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CHRISTMAS BELLS.

T chanced upon the merry, merry Christmas Eve,

I went singing past the church, across the moorland dreary: Oh! never sin, and want, and woe, this earth will leave, And the bells but mark the wailing sound, they sing so cheery.

How long, O Lord! how long before Thou come again?

Still in cellar, and in garret, and on moorland dreary

The orphans moan, and widows weep, and poor men toil in vain,

Till the earth is sick of hope deferred, though Christmas bells be cheery.

Then arose a joyous clamour from the wild fowl on the mere,
Beneath the stars, across the snow, like clear bells ringing;
And a voice within cried, Listen! Christmas carols even here!

Though thou be dumb; yet o'er their work the stars and snows are singing.

Blind! I live, I love, I reign; and all the nations through,
With the thunder of My judgments even now are ringing:
Do thou fulfil thy work, but as yon wild-fowl do,

Thou wilt heed no less the wailing, yet hear through it the angels singing!
C. KINGSLEY.

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THE THEATRE AS IT IS.

"the

HOSE who defend theatre as it is" should obtain and read Fanny Kemble's letters in "Records of a Girlhood," published by Bentley. It is not often we get a testimony from "behind the scenes," but if the truth could be spoken we believe many a saddened heart-record would furnish painful proof that the tragedy acted on the stage is but a faint reflection of stern life-tragedies which, if they were revealed, would make the theatre as it is anything but a place of amusement:

Liverpool, Aug. 19, 1830.-You will hardly imagine how irksome it was to me to be once more in my stage-trappings, and in the glare of the theatre instead of the blessed sunshine in the country. My task is sadly distasteful to me; it seems such useless work, that but for its very useful pecuniary results I think I would rather make shoes. (Vol. ii. pp. 176, 177.)

Great Russell Street, Nov. 30, 1830.-I have just come out in Mrs. Haller. I need not tell you how much I dislike the play; it is the quintessence of trashy sentimentalism, but our audiences cry and sob at it till we can hardly

hear ourselves speak on the stage, and the public in general rejoices in what the servant maids call "something deep." My father acts the Stranger with me, which makes it very trying to my nerves, as I mix up all my own personal feelings for him with my acting, and the sight of his anguish and sense of his displeasure is really very dreadful to me, though it is only all about "stuff and nonsense" after all. (Vol. ii. p. 216.)

May 13, 1831.-When we left Bridgewater House we drove to my aunt Siddons'. Every time I see that magnificent ruin some fresh decay makes itself apparent in it, and one cannot but feel that it must soon totter to its fall. What a price she has paid for her great celebrity! Weariness, vacuity, and utter deadness of spirit. The cup has been so highly flavoured that life is absolutely without savour or sweetness to her now, nothing but tasteless insipidity. She has stood on a pinnacle till all things have come to look flat and dreary; mere shapeless, colourless level monotony to her. Poor woman! What a fate to be condemned to, and yet how she has been envied as well as admired! (Vol. iii. p. 12.)

Monday, Aug. 15, Southampton.-At the theatre the house was good; the play was

Romeo and Juliet, and I played well. While I was changing my dress for the tomb sceneputting on my grave-clothes, in fact I had desired my door to be shut, for I hate that lugubrious funeral dirge. How I do hate, and have always hated, that stage funeral business, which I can never see without a shudder at its awful unfitness. I can't conceive how that death's pageant was ever tolerated in a theatre. At present the practice is to give the necessary time for setting the churchyard scene, and for Juliet to change her dress, which she has no business to do according to the text, for it expressly says that she shall be buried in all her finest attire, according to her country's custom. In spite of which I was always arrayed in long white muslin draperies and veils, with my head bound up corpse fashion, and lying, as my aunt had stretched me, on the black bier in the vault, with all my white folds drawn like carved stone robes along my figure and round my feet, with my hands folded and my eyes shut. I have had some bad nervous minutes, sometimes fancying, "Suppose I should really die while I am lying here making believe to be dead," and imagining the surprise and dismay of my Romeo when I didn't get up; and at others fighting hard against heavy drowsiness of over-fatigue lest I should be fast asleep, if not dead, when it came to my turn to speak. (Vol. iii. p. 100.)

Tuesday, Dec. 1.-In the evening we all went to hear her (Miss Sheriff, a new débutante), being every way much interested in her success.

The house was crammed, the pit one black crowded mass. Poor child! I turned as cold as ice as she came forward with Mr.

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Wilson. When I saw the thousands of eyes of that crowded pitful of men, and heard their stormy acclamations, and then looked at the fragile, helpless, pretty young creature standing before them trembling with terror, and all woman's fear and shame, in such an unnatural position, I more than ever marvelled how I or any woman could ever have ventured on so terrible a trial, or survived the venture. It made poor Dr. Moore and myself both cry, but there was more sympathy in my tears than his, for I had known the dizzy terror of that moment, and felt the ground slide from under my feet, and the whole air become a sea of fiery rings before my swimming eyes. Besides my fellow feeling for her actual agony, I had one for what her after-trials may be, and I hoped for her that she might be able to see the truth of all things, in the midst of all things false; and then if she takes pleasure in her gilded toys, she will not have too bitter a heartache when they are broken. (Vol. iii. pp. 119. 120.)

Philadelphia, Oct. 22, 1832.-Bianca is a part of terrible excitement in itself, without the addition of having to act it to my father's Fazio. I cannot get rid of his being he, and it agonizes me really to see his sham agony. However, "tis my vocation, Hal." It is very well that our audiences should look at us as mere puppets, for could they sometimes see the real feelings of those for whose false miseries their sympathies are excited, I believe sufficiently in their humanity to think they would kindly give us leave to leave off and go home. Ours is avery strange trade, and I am sorry to say every day increases my dislike to it. (Vol. iii. p. 258.)

OF THE PRESS.

God as its fountain of life, and shakes off the fear of man which impedes its motion, the power of the Press may yet beneficially affect the world to an extent of which we cannot now form any adequate conception. When all things work together for good, this one will work mightily."- William Arnot.

SINGING.

N addition to the delightful influence music has upon the character, it has also a marked effect in suppressing pul

monary complaints. Dr. Rush used to say that the reason why the Germans never died of consumption was, they were always singing.

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"HIS ONLY FRIEND:"

A THOUGHT FOR CHRISTMAS DAY.

(See Illustration, Page 727.)

BY THE REV. RICHARD WILTON, M.A., RECTOR OF LONDESBOROUGH, E. YORKS, AUTHOR OF 'SUNGLEAMS," ETC.

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IS only Friend, he clasps him in his arm-
That faithful dog-and lays his weary head

On the rough grass; while holly berries red
Colour his dream with a faint Christmas charm.
The two have wandered far by field and farm,
And shared together their last crust of bread;
And now, while dews of sleep on one are shed,
The other keeps wide eyes to ward from harm.
Ah, not his only Friend! that child forlorn

Has One who watches him with loving eye:
One who this gracious Christmas-tide was born
To win the outcasts to a Home on high.
Oh, for a Christ-like hand and heart this day,
To comfort some poor wanderer on his way!

CHATS ABOUT AUTHORS AND BOOKS.

BY ANDREW JAMES SYMINGTON, F.R.S.N.A., AUTHOR OF
LIFE;" HAREBELL CHIMES," ETC.; EDITOR OF

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CCIX. EUCLID'S
BROTHERLY LOVE.

UCLID showed in himself the
true symptoms of brotherly

affection. When his brother in his rage made a rash vow, saying, "Let me not live if I be not revenged on my brother!" Euclid turns the speech contrary way: "Nay, let me not live if I be not reconciled to my brother! Let me not live if we be not as good friends as ever we were before!"

CCX. ONE'S NEIGHBOUR.

A minister was soliciting aid for foreign missions, and applied to a gentleman, who refused him, saying:

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"I don't believe in foreign missions. I want nothing else; and he who knows men and what I give to benefit my neighbours." women thoroughly will best understand the

"Well," rejoined the minister, "whom do past work of the world, and be best able to you regard as your neighbours ?"

"Why, those around me!"

take a share in its work now. : If, there

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fore, any of you ask me how to study history,

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