taunts from the foremost-cheers from the hindmost-all sorts of practical jokes upon each other, and upon all they meet and all they pass and above all, the loud ringing laugh, the laugh of boyhood, so unlike all other laughter-that comes out clear and distinct-direct from the heart-stopping nowhere on its way— not pausing to be questioned by the judgment, nor restrained by the memory-presenting no hollowness nor flatness to the nicest attention-betraying no under-tone to the finest ear—giving true and unbroken "echoes to the seat where mirth is throned"—born spontaneously of that spirit, and excited so often by causes too minute for older eyes to see. And it is in this very causelessness that consists the spell of childhood's laughter, and the secret of youth's unmingled joy. We seldom begin to seek reasons for being gay, till we have had some for being grave,—and the search after the former is very apt to bring us upon more of the latter. There are tares among that wheat. The moment we commence to distrust our light-heartedness, it begins to evade us. From the day when we think it necessary to reason upon our enjoyments, to philosophise upon our mirth, to analyze our gladness, their free and unmingled character is gone. The toy is taken to pieces, to see of what it is composed, and can no more be put together in the same perfect form. They who have entered upon the paths of knowledge, or gone far into the recesses of experience,-like the men of yore, who ventured to explore the cave of Trophonius,-may, perhaps, find something higher and better than the light-heartedness they lose,-but they smile never more as they smiled of old. The fine clear instrument of the spirit, that we bring with us from heaven, is liable to injury from all that acts upon it here; and the string that has once been broken, or disordered, repair it as we may, never, again, gives out the precise note which it did before. The old man,—nay, even the young man,-let him be as merry as he may, and laugh as long and loudly as he will-never laughs as the school-boy laughs.

But of this, and all the slumbering passions yet to be awakened in those young breasts-and of many a grief to come, there is no token to darken the joy of to-day. The mighty pleasures towards which they are hastening, have as yet never "broken the word

of promise to their hope." The postillions are of their party ;and even he with the bottle-nose, who seems to be none of the youngest, is a boy, for the nonce. The very horses appear to have caught the spirit of the occasion; and toss their heads, and lay their haunches to the ground, and fling out their fore-legs, as if they drew the car of Momus. The village boys return them shout for shout, fling up their hats as the triumph approaches, and follow it till the breath fails. The older passer-by returns their uproarious salute, taking no umbrage at their mischievous jokes and impish tricks,—and turning, as the sounds of the merry voices die in the distance, to a vision of the days when he, too, was a boy, and an unconscious rehearsal of the half-forgotten song of "Dulce, dulce domum !"

And then the "limen amabile," and the "matris oscula," and the "Penates," towards which they are advancing!—the yearning hearts that wait within those homes to clasp them!—the bright eyes that are even now looking out from windows, to catch the first token of "their coming, and look brighter when they come!" -the quiet halls that shall ring to-night to their young voices ; and the lanes and alleys whose echoes they shall awaken to-morrow,—and still more loudly when the ice comes!—and, above all, the Christmas revelries themselves! The whole is one crowded scene of enjoyment, across whose long extent, the happy schoolboy has, as yet, caught no glimpse of that black Monday, which forms the opposite and distant portal of this haunted time.

Amongst the signs of the time that are conspicuous upon the roads, the traveller whose journeyings bring him towards those which lead into the metropolis, will be struck by the droves of cattle that are making their painful way up to the great mart, for this great festival. But a still more striking, though less noisy, Christmas symptom forms a very amusing object, to him who leaves London by such of its highways as lead eastward. Many a time have we seen a Norfolk coach, with its hampers piled on the roof and swung from beneath the body, and its birds depending, by every possible contrivance, from every part from which a bird could be made to hang. Nay, we believe it is not unusual with the proprietors, at this season, to refuse inside passengers of the human species, in favor of these oriental gentry, who " pay

better;" and, on such occasions, of course, they set at defiance the restriction which limits them to carrying "four insides.” Within and without, the coaches are crammed with the bird of Turkey; and a gentleman town-ward bound, who presented himself at a Norwich coach-office, at such a time, to inquire the "fare to London," was pertly answered by the book-keeper, "Turkeys." Our readers will acquit us of exaggeration, when we tell them that Mr. Hone, in his Every Day Book, quotes, from an historical account of Norwich, an authentic statement of the amount of turkeys which were transmitted from that city to London, between a Saturday morning and the night of Sunday, in the December of 1793;—which statement gives the number as one thousand seven hundred, the weight as nine tons, two cwt., and two lbs., and the value as £680. It is added that, in the two following days, these were followed by half as many more. We are unable to furnish the present statistics of the matter; but, in forty years which have elapsed since that time, the demand, and, of course, the supply must have greatly increased; and it is probable that the coach proprietors find it convenient to put extra carriages on the road, for these occasions.

Norfolk must be a noisy county. There must be a "pretty considerable deal" of gabble, towards the month of November, in that English Turkistan. But what a silence must have fallen upon its farm-yards, since Christmas has come round! Turkeys are indisputably born to be killed. That is an axiom. It is the end of their training,—as it ought to be (and, in one sense, certainly is) of their desires. And, such being the destiny of this bird, it may probably be an object of ambition with a respectable turkey, to fulfil its fate, at the period of this high festival. Certain it is that, at no other time, can it attain to such dignities as belong to the turkey who smokes on the well stored table of a Christmas dinner, the most honored dish of all the feast.

One of the most striking signs of the season—and which meets the eye in all directions—is that which arises out of the ancient, and still familiar, practice of adorning our houses and churches with evergreens, during the continuance of this festival. The decorations of our mantel-pieces, and, in many places, of our windows, the wreaths which ornament our lamps and Christmas

candles-the garniture of our tables, are alike gathered from the hedges and winter gardens; and, in the neighborhood of every town and village, the traveller may meet with some sylvan procession, or some group of boys, returning from the woods, laden with their winter greenery, and engaged in what we have heard technically called "bringing home Christmas." This symptom of the approaching festivity is mentioned by Gay, in his "Trivia:" "When Rosemary and Bays, the poet's crown,

Are bawl'd in frequent cries through all the town;
Then judge the festival of Christmass near,
Christmass, the joyous period of the year!

Now with bright holly all the temples strow;
With Laurel green, and sacred Misletoe."

The practice of these decorations, which is recommended to modern times, by its own pleasantness and natural beauty, is of very high antiquity,—and has been ascribed, by various writers, to various sources. They who are desirous of tracing a Christian observance to a Christian cause, remind us of those figurative expressions, in the prophets, which speak of the Messiah as the "Branch of righteousness," &c.; and describe, by natural allusions, the fertility which should attend his coming." The Lord shall comfort Zion," says Isaiah: "he will comfort all her waste places; and he will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord." Again:-"The glory of Lebanon shall come unto thee, the fir-tree, the pine-tree and the box together, to beautify the place of my sanctuary; and I will make the place of my feet glorious." And Nehemiah, on an occasion of rejoicing, orders the people, after the law of Moses, to "go forth unto the mount, and fetch olive branches, and pine branches, and myrtle branches, and palm branches, and branches of thick trees;" and to make booths thereof, "every one upon the roof of his house, and in their courts, and in the courts of the house of God," and in the streets :-" and all the congregation of them that were come again out of the captivity," sat under these booths, "and there was very great gladness." A writer in the Gentleman's Magazine asks if this custom may not be referred, as well as that of the palms on Palm Sunday, to that passage, in the Scripture account of Christ's entry into Jerusalem, which

states that the multitude "cut down branches from the trees, and strawed them in the way."

The practice, however, of introducing flowers and branches amongst the tokens of festivity, seems, and very naturally, to have existed universally and at all times. It was, as we know, a pagan manifestation of rejoicing and worship; and is forbidden, on that express ground, in early councils of the Christian church. Hone, in his Every-day Book, quotes Polydore Vergil, to the effect that "trymming of the temples with hangynges, flowres, boughes and garlondes, was taken of the heathen people, whiche decked their idols and houses with suche array ;" and it came under the list of abominations denounced by the Puritans, for the same reason. The practice was also in use amongst the nations both of Gothic and Celtic origin; and Brand quotes from Dr. Chandler's “ Travels in Greece," a very beautiful superstition, mentioned as the reason of this practice, amongst the votaries of Druidism. "The houses, he says, were decked with evergreens in December, that the sylvan spirits might repair to them, and remain unnipped with frost and cold winds, until a milder season had renewed the foliage of their darling abodes."

In England, the practice, whencesoever derived, has existed from the very earliest days; and, in spite of outcry and prohibition, has come down, in full vigor, to our own. In former times, as we learn from Stow, in his Survey of London, not only were our houses and churches decorated with evergreens, but also the conduits, standards, and crosses in the streets;—and, in our own day, it continues to form a garniture not only of our temples and our houses, but constitutes a portion of the striking display made at this festive season, in our markets and from the windows of our shops. Holly forms a decoration of the shambles; and every tub of butter has a sprig of rosemary in its breast.

The plants most commonly in use, for this purpose, appear to have generally been the holly, the ivy, the laurel, the rosemary and the misletoe, although the decorations were by no means limited to these materials. Brand expresses some surprise at finding cypress included in the list, as mentioned in the tract called "Round about our Coal fire," and observes that he "should as soon have expected to see the yew as the cypress used