dusty prison, and met in the paradise of love ;—you seem sad, Sir Count?

R. MOOR. The words of love make

my love also living.

AMEL. (pale.) What! you love another? Woe me, what have

I said?

R. MOOR. She believed me dead, and remained true to the dead; she heard again that I lived, and sacrificed for me the crown of an anointed. She knew that I wandered in the desert, and in misery-and her love followed me through the desert and misery. She was called Amelia, too, like thee, gracious lady. AMEL. How I envy thy Amelia!

R. MOOR. Oh, she is an unhappy maiden; her love is for one who is lost, and will-never be rewarded.

AMEL. No, it will be rewarded in heaven: say they not there is a better world, where the mourners rejoice, and the loving meet again?

R. MOOR. Yes, a world where the veil drops, and love finds itself again in horror-Eternity is its name!-my Amelia is an unhappy maiden.

AMEL. Unhappy, and love thee?

R. MOOR. Unhappy because she loves me! how, if I were a murderer? how, my lady? if thy beloved could count thee a murder for each kiss? woe to my Amelia! she is an unhappy maiden.

AMEL. (joyfully.) Ha! how happy a maiden am I. My onlyone is the reflection of the Godhead, and the Godhead is grace and mercy ! He would not see a fly suffer: his soul is as far from a thought of blood, as the south is from the north.

R. MOOR, (turns round quickly.)
AMEL. (plays on the lute and sings.)

Oh, Hector! wilt thou ever from me go
To where the murdering iron biddeth flow
Its purple sacrifice of blood?

Oh! who will then thy little children show
With manly, warlike skill the spear to throw,
When thou art sailing on the Xanthus flood?

R. MOOR, (takes the lute and plays.)

My dearest wife! go fetch the deadly lance,

And let me forth to the wild warlike dance.

(He throws the lute away, and rushes from the place.)
(To be continued.)

"SIR TOBY. Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, that there shall be no more cakes and ale ?

"CLOWN. Aye, by St. Anne, and ginger shall be hot i' the mouth too."

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SHAKSPERE.

'Heap on more wood-the wind is chill

But, let it whistle as it will,

We'll keep our Christmas merry still."

MARMION.

CHRISTMAS! old Christmas! What word is there in our language so potent to call up happy visions-visions of the past, of the present, of the future; visions of days long gone—now lost to us for ever - yet so intimately blended with the present that they are recalled by us at every turn; visions of bright hours to come, which are yet unborn in the womb of Time. How the heart warms as it remembers the merry meetings-the songs-the smiles the dances-that, in hours of our youth, welcomed old Christmas as a friend to our homes! What scenes in the olden times of merry England; what dreams of our fireside in years to come; what thoughts of this festive season in times yet distant, when we, who now taste the good cheer with our kindred, shall be "at supper, not where we eat, but where we are eaten," furnishing, perhaps, a Christmas meal to "a certain company of politic worms," are conjured up by this simple word.

Oh! how imagination loves to picture the reception of ChristWhat a mas by our ancestors in their old baronial castles! subject for a painter would be the fine old halls, decked with the sacred misletoe (so worshipped by their foregoers) and holly; with their tables of oak, crowned with honest English fare, and tankards of the "old October, brown and bright,” emptied almost as soon as filled, by the portly originals of our poet's Falstaff— the lord and the vassal, the lady and the serf, all met to celebrate the happy festival,—with the old yeomen, "in fair round bellies with good capon lined," trowling the carol, and draining the flagon in honour of the season that, to the peasant as the prince, brought the joyful tidings of salvation. How beautiful does Sir Walter Scott describe the welcoming of Christmas by our fathers!

"And well our Christian sires of old

Loved when the year its course had rolled,
And brought blithe Christmas back again,
With all his hospitable train.

Domestic and religious rite

Gave honour to the holy night;

On Christmas eve the bells were rung;
On Christmas eve the mass was sung;
That only night, in all the year,
Saw the stoled priest the chalice rear—
The damsel donned her kirtle sheen;
The hall was dressed with holly green;
Forth to the wood did merry men go,
To gather in the misletoe.
Then opened wide the Baron's hall,
To vassal, tenant, serf, and all;
Power laid his rod of rule aside,

And Ceremony doffed his pride.
The heir, with roses in his shoes,

That night might village partner choose;

The lord, underogating, share

The vulgar game of "post and pair:"
All hailed, with uncontrolled delight,
And general voice, the happy night
That, to the cottage as the crown,
Brought tidings of salvation down."

MARMION, Introd. to cant. 6.

But, although these good old times are gone, Christmas still brings its scenes of happiness. It is at this season that friends long separated meet with happy hearts around the cheerful

hearth; grandsires and their grandchildren, parents and children, brothers and sisters, the loving and the loved at this time assemble together; and oh! if the stern face of Winter ever smile, it must be upon scenes like this. Who cannot see " in his mind's eye" the grandfather smiling, even in his age of "second childishness and 1-mere oblivion,” as he looks upon the little ones that climb his knee for their Christmas kiss-the father wondering as he counts the years that have passed since he entered Hymen's net-the mother with her infant in her arms—the children playing round the hearth in all the unconsciousness of that happy age-and all delighting in each other's society? While there are in the world scenes like this, we need not envy the Christmasses of our forefathers.

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But there are, alas! some whose Christmas passes far differently; some who know not these merry meetings, but who, solitary as they are, spend Christmas alone by their desolate firesides, with poverty and misery for their only companions; no happy circle opens to receive them; no festive hearth invites them to partake of the universal joy; no groaning board bids them eat, drink, and be merry;" no voices of kindness and love utter sweet prayers for the happiness of their Christmas-the mirth of their new year. The bells, that ring in the season of plenty and merriment, wake them only to beggary and despair, mocking their agony with unseasonable joy. They hear of others going home to their friends—they have no friends, for poverty has left them none-they have no home,

"For, without hearts, there is no home."

They go forth in their friendlessness; they wander to and fro in the streets, but they hear on all sides the greetings of the season, and they turn, sick at heart, to their own solitary dens, and feel (how keenly, God alone knows!)

"The solitude of passing their own door
Without a welcome."

Sometimes, even in the midst of the happy circle, there may be a sorrow-the deeper because concealed. One seat that was last year filled may be vacant now; perhaps the loved of all-the good, the beautiful, the gentle-may be missing from the accustomed place. Perhaps the father, whose grey hairs lent so beautiful a moral to the last year's festival, may have gone down to "the house

appointed for all living," to sleep with his fathers the sleep that knows no waking.

Is there nothing to be learnt from this? The Egyptians placed a skeleton in the midst of their feasts, to teach the revellers that, bask as they might in the sunny hours of pleasure, "to that favour must they come at last;"-a wise and salutary lesson, Yes, there is a lesson to be learned from it. If, spite of all things, Death must come to all of us at last, and, since we know not how soon it may come to us, how careful should we be to contribute, as much as we are able, to the happiness of those with whom Death will one day lay us equal. Then, as we gather round the Christmas hearth, we shall feel the satisfaction of having made others happy; and thus draw down on us, from all sides, the wish which we express for all kind readers—the wish of a merry Christmas, and a happy new year.

C. H. H.

ECHO.

DAUGHTER of Tellus, lover of Narcissus,
Thou whose chaste beauty, by love unrequited,
Withered away, like the last flower of Autumn,
Nipped by stern Winter!

Echo! sweet Echo! thou false one, yet faithful-
Faithful to passion, which made thee its victim;
False to the secrets which fond lovers utter
Wildly at midnight!

Why, from the cavern, the rock, and the mountain,
Tell'st thou the tales which to thee are confided,
Mocking the fervour of lovers forgetful,

Warm vows repeating?

Voice of the Unseen, I would not have thee silent;
I love the responses thou fling'st o'er the valleys!—
Here, as a tribute, lily-bells I'll scatter,

Torn from Narcissus !

He who neglected thy young heart's affections
For his own beauty's bright shadow in the fountain,

He now shall lavish the sweets of his bosom

Freely before thee!

ARUNDEL CECIL.