as if all the world were made of minced-pies, plum-pudding, and furmity.' And we might produce other quotations, to show that, as the name hackin fell into disuse, about this period, it was generally supplanted by that of plum-pudding.”

Plum-pudding is a truly national dish; and refuses to flourish out of England. It can obtain no footing in France. A Frenchman will dress like an Englishman, swear like an Englishman, and get drunk like an Englishman; but if you would offend him for ever, compel him to eat plum-pudding. A few of the leading restaurateurs, wishing to appear extraordinary, have plomb-pooding upon their cartes; but in no instance is it ever ordered by a Frenchman. Everybody has heard the story of St. LouisHenri Quatre, or whoever else it might be-who, wishing to regale the English ambassador, on Christmas-day, with a plumpudding, procured an excellent receipt for making one; which he gave to his cook, with strict injunctions that it should be prepared with due attention to all particulars. The weight of the ingredients, the size of the copper, the quantity of water, the duration of time, everything was attended to except one trifle ;—the king forgot the cloth;' and the pudding was served up, like so much soup, in immense tureens, to the surprise of the ambassador,—who was, however, too well bred to express his astonishment.

Amongst our ancestors, the duties of the day which followed first after those of religion, were the duties which immediately spring out of a religion like ours-those of charity,

"When

Among their children, comfortable men
Gather about great fires, and yet feel cold,
Alas! then for the houseless beggar old !"—

was a sentiment of which they never allowed themselves to lose sight. Amid the preparations making for his own enjoyment, and the comforts by which he set at defiance the austerities of the season, the old English gentleman did not forget the affecting truths, so beautifully embodied in words, by Mary Hewitt :

"In rich men's halls, the fire is piled,
And ermine robes keep out the weather;
In poor men's huts, the fire is low,

Through broken panes, the keen winds blow,
And old and young are cold together.

Oh! poverty is disconsolate!—

Its pains are many, its foes are strong!
The rich man, in his jovial cheer,
Wishes 't was winter through the year;
The poor man, 'mid his wants profound,
With all his little children round,

Prays God that winter be not long!"

Immediately after the service of the day, the country gentleman stood, of old, at his own gate, and superintended the distribution of alms to the aged and the destitute. The hall, prepared for the festival of himself and his friends, was previously opened to his tenants and retainers; and the good things of the season were freely dispensed to all. "There was once," says the writer of 'Round about our Coal Fire,' "hospitality in the land. An English gentleman, at the opening of the great day, had all his tenants and neighbors entered his hall by day-break; the strong beer was broached, and the black-jacks went plentifully about, with toast, sugar, nutmeg, and good Cheshire cheese. The servants were then running here and there, with merry hearts and jolly countenances. Every one was busy in welcoming of guests, and looked as snug as new-licked puppies. The lasses were as blithe and buxom as the maids in good Queen Bess's days, when they ate sirloins of roast-beef for breakfast. Peg would scuttle about to make a toast for John, while Tom run harum-scarum to draw a jug of ale for Margery."

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The solemn festivals of ancient superstition were marked either by bloody sacrifice, secret.revelling, or open licentiousness. There was no celebration of rites,—real or symbolical,—which might become a religion of cheerfulness, decency, and mercy. There was no medium between a mysteriousness dark and gloomy as the grave, and a wild and savage enthusiasm or riotous frenzy, which mingled with the worship of the gods the impassioned depravity of human nature. From Moloch, upon whose dreadful altar children were offered-to Bacchus, at whose shrine reason and virtue were prostrated,-there were none of the fabled deities of antiquity whose service united the spirit of devotion with inno

cent pleasures and the exercise of the domestic charities. This was reserved for the Christian religion;—one of the marks of whose divinity it is, that it can mingle with many of the pleasures and all the virtues of the world, without sullying the purity of its glory-without depressing the sublime elevation of its character. The rites of Ceres were thought profaned, if the most virtuous believer of the divinity of that goddess beheld them, without having undergone the ceremonies of special initiation. The worship of Saturn gave rise to a liberty inconsistent with the ordinary government of states. At the altar of Diana, on certain days, the Spartans flogged children to death. And the offerings which, on state occasions, the Romans made to Jupiter, were such as feudal vassals might offer to their warlike lord. But now, thank God!—to use the words of Milton's Hymn on the Nativity

"Peor and Baalim

Forsake their temples dim,

With that twice-batter'd God of Palestine;
And mooned Ashtaroth,

Heaven's queen and mother both,

Now sits not girt with tapers' holy shine,

The Lybick Hammon shrinks his horn;

In vain the Tyrian maids their wounded Thammuz mourn.

And sullen Moloch, fled,

Has left in shadows dread

His burning idol all of blackest hue;

In vain with Cymbals' ring,

They call the grisly king,

In dismal dance about the furnace blue:

The brutish Gods of Nile as fast,

Iris, and Orus, and the dog Anubis haste.

Nor is Osiris seen

In Memphian grove or green

Trampling the unshowered grass with lowings loud,
Nor can he be at rest,

Within his sacred chest ;

Naught but profoundest hell can be his shroud

In vain, with timbrelled anthems dark,

The sable-stoled sorcerers bear his worship'd ark.

He feels from Judah's land
The dreaded Infant's hand:

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The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyne;
Nor all the gods beside

Longer dare abide;

Not Typhon huge, ending in snaky twine;

Our Babe, to show his God-head true,

Can in his swaddling bands control the damned crew."

Oh! how different were those religions of the passions and the senses from that of the sentiments and pure affections of the Christian heart; which, as it rises to heaven in sublime devotion, expands in charity towards its kind, until it comprehends all humanity in the bond of universal benevolence. To ameliorate the temporal as well as elevate the spiritual state of man is its distinguishing excellence—the sublime peculiarity of its character, as a religious dispensation. All the systems of superstition were external and gross,-or mysterious and occult. They either encouraged the follies and the passions of men, or, by a vain and fruitless knowledge, flattered their vanity. But Christianity came to repress the one and to dissipate the other;-to make the exercise of the virtues the result and the proof of mental attachment to the doctrines which, while they afford grand subjects of eternal interest, contain the principles of all true civilisation. It is in this religion alone that faith is the sister of charity;—that the former brightens, with the beams of another world, the institutions by which the latter blesses this,-those institutions of mercy and of instruction which cover the land with monuments of humanity, that are nowhere to be found but among the temples of our faith.

And now, when silent and desolate are even the high places over which Augustus ruled-fallen majestic Rome with all her gods, the religion proclaimed to the humble shepherds,-whose sound was first heard by the moonlight streams and under the green boughs,—has erected, on the ruins of ancient grandeur, a sublimer dominion than all those principalities of the earth which refused its hospitality. It came in gentleness and lowliness, and the spirit of peace; and now, it grasps the power of the universe, and wields the civilized energies of the greatest of all the nations, -to the beneficent extension of its authority,-imperishable in its glory, and bloodless in its triumphs!

Our account of Christmas would not be complete,—without

giving some description of the forms which attended the introduction of the boar's head at the feasts of our ancestors.

The boar's head soused, then, was carried into the great hall, with much state; preceded by the Master of the Revels, and followed by choristers and minstrels, singing and playing compositions in its honor. Dugdale relates that at the Inner Temple, for the first course of the Christmas dinner, was "served in, a fair and large bore's head, upon a silver platter, with minstrelsye." And here we would observe,-what we do not think has been before remarked,—that the boar's-head carols appear to have systematically consisted of three verses. A manuscript, indeed, which we once met with, stated that the "caroll, upon the bringynge in of the bore's head, was sung to the glorie of the blessed Trinytie ;" and the three subsequent illustrative specimens,-in which the peculiarity mentioned may be observed,―tend to confirm this notion. At St. John's, Oxford, in 1607, before the bearer of the boar's head,-who was selected for his height and lustiness, and wore a green silk scarf, with an empty sword-scabbard dangling at his side,—went a runner, dressed in a horseman's coat, having a boar's spear in his hand,—a huntsman in green, carrying the naked and bloody sword belonging to the head-bearer's scabbard,—and "two pages in tafatye sarcenet," each with a mess of mustard." Upon which occasion these verses were sung:

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