and found it proceeded from a band which I concluded to be the waits from some neighboring village. They went round the house, playing under 10 the windows. I drew aside the curtains to hear them more distinctly. The moonbeams fell through the upper part of the casement, partially lighting up the antiquated apartment. The sounds as they receded became more soft and aërial, and seemed to accord with the quiet 15 and moonlight. I listened and listened; they became more and more tender and remote, and as they gradually died away my head sunk upon the pillow and I fell asleep. CHRISTMAS DAY Dark and dull night, flie hence away, That sees December turn'd to May. * Why does the chilling winter's morne Or smell like to a meade new-shorne, Thus on the sudden? — The cause why things thus fragrant be. HERRICK. WHEN I woke the next morning, it seemed as if all the events of the preceding evening had been a dream, and nothing but the identity of the ancient chamber convinced me of their reality. While I lay musing on 5 my pillow, I heard the sound of little feet pattering outside of the door and a whispering consultation. Presently a choir of small voices chanted forth an old Christmas carol, the burden of which was: ΙΟ Rejoice, our Saviour he was born On Christmas day in the morning. I rose softly, slipt on my clothes, opened the door suddenly, and beheld one of the most beautiful little fairy groups that a painter could imagine. It consisted of a boy and two girls, the eldest not more than six, 15 and lovely as seraphs. They were going the rounds of the house, and singing at every chamber door; but my sudden appearance frightened them into mute bashfulness. They remained for a moment playing on their lips with their fingers, and now and then stealing a shy glance from under their eyebrows, until as if by one impulse they scampered away, and as they turned an angle of the gallery I heard them laughing in triumph at their escape. 5 Everything conspired to produce kind and happy feelings in this stronghold of old-fashioned hospitality. The window of my chamber looked out upon what in summer would have been a beautiful landscape. There was a sloping lawn, a fine stream winding at the foot 10 of it, and a track of park beyond with noble clumps of trees and herds of deer. At a distance was a neat hamlet with the smoke from the cottage chimneys hanging over it, and a church with its dark spire in strong relief against the clear, cold sky. The house was surrounded 15 with evergreens, according to the English custom, which would have given almost an appearance of summer, but the morning was extremely frosty; the light vapor of the preceding evening had been precipitated by the cold, and covered all the trees and every blade of grass with 20 its fine crystallizations. The rays of a bright morning sun had a dazzling effect among the glittering foliage. A robin perched upon the top of a mountain ash that hung its clusters of red berries just before my window was basking himself in the sunshine, and piping a few 25 querulous notes; and a peacock was displaying all the glories of his train, and strutting with the pride and gravity of a Spanish grandee on the terrace walk below. I had scarcely dressed myself when a servant appeared to invite me to family prayers. He showed me the way 30 to a small chapel in the old wing of the house, where I found the principal part of the family already assembled in a kind of gallery furnished with cushions, hassocks, and large prayer-books; the servants were seated on benches below. The old gentleman read prayers from a desk in front of the gallery, and Master Simon acted as clerk and made the responses; and I must do him the justice to say that he acquitted himself with great 5 gravity and decorum. The service was followed by a Christmas carol which Mr. Bracebridge himself had constructed from a poem of his favorite author, Herrick; and it had been adapted to an old church melody by Master Simon. As there 10 were several good voices among the household, the effect was extremely pleasing; but I was particularly gratified by the exaltation of heart and sudden sally of grateful feeling with which the worthy squire delivered one stanza, his eye glistening, and his voice rambling out of all the 15 bounds of time and tune : 20 'Tis thou that crown'st my glittering hearth With guiltlesse mirth, And giv'st me Wassaile bowles to drink Spiced to the brink: Lord, 'tis thy plenty-dropping hand That soiles my land: And giv'st me for my bushell sowne, Twice ten for one. I afterwards understood that early morning service 25 was read on every Sunday and saints' day throughout the year either by Mr. Bracebridge or by some member of the family. It was once almost universally the case at the seats of the nobility and gentry of England, and it is much to be regretted that the custom is falling into 30 neglect; for the dullest observer must be sensible of the order and serenity prevalent in those households where the occasional exercise of a beautiful form of worship in the morning gives, as it were, the keynote to every temper for the day, and attunes every spirit to harmony. |