affections as it gives its graces to sustain our spiritual life -whose sabbaths recruit the body while they refresh the soul-whose festivals are not only spiritual rejoicings, but potent bonds to bind together the human family in the brotherhood of love! The Divinity of Christianity, had it no other proof, would stand confessed in this—that it is the most sublime, the most perfect, the most lovely social system that the world has ever seen, wondrously adapted to cherish and develope all that is good in man's nature, to repress all that is evil, to make him the best citizen, the truest friend, the tenderest parent, and the most duteous child. I hold it, therefore, to be an obligation, equally social and religious, to maintain in all their ancient integrity the joyous observances of those festive seasons; they are stages in the great journey of human life, when man pauses for a moment from the intent and absorbing selfishness with which each is pressing onwards, to forget self and to look lovingly on his brother. And preeminent above all others is the Festival of the Nativity. The wondrous event which it commemorates influences the soul with a grateful happiness, and opens the heart to the reception of all kindly affections. I love to see it kept in all its glory. I love it for its holy charities, for its humanizing influences, for its generous cheer, its wassail-bowl, the tale, the song, and the dance. I love it for the recollections of childish delight with which it is associated; but in chief I love it for this, that it brings back to home the feet that have been wandering away from it during the year-that it unites again in one common family those who have been scattered abroad amid strange scenes and in diverse pursuits, renovating the affections that distance or time may have weakened, drawing us all together round the one holy well of love, to drink of it and strengthen our hearts, and fill them with stores of kindliness, that may sustain us when we go forth into the arid deserts of life.

There is something, to my thinking, profoundly affecting in the appearance of external nature with which Christmas is usually ushered in. Everything around is suggestive, as if by a wise arrangement, of the havoc which sin has wrought on the world. The earth-how unlike to the vernal glory of her

primal sinlessness!-lies torpid and exhausted, stripped alike of the verdure of spring, the bloom of summer, and the richness of autumn. With the shroud of snow upon her bosom, and the ice upon her heart beneath, she looks the emblem of physical death. And then it is-when the curse laid upon man is upon her too, for man's sake-that He who had walked the bowers of Paradise in the majesty of a king and the benignity of a parent, now revisits the earth, in her desolation and abasement, as a lowly feeble child; yet potent to reconquer His kingdom from the usurper, and to found a system calculated to revolutionize the world to its extremest limits.

The recollections of Christmas during my childhood are still the dearest and holiest memories of my life, and I cannot even yet recall them without mingled feelings of pleasure and pain. My eyes grow dim with tears, and my heart is stirred, when I call to mind four children, with impatient wakefulness, awaiting the dawn of morning, that they might dress and hurry down-stealing on tiptoe to the door of their parents' chamber-then artlessly singing their Christmas hymn; and, when it was ended, springing into the room with gay clamour, claiming their Christmas-boxes, and wishing a happy Christmas, and receiving the kiss and blessing. And those parents -where are they now? And we-where are we? One, the loveliest and meekest of souls, sleeps in peace, wearied of the world before it was well entered on; and the others have gone, each his different way, and now meet but rarely; for we have no father's house to reassemble us, and I often ask in thought, "Is thine heart right, as my heart is with thy heart?"

But ye, who still have that priceless blessing, a father's home, know that it is a holy temple to which all should, like the Jews of old, go up at seasons to worship. Make it the focal point to which all your hearts and feet, no matter how distant ye be, shall at seasons converge; where all your affections, like rays of light which the glass draws together, shall meet and commingle in a glow of love, intense and ardent. Let no cold philosophy sneer down for you these honoured festivities; nor let the children of a utilitarian age deem themselves wiser in their generation than their simpler sires, who

failed not to call the annual muster-roll of glad hearts and joyous faces, to see that none were wanting in their places — that none had fallen away or lagged behind in the journey of life.

CHRISTMAS DAY AT CASTLE SLINGSBY.

CHRISTMAS morning is come, and the sun shines down with a cheerful brightness upon the white fields and hard, frosty roads, and from many a kindling hearth the blue, vapory smoke rises straight up into the clear, still ether without meeting a breath of air to disturb or deflect it, reminding one of the incense of holy prayers which no earthly thoughts dissipate or distract as they mount warm from pious hearts to heaven. The heart is glad, one pauses not to think why, for it seems to be so by an instinct which anticipates any reasoning on the cause for its gladness, and the world all around wears that holiday look of peace, tranquillity, and love, so unmistakeable, yet so impossible, to describe. Christmas, too, has brought home good old Jonathan Freke to his native land, and he is now housed, to his heart's content, with the companion of his youth in the snuggest bed-chamber of Castle Slingsby. Thither, then, as the sun was half-way down his short winter day's journey, did I bend my steps from my own quiet nook of Carrigbawn, to join the festive family gathering which invariably congregates there at Christmas; and while I am on the way, I may as well give you some notion of the host with whom we are to eat our Christmas dinner, my Uncle Saul Slingsby.

If there is any zoological specimen more worthy than another of being hermetically sealed in a glass case, or corked up in a bottle of spirts of wine, it is an old bachelor without bile or bitterness-one who is at the same time fond of children and of their grandmothers-the playfellow of the young, and the counsellor of the old-who flirts with young girls, and squires old ones-who can dance, play whist, drink tea, sing

songs, or ride a fox-hunt-who is all things to all men, and everything in the world to every woman. Just such a specimen is my good uncle, Saul Slingsby-the delight of all who know him for miles round-the grand projector of pic-nics and steeple-chases—a steward at every subscription ball, and croupier at every club dinner. How Saul escaped matrimony is a marvel to every one, for he was a good-looking and a manly fellow. I think myself that he owed his safety to the immensity of his philogyny; the lover of all womankind could never afford to incarcerate his affections within the sphere of one of the sex. Had he lived in Turkey, he would have been the happy husband of a thousand wives. But he lives in Ireland, and is, therefore, a bachelor. The Slingsbys all cluster about Uncle Saul at all the great festivals, as bees about thyme flowers, or butterflies in a sunny meadow. He is the sole survivor of a multitude of younger brothers and sisters, and has a large ancient house all to himself-as large as his heart, and as ready as that heart to take every mother's son of us into its warmest corners, and cherish us with true parental love.

The sun was approaching the horizon, shining redly through the frosty air, as I stood before the ancient entrance into Uncle Saul's demesne. In the apex of a semi-circle, which swept inwards from the road, rose two high, square pillars of limestone of rusticated masonry, surmounted by antique urns of the same material; but the stone, though unbroken and carefully preserved, had lost its original colour, and looked dark and weather-stained, and the tooth of time was visible in that appearance, which architects have denominated "vermiculated." From these piers swung an enormous gate of iron, the rails of which were all arrow-headed, and between the crossbars you could see many a fantastic scroll, elaborately wrought, according to the fashion of by-gone times. At either side, the sweep of coped stonework was terminated by a pier, similar in style to those I have mentioned, beyond which stood a square, stone lodge, with a high slated roof that ran to a point in the centre, topped by a wooden ornament. I swung open one valve of the gate, and passed up the long, straight, formal avenue of beech trees till I reached the house. My approach

was not unnoticed, nor unannounced, for a multitude of dogs, of all sizes, ages, and species, broke out into a clamorous salutation, ranging through every note of the canine diapason, from the deep bay of the house-dog to the shrill, snappish challenge of the little, wiry-haired terrier. But I was a friend amongst that honest-hearted population, and the storm soon sank down to pleasant whinings and caressing gambols. And thus escorted, I mounted the flight of broad stone steps that led to the door of one of those fine old mansions which are still to be seen in the interior of the country-none of your gingerbread things, that you see at Kingstown and Dalkey, with their gables and gazaboes, and little windows stuck in all sorts of queer places in the roof, young Elizabethans, just come from nurse, with their white, shining faces, and flaring green-painted doors—but a noble, square pile of solid masonry, not ashamed to show its honest face without a mask of whitewash upon it, pierced with innumerable windows, too narrow, I admit, for more modern taste, yet large enough withal to afford a pleasant look-out for a couple of young lovers (if they cared for a look-out), and to let in sunbeams and air enough for the low-ceiled rooms within, while on the eastern flank rose the still strong shell of a square, massive castle, whose dark weather-stained sides, contrasted very picturesquely with the more modern mansion that had grown up beside it. Well, the door opened, and there stood the worthy master, with outstretched hand and smiling face, welcoming "the last of the Slingsbys," for all the others had arrived before me.

I shall not trouble you with an introduction to all the Slingsbys. First, it would be a tedious ceremony, for they are very numerous; next, it would be a profitless one, for you would only find amongst the mass of them the same characters (always bating the family peculiarities, which are developed more or less in all of them) which you see gliding noiselessly and unobtrusively through the world, taking the least thronged sides of the streets in town, and the sheltered by-ways in the country, rather than encounter the jostling, and the heat, and the dust of life's crowded thoroughfares; there is the lazy man that loves his ease, and the taciturn man, invaluable as a