"I love these old-world customs and ceremonies still," said the parson, "with the same fondness that I felt for them in my childish days, and I cannot help lamenting that they have all nigh passed away. We are wiser beyond our fathers, doubtless, in this age of mighty revelation of the power of man over physical nature; but are we better? Have we not lost something amidst this constant acquisition-something which we cast from us as a useless burden impeding our rapid progress, but which we may yet find we would have done well to have borne with us in our journey, even to the grave-things that kept our hearts childlike, our affections warm, our souls pure and fresh. I sometimes think that the influence of science and civilization upon our natures is not unalloyedly good. It reminds me of those beautiful pictures which men transfer to stone by encaustic colours. Every rich flower, and bright sunshine, and every lovely landscape which we admire, have burned away the surface that receives them. Ah! May it not be, that the accomplishments, and the illumination, and the knowledge which this wonderful age has brought us, has seared our hearts and cauterized our feelings, and destroyed the smoothness and the tenderness of both in the very process of acquiring them ?"

"By no means, my dear Parson; by no means,” cried my godfather. "Elevate the soul and enlarge the mind, and, take my word for it, the heart will participate in the improvement. There is nothing like the go-a-head system of the day. Telegraphs that will start with the lightning, run round it in the race, and be in first at the winning-post-tubes and tunnels that leap across straits of the ocean or burrow under mighty rivers-telescopes that poke their noses, or their eyes, into the parlours of the men in the moon, and show us what they have for dinner, and air-ships that will shortly take us to dine with them! That's what I call getting up the steam of human nature, and making the old lass go along at a slapping pace. Aint it?” "Bravo! Freke," said Uncle Saul.

"Bravo!" cried I; "all sober prose and no poetry."
"Bravissimo!" shouted half a dozen applauding voices.
The parson smiled blandly but somewhat sadly, shook his

head, and was silent. My godfather had evidently routed his forces and made sad havoc of his old fashioned philosophy; but one might see the old man clung to his own notions still.

"Well," said he at length. "Be it so. Knowledge is the birthright of man since first he purchased it with the sacrifice of his obedience, and he will go on for ever plucking more and more fruit from the tree. Happy, if the food which he feeds upon so eagerly does not yet vitiate his palate. Yet may it not be allowed an old man like me to say a word in favour of those dear old customs which were the best promoters of the domestic charities of life-those charities which sanctify our hearths, and at seasons like the present especially solicit us to cherish them. They come to us, as the angels came to Abraham when he sat in the tent door. Ah! let us, like him, 'run to meet them,' and constrain them that they pass not away; let us honour them and entertain them with the best cheer that we have, that so they may bring to us and to our household, love, and joy, and peace.."

THOUGHTS ON THE OLD YEAR.

CHRISTMAS is gone! Gone is the glory of plum-pudding; and mince-pies maintain but a precarious and tolerated existence. Garlands have come down, and the wassail-bowl is gone down, -the way all good bowls ought to go; while the holly and the ivy are turning crisp, and curl up into wry shapes. Christmas is gone but the fond hearts that this sacred season has brought together part not thus soon again. Ah, no! they have not for this left their distant homes, disentangled themselves from their world-born cares, and come clustering once more around the hallowed hearths of childhood, that they may rush back into the bustle and coil of life, and seal up again the sweet springs of affection that welled forth from their hearts, touched by the wand of Love, as the living streams gushed from the rock at Meribah, beneath the rod of the law-giver of

Israel. In the remote regions of the country, the spirit of primitive hospitality is, thank heaven! too potent for such a rapid disruption of the social union; and the friends who assemble at Christmas are sure to see the waning year to an end in each other's company, and let the new year dawn upon and sanctify their friendship. Well, then, you may be sure Uncle Saul's mansion is thronged: every chamber has its inhabitant, as every cell in a hive has its particular bee. Each one, during the day, does as he likes, or, if he likes, does nothing at all. There is a greyhound for the hills, if you love coursing; or a rod for the streams, if you are an angler or a day-dreamer. Old Jonathan Freke will join yon in a cigar, or rather half-adozen of them, and talk transatlantic politics. My uncle will stroll with you through the now leafless woodlands. Will you read? There is a book in the study; but be sure you replace it when you are done. Naomi will sing for you in the drawing-room, Abigail will canter with you on the sward, and all the girls, God bless them! will talk with you by the hour, anywhere and everywhere! Thus, by day each is master of his own time, and may form such combinations as his fancy dictates; but in the evening, when the chairs are drawn nearer around the fire, and the log burns its brightest, then we are all common property, and each contributes his share to the general stock of pleasure and good humour. Such is the way in which we spend our Christmas holidays in the country.

And who, pray, are Naomi and Abigail?

Oh, they are daughters of my deceased uncle, Sampson, and they have just returned from town, where their education has received the last finish which young ladies are thought capable of acquiring. They draw and execute all sorts of useless and ornamental needlework. They dance all sorts of modern dances, the revolving waltz, the hopping deux temps, the ambling polka, and the impetuous galop. They are musicians in every sense of the word, from their sweet ripe lips jusques au bout des doigts,—that is, they will give you all manner of charming airs, and give themselves almost as many at the same time, whether they be delighting you with vocal or instrumental performance. And yet the city has not quite spoiled them. Its air has not

altogether blenched the roses on their cheeks, nor its affectations destroyed the simplicity of their hearts. So that Naomi has not lost all her romance, nor Abigail learned to restrain entirely all her native vivacity. There is now our friend George Herbert, for instance, who will have it that Naomi is just what she ought to be,-neither too much of a city belle or a country maiden. Well, may be he is right. George has himself been travelling through all parts of the Continent east of Calais, and has acquired Gallic and Germanesque tastes,— wears a red casquette, with a long black tassel, on his head, two thick rings on the middle finger of his left hand, and a moustache on his upper lip,-and he has paid his first visit, on his return to his own country, to his father's old friend, Uncle Saul.

Last evening, we were all circling the old-fashioned fireplace in the drawing-room. The conversation paused for a moment, and somehow a feeling of momentary sadness seemed to creep in amongst us. I know not to what I should attribute this, unless to the announcement which my friend Herbert and myself had just made, that we should leave "the Castle" next day. A gentle sigh from a young lady that shall be nameless, responded to by an expiration from Herbert, which he adroitly strangled by a cough, tended not a little to confirm my suspicions.

"Well," said Uncle Saul, at last, "if you must go, there is no help for it; but you will be back soon. We shall meet by New Year's Day, at farthest."

"Most assuredly," said I. "Eh, Herbert?"

My friend assented emphatically. A deep, long sigh attracted general attention to the pastor; he was slowly coiling his heavy watch-chain with the left hand round the fore-finger of the right one. We all knew the old man's habits, and were aware he was ruminating, and would shortly "come out with a homily," as Saul phrases it, and so we at once assumed the attitude of reverent attention.

"We shall meet by New Year's Day at farthest," said the old man, repeating the words, half in musing, and half in observation to those around him. "How in all ages, many, have so spoken upon whom no New Year's morn ever dawned

again! How many who have begun the year in joy and health and hope, who have assured their hearts that it shall be as those that went before it, and even more abundant,' have found it a treasury of sorrows and trials—its sunshine overcast with cloud and tempest—its flowers of hope withered and dead -its fairest promises the forerunners of life's heaviest dispensations! Yes, let us pause a little, and think upon the year that is now passing away, ere we rejoice in the prospect of that which is so nigh at hand. Look in upon the homes of your dearest friends now, and count the chairs that were drawn around that most blessed sanctuary of sweet affections,-the evening fireside,-on last New Year's Day. Are any of them now untenanted-standing lonely against the wall? Father! is thy honoured form absent? Mother! does thy sweet face of love beam still upon us? Children! are ye all—all there, smiling and prattling, and shedding light upon our hearts, like star-beams in a serene midnight? Alas! alas! it may not be— some one is gone-and we moisten even our festive bread with tears as we think upon the departed. At whose threshold has not Azrael stood within these short twelve months? whose house has he not entered? Many a one, erect in strength and high in hope when the year was young, is now bowed down in sickness and shattered in his fortunes, whose light of life flickers and burns lower hourly, and will scarce struggle through the few days of this old year that still remain. And then, too, what opportunities have been lost, what blessings unvalued, what monitions unheeded, what lessons of God's own teaching unread! Ah, let us think of all this when we welcome in the new year, and our gratulations shall be tempered with a profound sense of the responsibilities which this recurring cycle of time brings with it."

"You speak truly, my dear old friend," said Saul. "It should be in no spirit of unreflecting gaiety that we should see the old year out, or of heedless festivity that we should usher the new year in but still it is permitted us to look forward to it with joy as one period more added to that gift of long life which the instincts of our own being, as well as the Word of our Creator, assures us is a blessing."