THE SNOWBALL BICKER OF PEDMOUNT.

"Oh! little think the gay licentious proud!"

What a nest of ninnies must people in general be in Mr Wordsworth's eyes! And is "The Excursion" not to be placed by the side of "Paradise Lost," till the Millennium?

Such is thereasoning (!)of one of the first of our English poets, against not only the people of Britain, but mankind. One other sentence there is which we had forgotten—but now remember—which is to help us to distinguish, in the case of the reception "The Seasons" met with, between "wonder and legitimate admiration!" "The subject of the work is the changes produced in the appearances of nature by the revolution of the year;and, undertaking to write in verse, Thomson pledged himself to treat his subject as became a poet!" How original and profound! Thomson redeemed his pledge; and that great pawnbroker, the public, returned to him his poem at the end of a year and a day. Now, what is the "mighty stream of tendency" of that remark? Were the public, or the people, or the world, gulled by this unheard-of pledge of Thomson, to regard his work with that "wonder which is the natural product of ignorance!" If they were so in his case, why not in every other? All poets pledge themselves to be poetical, but too many of them are wretchedly prosaic—die and are buried, or what is worse, protract a miserable existence, in spite of their sentimental commonplaces, false ornaments, and a vicious style. But Thomson, in spite of all these, leapt at once into a glorious life, and a still more glorious immortality.

There is no mystery in the matter. Thomson—a great poet—poured his genius over a subject of universal interest; and "The Seasons" from that hour to this—then, now, and for ever—have been, are, and will be loved, and admired by all the world. All over Scotland "The Seasons" is a household book. Let the taste and feeling shown by the Collectors of Elegant Extracts be poor as possible; yet Thomson's countrymen, high and low, rich and poor, have all along not only gloried in his illustrious fame, but have made a very manual of his great work. It lies in many thousand cottages. We have ourselves seen it in the shepherd's shieling, and in the woodsman's bower—small, yellow-leaved, tatter'd, mean, miserable, calf-skin-bound, smoked,stinkingcopies—let us not fear to utter the word, ugly but true—yet perused, pored, and pondered over by those humble dwellers, by the winteringle or on the summer brae, perhaps with as enlightened—certainly with as imagination-overmastering a delight as ever enchained the spirits of the high-born and highly-taught to their splendid copies lying on richly-carved tables, and bound in crimson silk or velvet, in which the genius of painting strives to embody that of poetry, and the printer's art to lend its beauty to the very shape of the words in which the bard's immortal spirit is enshrined. "The art of seeing" has flourished for many centuries in Scotland. Men, women, and children, all look up to her loveful blue or wrathful black skies, with a weather-wisdom that keeps growing from the cradle to the grave. Say not that 'tis alone

"The poor Indian, whose untutor'd mindSees God in clouds, and hears Him in the wind!"

In Scriptural language, loftier even than that, the same imagery is applied to the sights seen by the true believer. Who is it "that maketh the clouds His chariot?" The Scottish peasantry—Highland and Lowland—look much and often on nature thus; and they live in the heart of the knowledge and of the religion of nature. Therefore do they love Thomson as an inspired bard—only a little lower than the Prophets. In like manner have the people of Scotland—from time immemorial—enjoyed the use of their ears. Even persons somewhat hard of hearing, are not deaf to her waterfalls. In the sublime invocation to Winter, which we have quoted—we hear Thomson recording his own worship of nature in his boyish days, when he roamed among the hills of his father's parish, far away from the manse. In those strange and stormy delights did not thousands of thousands of the Scottish boyhood familiarly live among the mists and snows? Of all that number he alone had the genius to "here eternise on earth" his joy—but many millions have had souls to join religiously in the hymns he chanted. Yea, his native land, with one mighty voice, has for upwards of a century responded,

"These, as they change, Almighty Father, theseAre but the varied God!"

Beautiful as Snow yet is to our eyes, even through our spectacles, how grey it looks beside that which used to come with the long winters that glorified the earth in our youth, till the white lustre was more delightful even than the green—and we prayed that the fine fleecy flakes might never cease falling waveringly from the veil of the sky! No sooner comes the winter now, than it is away again to one of the Poles. Then, it was a year in itself—a whole life. We remember slides a quarter of a mile long, on level meadows; and some not less steep, down the sides of hills that to us were mountains. No boy can slide on one leg now—not a single shoe seems to have sparables. The florid style of skating shows that that fine art is degenerating; and we look in vain for the grand simplicity of the masters that spread-eagled in the age of its perfection. A change has come over the spirit of the curler's dream. They seem to our ears indeed to have "quat their roaring play." The cry of "swoop-swoop" is heard still—but a faint, feeble, and unimpassioned cry, compared with that which used, on the Mearns Brother-Loch, to make the welkin ring, and for a moment to startle the moon and stars—those in the sky, as well as those below the ice—till again the tumult subsided—and all the host of heaven above and beneath became serene as a world of dreams. Is it not even so, Shepherd? What is a rink now on a pond in Duddingston policy, to the rinks that rang and roared of old on the Loch o' the Lowes, when every stone circled in a halo of spray, seemed instinct with spirit to obey, along all its flight, the voice of him that launched it on its unerring aim, and sometimes, in spite of his awkward skillessness, when the fate of the game hung on his own single crank, went cannonading through all obstacles, tillit fell asleep, like a beauty as it was, just as it kissed the Tee!

Again we see—again we sit in the Snow-house, built by us boys out of a drift in the minister's glebe, a drift—judging by the steeple, which was sixty—about twenty feet high—and purer than any marble. The roof was all strewed with diamonds, which frost saved from the sun. The porch of the palace was pillared—and the character of the building outside was, without any servile imitation—for we worked in the glow of original genius, and none of us had then ever seen itself or its picture—wonderfully like the Parthenon. Entering, you found yourself in a superb hall, lighted up—not with gas, for up to that era gas had not been used except in Pandemonium—but with a vast multitude of farthing candles, each in a turnip stuck into the wall—while a chandelier of frozen snow-branches pendent from the roof set that presence-chamber in a blaze. On a throne at the upper end sat young Christopher North—then the king of boys, as now of men—and proud were his subjects to do him homage. In niches all around the sidewalls were couches covered with hare, rabbit, foumart, and fox's skins—furnished by these animals slain by us in the woods and among the rocks of that sylvan and moorland parish—the regal Torus alone being spread with the dun-deer's hide from Lochiel Forest in Lochaber. Then old airs were sung—in sweet single voice—or in full chorus that startled the wandering night traveller on his way to the lone Kings-well; and then in the intermediate hush, old tales were told "of goblin, ghost, or fairy," or of Wallace Wight at the Barns of Ayr or the Brig o' Stirling—or, a glorious outlaw, harbouring in caves among the Cartlane Craigs—or of Robert Bruce the Deliverer, on his shelty cleaving in twain the skull of Bohun the English knight, on his thundering war-steed, armed cap-à-pie, while the King of Scotland had nothing on his unconquered head but his plain golden crown. Tales of the Snow-house! Had we but the genius to recall you to life in undying song!

Nor was our frozen hall at times uncheered by the smiles of beauty. With those smiles was heard the harmless love-whisper, and the harmless kiss of love; for the cottages poured forth their little lasses in flower-like bands, nor did their parents fear to trust them in the fairy frozen palace, whereChristopher was king. Sometimes the old people themselves came to see the wonders of the lamp, and on a snow-table stood a huge bowl—not of snow—steaming with nectar that made Hyems smile as he hung his beard over the fragrant vapour. Nay, the minister himself—with his mother and sister—was with us in our fantastic festivities, and gave to the architecture of our palace his wondering praise. Then Andrew Lyndsey, the blind Paisley musician, a Latin scholar, who knew where Cremona stood, struck up on his famous fiddle jig or strathspey—and the swept floor, in a moment, was alive with a confused flight of foursome reels, each begun and ended with kisses, and maddened by many a whoop and yell—so like savages were we in our glee, dancing at the marriage of some island king!

Countless years have fled since that Snow-palace melted away—and of all who danced there, how many are now alive! Pshaw! as many probably as then danced anywhere else. It would never do to live for ever—let us then live well and wisely; and when death comes—from that sleep how blessed to awake! in a region where is no frost—no snow—but the sun of eternal life.

Mercy on us! what a hubbub!—Can the harriers be hunting in such a snowfall as this, and is poor pussy in view before the whole murderous pack, opening in full cry on her haunches? Why—Imagination, thou art an ass, and thy long ears at all times greedy of deception! 'Tis but a country Schoolhouse pouring forth its long-imprisoned stream of life as in a sudden sunny thaw, the Mad Master flying in the van of his helter-skelter scholars, and the whole yelling mass precipitated, many of them headlong, among the snow. Well do we know the fire-eyed Poet pedagogue, who, more outrageous than Apollo, has "ravished all the Nine." Ode, elegy, epic, tragedy, or farce—all come alike to him; and of all the bards we have ever known—and the sum total cannot be under a thousand—he alone, judging from the cock and the squint of his eye, labours under the blessing or the curse—we wot not whilk it be—of perpetual inspiration. A rare eye, too, is his at the setting of a springe for woodcocks, or tracking a maukin on the snow. Not a daredevil in the school that durst follow the indentations of his toes and fingers up the wall of the old castle, to the holes just below the battlements, to thrust his arm up tothe elbows harrying the starlings' nests. The corbies ken the shape of his shoulders, as craftily he threads the wood; and let them build their domicile as high as the swinging twigs will bear its weight, agile as squirrel, and as foumart ferocious, up speels, by the height undizzied, the dreadless Dominie; and should there be fledged or puddock-haired young ones among the wool, whirling with guttural cawings down a hundred feet descent, on the hard rooty ground floor from which springs pine, oak, or ash, driven out is the life, with a squelsh and a squash, from the worthless carrion. At swimming we should not boggle to back him for the trifle of a cool hundred against the best survivor among those water-serpents, Mr Turner, Dr Bedale, Lieutenant Ekenhead, Lord Byron, Leander, and Ourselves—while, with the steel shiners on his soles, into what a set of ninnies in their ring would he not reduce the Edinburgh Skating Club?

Saw ye ever a Snowball Bicker? Never! Then look there with all the eyes in your head—only beware of a bash on the bridge of your nose, a bash that shall dye the snow with your virgin blood. The Poet-pedagogue,aliasthe Mad Dominie, with Bob Howie as his Second in Command, has chosen the Six stoutest striplings for his troop, and, at the head of that Sacred Band, offers battle to Us at the head of the whole School. Nor does that formidable force decline the combat. War levels all foolish distinctions of scholarship. Booby is Dux now, and Dux Booby—and the obscure dunce is changed into an illustrious hero.

"The combat deepens—on, ye brave,Who rush to glory or the grave!Wave, Nitton, all thy banners wave,And charge with all thy schoolery!"

Down from the mount on which it had been drawn up in battle array, in solid square comes the School army, with shouts that might waken the dead, and inspire with the breath of life the nostrils of the great Snow-giant built up at the end of yonder avenue, and indurated by last night's frost. But there lies a fresh fall—and a better day for a bicker never rose flakily from the yellow East. Far out of distance, and prodigal of powder lying three feet deep on the flats, and heaped up in drifts to tree and chimney-top, the tirailleurs,flung out in front, commence the conflict by a shower of balls that, from the bosom of the yet untrodden snow between the two battles, makes spin like spray the shining surface. Then falling back on the main body, they find their places in the front rank, and the whole mottled mass, grey, blue, and scarlet, moves onwards o'er the whiteness, a moment ere they close,

"Calm as the breeze, but dreadful as the storm!"

"Let fly," cries a clear voice—and the snowball storm hurtles through the sky. Just then the valley-mouth blew sleety in the faces of the foe—their eyes, as if darkened with snuff or salt, blinked bat-like—and with erring aim flew their feckless return to that shower of frosty fire. Incessant is the silent cannonade of the resistless School—silent but when shouts proclaim the fall or flight of some doughty champion in the adverse legion.

See—see—the Sacred Band are broken! The cravens take ignominiously to flight—and the Mad Dominie and Bob Howie alone are left to bear the brunt of battle. A dreadful brotherhood! But the bashing balls are showered upon them right and left from scores of catapultic arms—and the day is going sore against them, though they fight less like men than devils. Hurra! the Dominie's down, and Bob staggers. "Guards, up and at them!" "A simultaneous charge of cocks, hens, and earocks!" No sooner said than done. Bob Howie is buried—and the whole School is trampling on its Master!

"Oh, for a blast of that dread horn,On Fontarabian echoes borne,That to King Charles did come,When Rowland brave and Olivier,And every paladin and peer,On Roncesvalles died!"

The smothered ban of Bob, and the stifled denunciations of the Dominie, have echoed o'er the hill, and,

"Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell,"

the runaways, shaking the snows of panic from their pows,

"Like dewdrops from the lion's mane,"

come rushing to the rescue. Two of the Six tremble and turn. The high heroic scorn of their former selves urges four to renew the charge, and the sound of their feet on the snow is like that of an earthquake. What bashes on bloody noses! What bungings-up of eyes! Of lips what slittings! Red is many a spittle! And as the coughing urchin groans, and claps his hand to his mouth, distained is the snowball that drops unlaunched at his feet. The School are broken—their hearts die within them—and—can we trust our blasted eyes?—the white livers show the white feather, and fly! O shame! O sorrow! O sin! they turn their backs and fly! Disgraced are the mothers that bore them—and "happy in my mind," wives and widows, "were ye that died," undoomed to hear the tidings of this wretched overthrow! Heavens and earth! sixty are flying before Six!—and half of sixty—oh! that we should record it!—are pretending to be dead!!Would indeed that the snow were their winding-sheet, so that it might but hide our dishonour!

Look, we beseech you, at the Mad Dominie! like Hector issuing from the gates of Troy, and driving back the Greeks to their ships; or rather—hear, spirit of Homer!—like some great, shaggy, outlandish wolf-dog, that hath swum ashore from some strange wreck, and, after a fortnight's famine on the bare sea-cliffs, been driven by the hunger that gnaws his stomach like a cancer, and the thirst-fever that can only be slaked in blood, to venture prowling for prey up the vale, till, snuffing the scent of a flock of sheep, after some grim tiger-like creeping on his belly, he springs at last, with huge long spangs, on the woolly people, with bull-like growlings quailing their poor harmless hearts, and then fast throttling them, one after another—till, as it might seem rather in wantonness of rage than in empty pangs, he lies down at last in the midst of all the murdered carcasses, licking the blood off his flews and paws—and then, looking and listening round with his red turbid eyes, and sharp-pointed ears savagely erect, conscious of crime and fearful of punishment, soon as he sees and hears that all the coast is clear and still, again gloatingly fastens his tusks behind the ears, and then eats into the kidneys of the fattest of the flock, till, sated with gore and tallow, he sneaks stealthily into the wood, and coiling himself up all his wiry length—now no longer lank, but swollen and knottedlike that of a deer-devouring snake—he falls suddenly asleep, and re-banquets in a dream of murder.

That simile was conceived in the spirit of Dan Homer, but delivered in that of Kit North. No matter. Like two such wolf-dogs are now Bob Howie and the Mad Dominie—and the School like such silly sheep. Those other hell-dogs are leaping in the rear—and to the eyes of fear and flight each one of the Six seems more many-headed than Cerberus, while their mouths kindle the frosty air into fire, and thunder-bolts pursue the pell-mell of the panic.

Such and so imaginative is not only mental but corporeal fear. What though it be but a Snowball bicker! The air is darkened—no, brightened by the balls, as in many a curve they describe their airy flight—some hard as stones—some soft as slush—some blae and drippy in the cold-hot hand that launches them on the flying foe, and these are the teazers—some almost transparent in the cerulean sky, and broken ere they reach their aim, abortive "armamentaria cœli"—and some useless from the first, and felt, as they leave the palm, to be fozier than the foziest turnip, and unfit to bash a fly.

Far and wide, over hill, bank, and brae, are spread the flying School! Squads of us, at sore sixes and sevens, are making for the frozen woods. Alas! poor covert now in their naked leaflessness for the stricken deer! Twos and threes in miserable plight floundering in drift-wreaths! And here and there—woefullest sight of all—single boys distractedly ettling at the sanctuaries of distant houses—with their heads all the while insanely twisted back over their shoulders, and the glare of their eyes fixed frightfully on the swift-footed Mad Dominie, till souse over neck and ears, bubble and squeak, precipitated into traitorous pitfall, and in a moment evanished from this upper world!

Disturbed crows fly away a short distance and alight silent,—the magpies chatter pert even in alarm,—the lean kine, collected on the lown sides of braes, wonder at the rippet—their horns moving, but not their tails,—while the tempest-tamed bull—almost dull now as an ox—gives a short sullen growl as he feebly paws the snow.

But who is he—the tall slender boy—slender, but sinewy—a wiry chap—five feet eight on his stocking-soles—and on his stocking-soles he stands—for the snow has sucked hisshoes from his feet—that plants himself like an oak sapling, rooted ankle-deep on a knoll, and there, a juvenile Jupiter Stator, with voice and arm arrests the Flight, and fiercely gesticulating vengeance on the insolent foe, recalls and rallies the shattered School, that he may re-lead them to victory? The phantom of a visionary dream!Kit North Himself—

"In life's morning march when his spirit was young."

And once on a day was that figure—ours! Then like a chamois-hunter of the Alps! Now, alas! like—

"But be hush'd, my dark spirit—for wisdom condemns,When the faint and the feeble deplore;Be strong as a rock of the ocean that stemsA thousand wild waves on the shore.Through the perils of chance and the scowl of disdain,Let thy front be unalter'd, thy courage elate;Yea! even the name we have worshipp'd in vainShall awake not a pang of remembrance again;To bear, is to conquer our fate!"

Half a century is annihilated as if it had never been: it is as if young Kit had become not old Kit—but were standing now as then front to front, with but a rood of trampled snow between them, before the Mad Dominie and Bob Howie—both the bravest of the brave in Snowball or Stone bicker—in street, lane, or muir fight—hand to hand, single-pitched with Black King Carey of the Gypsies—or in irregular high-road row—two to twelve—with a gang of Irish horse-coupers from the fair of Glasgow returning by Portpatrick to Donaghadee. 'Tis a strange thing so distinctly to see One's Self as he looked of yore—to lose one's present frail personal identity in that of the powerful past. Or rather to admire One's Self as hewas, without consciousness of the mean vice of egotism, because of the pity almost bordering on contempt with which One regards One's Self as heis, shrivelled up into a sort of shrimp of a man—or blown out into a flounder.

The Snowball bicker owns an armistice—and Kit North—that is, we of the olden and the golden time—advance into the debatable ground between the two armies, with a frozen branch in our hand as a flag of truce. The Mad Dominie loved us, because then-a-days—bating and barring the cockand the squint of his eye—we were like himself a poet, and while a goose might continue standing on one leg, could have composed one jolly act of a tragedy, or book of an epic, while Bob—God bless him!—to guard us from scathe would have risked his life against a whole craal of tinkers. With open arms they come forward to receive us; but our blood is up—and we are jealous of the honour of the School, which has received a stain which must be wiped out in blood. From what mixed motives act boys and men in the deeds deemed most heroic, and worthy of the meed of everlasting fame! Even so is it now with us—when sternly eyeing the other Six, and then respectfully the Mad Dominie, we challenge—not at long bowls—but toe to toe, at the scratch on the snow, with the naked mawlies, the brawny boy with the red shock-head, the villain with the carrots, who, by moonlight nights,

"Round the stacks with the lasses at bogles to play,"

had dared to stand between us and the ladye of our love. Off fly our jackets and stocks—it is not a day for buff—and at it like bull-dogs. Twice before had we fought him—at our own option—over the bonnet; for 'twas a sturdy villain, and famous for the cross-buttock. But now, after the first close, in which we lose the fall—with straight right-handers we keep him at off-fighting—and that was a gush of blood from his smeller. "How do you like that, Ben?" Giving his head, with a mad rush, he makes a plunge with his heavy left—for he was ker-handed—at our stomach. But a dip of our right elbow caught the blow, to the loud admiration of Bob Howie—and even the Mad Dominie, the umpire, could not choose but smile. Like lightning, our left returns between the ogles—and Ben bites the snow. Three cheers from the School—and, lifted on the knee of his second, James Maxwell Wallace, since signalised at Waterloo, and now a knighted colonel of horse, "he grins horribly a ghastly smile," and is brought up staggering to the scratch. We know that we have him—and ask considerately, "what he means by winking?" And now we play around him,

"Just like unto a trundling mop,Or a wild-goose at play."

He is brought down now to our own weight—then nine stonejimp—his eyes are getting momently more and more pig-like—water-logged, like those of Queen Bleary, whose stone image lies in the echoing aisle of the old Abbey Church of Paisley—and bat-blind, he hits past our head and body, like an awkward hand at the flail, when drunk, thrashing corn. Another hit on the smeller, and a stinger on the throat-apple—and down he sinks like a poppy—deaf to the call of "time"—and victory smiles upon us from the bright blue skies. "Hurra—hurra—hurra! Christopher for ever!" and perched aloft, astride on the shoulders of Bob Howie—he, the Invincible, gallops with us all over the field, followed by the shouting School, exulting that Ben the Bully has at last met with an overthrow. We exact an oath that he will never again meddle with Meg Whitelaw—shake hands cordially, and

"Off to some other game we all together flew."

And so ended the famous Snowball Bicker of Pedmount, now immortalised in our Prose-Poem.

Some men, it is sarcastically said, are boys all life-long, and carry with them their puerility to the grave. 'Twould be well for the world were there in it more such men. By way of proving their manhood, we have heard grown-up people abuse their own boyhood—forgetting what our great Philosophical Poet—after Milton and Dryden—has told them, that

"The boy is father of the man,"

and thus libelling the author of their existence. A poor boy indeed must he have been, who submitted to misery when the sun was new in heaven. Did he hate or despise the flowers around his feet, congratulating him on being young like themselves? the stars, young always, though Heaven only knows how many million years old, every night sparkling in happiness which they manifestly wished him to share? Did he indeed in his heart believe that the moon, in spite of her shining midnight face, was made of green cheese? Not only are the foundations dug and laid in boyhood, of all the knowledge and the feelings of our prime, but the ground-flat too built, and often the second story of the entire superstructure, from the windows of which, the soul looking out, beholds nature in her state, and leaps down, unafraid of a fall on the green or white bosom of earth, to join with hymns the front of the procession. The soul afterwards perfects her palace—building up tier after tier of all imaginable orders of architecture—till the shadowy roof, gleaming with golden cupolas, like the cloud-region of the setting sun, set the heavens ablaze.

Gaze up on the highest idea—gaze down on the profoundest emotion—and you will know and feel in a moment that it is not a new birth. You become a devout believer in the Pythagorean and Platonic doctrine of metempsychosis and reminiscence, and are awed by the mysterious consciousness of the thought "Before!" Try then to fix its date, and back travels your soul, now groping its way in utter darkness, and now in darkness visible—now launching along lines of steady lustre, such as the moon throws on the broad bosoms of starry lakes—now dazzled by sudden contrast—

"Blind with excess of light!"

But back let it travel, as best or worst it may, through and amidst eras after eras of the wan or radiant past; yet never, except for some sweet instant of delusion, breaking dewdrop-like at a touch or a breath, during all that perilous pilgrimage—and perilous must it be, haunted by so many ghosts—never may it reach the shrine it seeks—the fountain from which first flowed that feeling whose origin seems to have been out of the world of time—dare we say—in eternity!

How graciously provided are all the subdivisions of Time, diversifying the dream of human life! And why should moralists mourn over the mutability that gives the chief charm to all that passes so transitorily before our eyes!—leaving image upon image in the waters of memory, that can bear being stirred without being disturbed, and contain steadier and steadier reflections as they seem to repose on an unfathomable depth!—the years, the months, the weeks, the days, the nights, the hours, the minutes, the moments, each in itself a different living, and peopled, and haunted world. One life is a thousand lives, and each individual, as he fully renews the past, reappears in a thousand characters; yet all of them bearing a mysterious identity not to be misunderstood, and all of them, while every passion has been shifting and ceasing, and reascending into power, still under the dominion of the same Conscience, that feels and knows it is from God.

Who will complain of the shortness of human life, that can re-travel all the windings, and wanderings, and mazes that his feet have trodden since the farthest back hour at which memory pauses, baffled and blindfolded, as she vainly tries to penetrate and illumine the palpable, the impervious darkness that shrouds the few first years of our inscrutable being? Long, long, long ago seems it to be indeed, when we now remember it, the Time we first pulled the primroses on the sunny braes, wondering in our first blissful emotions of beauty at the leaves with a softness all their own—a yellowness nowhere else so vivid—"the bright consummate flower" so starlike to our awakened imagination among the lowly grass—lovely indeed to our admiring eyes as any one of all the stars that, in their turn, did seem themselves like flowers in the blue fields of heaven!Long, long, long ago, the time when we danced hand in hand with our golden-haired sister! Long, long, long ago, the day on which she died—the hour, so far more dismal than any hour that can now darken us on this earth, when her coffin descended slowly, slowly into the horrid clay, and we were borne death-like, and wishing to die, out of the churchyard, that, from that moment, we thought we could enter never more! What a multitudinous being must ours have been, when, before our boyhood was gone, we could have forgotten her buried face! or at the dream of it, dashed off a tear, and away, with a bounding heart, in the midst of a cloud of playmates, breaking into fragments on the hill-side, and hurrying round the shores of those wild moorland lochs, in vain hope to surprise the heron that slowly uplifted his blue bulk, and floated away, regardless of our shouts, to the old castle woods. It is all like a reminiscence of some other state of existence.

Then, after all the joys and sorrows of those few years, which we now call transitory, but which ourBoyhoodfelt as if they would be endless—as if they would endure for ever—arose upon us the glorious dawning of another new life—Youth—with its insupportable sunshine, and its agitating storms. Transitory, too, we now know, and well deserving the same name of dream. But while it lasted, long, various, and agonising; as, unable to sustain the eyes that first revealed to us the light of love, we hurried away from the parting hour, and, looking up to moon and stars, invocated in sacred oaths, hugged the very heavens to our heart. Yet life had not then nearly reached its meridian, journeying up the sunbright firmament. How long hung it there exulting, when "it flamed on the forehead of the noontide sky!" Let not the Time be computed by the lights and shadows of the years, but by the innumerable array of visionary thoughts, that kept deploying as if from one eternity into another—now in dark sullen masses, now in long array, brightened as if with spear-points and standards, and moving along through chasm, abyss, and forest, and over the summits of the highest mountains, to the sound of ethereal music, now warlike and tempestuous—now, as "from flutes and soft recorders" accompanying not pæans of victory but hymns of peace. That Life, too, seems, now that it is gone, to have been of a thousand years. Is it gone? Its skirts are yet hovering on the horizon. And isthere yet another Life destined for us? That Life which men fear to face—Age, Old Age! Four dreams within a dream—andwhereto awake?

At dead of night—and it is now dead of night—how the heart quakes on a sudden at the silent resurrection of buried thoughts! Perhaps the sunshine of some one single Sabbath of more exceeding holiness comes first glimmering, and then brightening upon us, with the very same sanctity that filled all the air at the tolling of the kirk-bell, when all the parish was hushed, and the voice of streams heard more distinctly among the banks and braes. Then, all at once, a thunderstorm, that many years before, or many years after, drove us, when walking alone over the mountains, into a shieling, will seem to succeed; and we behold the same threatening aspect of the heavens that then quailed our beating hearts, and frowned down our eyelids before the lightning began to flash, and the black rain to deluge all the glens. No need now for any effort of thought. The images rise of themselves—independently of our volition—as if another being, studying the working of our minds, conjured up the phantasmagoria before us who are beholding it with love, wonder, and fear. Darkness and silence have a power of sorcery over the past; the soul has then, too, often restored to it feelings and thoughts that it had lost, and is made to know that nothing it once experiences ever perishes, but that all things spiritual possess a principle of immortal life.

Why linger on the shadowy wall some of those phantasmagoria—returning after they have disappeared—and reluctant to pass away into their former oblivion? Why shoot others athwart the gloom, quick as spectral figures seen hurrying among mountains during a great storm? Why do some glare and threaten—why others fade away with a melancholy smile? Whythat one—a Figure all in white, and with white roses in her hair—come forward through the haze, beautifying into distincter form and face, till her pale beseeching hands almost touch our neck—and then, in a moment, it is as nothing?

But now the room is disenchanted—and feebly our lamp is glimmering, about to leave us to the light of the moon and stars. There it is trimmed again—and the sudden increase of lustre cheers the heart within us like a festal strain. And To-Morrow—To-Morrow is Merry Christmas; and when itsnight descends there will be mirth and music, and the light sound of the merry-twinkling feet within these now so melancholy walls—and sleep, now reigning over all the house save this one room, will be banished far over the sea—and morning will be reluctant to allow her light to break up the innocent orgies.

Were every Christmas of which we have been present at the celebration, painted according to nature—what a Gallery of Pictures! True that a sameness would pervade them all—but only that kind of sameness that pervades the nocturnal heavens. One clear night always is, to common eyes, just like another; for what hath any night to show but one moon and some stars—a blue vault, with here a few braided, and there a few castellated, clouds? Yet no two nights ever bore more than a family resemblance to each other before the studious and instructed eye of him who has long communed with Nature, and is familiar with every smile and frown on her changeful, but not capricious, countenance. Even so with the Annual Festivals of the heart. Then our thoughts are the stars that illumine those skies—and on ourselves it depends whether they shall be black as Erebus, or brighter than Aurora.

"Thoughts! that like spirits trackless come and go"—

is a fine line of Charles Lloyd's. But no bird skims, no arrow pierces the air, without producing some change in the Universe, which will last to the day of doom. No coming and going is absolutely trackless; nor irrecoverable by Nature's law is any consciousness, however ghostlike; though many a one, even the most blissful, never does return, but seems to be buried among the dead. But they are not dead—but only sleep; though to us who recall them not, they are as they had never been, and we, wretched ingrates, let them lie for ever in oblivion! How passing sweet when of their own accord they arise to greet us in our solitude?—as a friend who, having sailed away to a foreign land in our youth, has been thought to have died many long years ago, may suddenly stand before us, with face still familiar and name reviving in a moment, and all that he once was to us brought from utter forgetfulness close upon our heart.

My Father's House! How it is ringing like a grove inspring, with the din of creatures happier, a thousand times happier, than all the birds on earth. It is the Christmas Holidays—Christmas Day itself—Christmas Night—and Joy in every bosom intensifies Love. Never before were we brothers and sisters so dear to one another—never before had our hearts so yearned towards the authors of our being—our blissful being! There they sit—silent in all that outcry—composed in all that disarray—still in all that tumult; yet, as one or other flying imp sweeps round the chair, a father's hand will playfully strive to catch a prisoner—a mother's gentler touch on some sylph's disordered symar be felt almost as a reproof, and for a moment slacken the fairy-flight. One old game treads on the heels of another—twenty within the hour—and many a new game never heard of before nor since, struck out by the collision of kindred spirits in their glee, the transitory fancies of genius inventive through very delight. Then, all at once, there is a hush, profound as ever falls on some little plat within a forest when the moon drops behind the mountain, and the small green-robed People of Peace at once cease their pastime, and evanish. For She—the Silver-Tongued—is about to sing an old ballad, words and air alike hundreds of years old—and sing she doth, while tears begin to fall, with a voice too mournfully beautiful long to breathe below—and, ere another Christmas shall have come with the falling snows, doomed to be mute on earth—but to be hymning in Heaven.

Of that House—to our eyes the fairest of earthly dwellings—with its old ivied turrets, and orchard-garden bright alike with fruit and with flowers, not one stone remains. The very brook that washed its foundations has vanished along with them—and a crowd of other buildings, wholly without character, has long stood where here a single tree, and there a grove, did once render so lovely that small demesne; which, how could we, who thought it the very heart of Paradise, even for one moment have believed was one day to be blotted out of being, and we ourselves—then so linked in love that the band which bound us all together was, in its gentle pressure, felt not nor understood—to be scattered far and abroad, like so many leaves that after one wild parting rustle are separated by roaring wind-eddies, and brought together no more! The old Abbey—it still survives; and there, in that corner of theburial-ground, below that part of the wall which was least in ruins, and which we often climbed to reach the flowers and nests—there, in hopes of a joyful resurrection, lie the Loved and Venerated—for whom, even now that so many grief-deadening years have fled, we feel, in this holy hour, as if it were impiety so utterly to have ceased to weep—so seldom to have remembered!—And then, with a powerlessness of sympathy to keep pace with youth's frantic grief, the floods we all wept together—at no long interval—on those pale and placid faces as they lay, most beautiful and most dreadful to behold, in their coffins.

We believe that there is genius in all childhood. But the creative joy that makes it great in its simplicity dies a natural death or is killed, and genius dies with it. In favoured spirits, neither few nor many, the joy and the might survive; for you must know that unless it be accompanied with imagination, memory is cold and lifeless. The forms it brings before us must be inspired with beauty—that is, with affection or passion. All minds, even the dullest, remember the days of their youth; but all cannot bring back the indescribable brightness of that blessed season. They who would know what they once were, must not merely recollect, but they must imagine, the hills and valleys—if any such there were—in which their childhood played, the torrents, the waterfalls, the lakes, the heather, the rocks, the heaven's imperial dome, the raven floating only a little lower than the eagle in the sky. To imagine what he then heard and saw, he must imagine his own nature. He must collect from many vanished hours the power of his untamed heart, and he must, perhaps, transfuse also something of his maturer mind into these dreams of his former being, thus linking the past with the present by a continuous chain, which, though often invisible, is never broken. So is it too with the calmer affections that have grown within the shelter of a roof. We do not merely remember, we imagine our father's house, the fireside, all his features then most living, now dead and buried; the very manner of his smile, every tone of his voice. We must combine with all the passionate and plastic power of imagination the spirit of a thousand happy hours into one moment; and we must invest with all that we ever felt to be venerable such an image as alone can satisfy our filial hearts. It isthus that imagination, which first aided the growth of all our holiest and happiest affections, can preserve them to us unimpaired—

"For she can give us back the dead,Even in the loveliest looks they wore."

Then came a New Series of Christmases, celebrated one year in this family, another year in that—none present but those whom Charles Lamb the Delightful calleth the "old familiar faces;" something in all features, and all tones of voice, and all manners, betokening origin from one root—relations all, happy, and with no reason either to be ashamed or proud of their neither high nor humble birth—their lot being cast within that pleasant realm, "the Golden Mean," where the dwellings are connecting-links between the hut and the hall—fair edifices resembling manse or mansion-house, according as the atmosphere expands or contracts their dimensions—in which Competence is next-door neighbour to Wealth, and both of them within the daily walk of Contentment.

Merry Christmases they were indeed—one Lady always presiding, with a figure that once had been the stateliest among the stately, but then somewhat bent, without being bowed down, beneath an easy weight of most venerable years. Sweet was her tremulous voice to all her grandchildren's ears. Nor did those solemn eyes, bedimmed into a pathetic beauty, in any degree restrain the glee that sparkled in orbs that had as yet shed not many tears, but tears of joy or pity. Dearly she loved all those mortal creatures whom she was soon about to leave; but she sat in sunshine even within the shadow of death; and the "voice that called her home" had so long been whispering in her ear, that its accents had become dear to her, and consolatory every word that was heard in the silence, as from another world.

Whether we were indeed all so witty as we thought ourselves—uncles, aunts, brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, cousins, and "the rest," it might be presumptuous in us, who were considered by ourselves and a few others not the least amusing of the whole set, at this distance of time to decide—especially in the affirmative; but how the roof did ring with sally, pun, retort, and repartee! Ay, with pun—a species of impertinence for which we have therefore a kindness even to this day. Had incomparable Thomas Hood had the goodfortune to have been born a cousin of ours, how with that fine fancy of his would he have shone at those Christmas festivals, eclipsing us all! Our family, through all its different branches, has ever been famous for bad voices, but good ears; and we think we hear ourselves—all those uncles and aunts, nephews and nieces, and cousins—singing now! Easy is it to "warble melody" as to breathe air. But we hope harmony is the most difficult of all things to people in general, for to us it was impossible; and what attempts ours used to be at Seconds! Yet the most woeful failures were rapturously encored; and ere the night was done we spoke with most extraordinary voices indeed, every one hoarser than another, till at last, walking home with a fair cousin, there was nothing left for it but a tender glance of the eye—a tender pressure of the hand—for cousins are not altogether sisters, and although partaking of that dearest character, possess, it may be, some peculiar and appropriate charms of their own; as didst thou, Emily the "Wild-cap!"—Thatsobriquetall forgotten now—for now thou art a matron, nay a Grandam, and troubled with an elf fair and frolicsome as thou thyself wert of yore, when the gravest and wisest withstood not the witchery of thy dancings, thy singings, and thy showering smiles.

On rolled Suns and Seasons—the old died—the elderly became old—and the young, one after another, were wafted joyously away on the wings of hope, like birds almost as soon as they can fly ungratefully forsaking their nests and the groves in whose safe shadow they first essayed their pinions; or like pinnaces that, after having for a few days trimmed their snow-white sails in the land-locked bay, close to whose shores of silvery sand had grown the trees that furnished timber both for hull and mast, slip their tiny cables on some summer-day, and gathering every breeze that blows, go dancing over the waves in sunshine, and melt far off into the main. Or, haply, some were like fair young trees, transplanted during no favourable season, and never to take root in another soil, but soon leaf and branch to wither beneath the tropic sun, and die almost unheeded by those who knew not how beautiful they had been beneath the dews and mists of their own native climate.

Vain images! and therefore chosen by fancy not too painfully to touch the heart. For some hearts grow cold andforbidding with selfish cares—some, warm as ever in their own generous glow, were touched by the chill of Fortune's frowns, ever worst to bear when suddenly succeeding her smiles—some, to rid themselves of painful regrets, took refuge in forgetfulness, and closed their eyes to the past—duty banished some abroad, and duty imprisoned others at home—estrangements there were, at first unconscious and unintended, yet ere long, though causeless, complete—changes were wrought insensibly, invisibly, even in the innermost nature of those who being friends knew no guile, yet came thereby at last to be friends no more—unrequited love broke some bonds—requited love relaxed others—the death of one altered the conditions of many—and so—year after year—the Christmas Meeting was interrupted—deferred—till finally it ceased with one accord, unrenewed and unrenewable. For when Some Things cease for a time—that time turns out to be for ever.

Survivors of those happy circles! wherever ye be—should these imperfect remembrances of days of old chance, in some thoughtful pause of life's busy turmoil, for a moment to meet your eyes, let there be towards the inditer a few throbs of revived affection in your hearts—for his, though "absent long and distant far," has never been utterly forgetful of the loves and friendships that charmed his youth. To be parted in body is not to be estranged in spirit—and many a dream and many a vision, sacred to nature's best affections, may pass before the mind of one whose lips are silent. "Out of sight out of mind" is rather the expression of a doubt—of a fear—than of a belief or a conviction. The soul surely has eyes that can see the objects it loves, through all intervening darkness—and of those more especially dear it keeps within itself almost undimmed images, on which, when they know it not, think it not, believe it not, it often loves to gaze, as on relics imperishable as they are hallowed.

All hail! rising beautiful and magnificent through the mists of morning—ye Woods, Groves, Towers, and Temples, overshadowing that famous Stream beloved by all the Muses! Through this midnight hush—methinks we hear faint and far-off sacred music—

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