I write thereof, look in upon my heart, bright portraits-traced with a skill which no mortal pencil shall achieve-faces on which the earth hath long lain—and others from whom the wide spaces of the world have separated me, for many a weary year-and, heavier far! some to whom unkindness hath made me, too long, a stranger. There they rise, and stand, one by one, beneath the merry snare, each with the heightened beauty on her cheek, which is the transient gift of the sacred bough! Oh! M- how very fair is thine image in the eye of memory! and how has thy going away changed all things for me! The bright and the beautiful lie still about,-still bright and beautiful even to me, but in another manner than when thou wert here! All things are tinged with thy loss. All fair things have a look, and all sweet sounds a tone, of mourning, since thou leftest me. How long it seems!—as if ages, instead of years, of the grave had grown between us !—as if, indeed, I had known thee in some former, and far removed, state of being! I do not love to think of thee as dead- I strive to think of thee rather as of one whom I have left behind, in the quiet valley of our youth and our love-from whom I have wandered forth, and lost my way amid the mazes of the world. But where is the clue that should lead me back to thee? There may have been fairer (sweeter never!) things than thou in this fair world; but my heart could never be made to believe, or understand it. Had I known thee only in that world, I might not so have marked thy beauty :-but thou wert with me, when the world left me. In the flood of the sunshine, when a thousand birds are about us, we go upon our way, with a sense that there is melody around, but singling, perhaps, no one note, to take home to the heart, and make a worship of. But the one bird that sings to us, in the dim and silent night,-oh! none, but they on whom the night has fallen, can know how dear its song becomes; filling with its music all the deserted mansions of the lonely soul! But the bird is dead-the song is hushed—and the houses of my spirit are empty, and silent, and desolate ! And thou! whom the grave hath not hidden, nor far distance removed! from whom I parted, as if it were but yesterday; and yet, of whom I have already learned to think, as of one separated from me by long years of absence and death,—as if it were very long since I had beheld thee,‚—as if I gazed upon thee, from a far distance, across the lengthened and dreary alleys of the valley of the dead! Physically speaking, thou art, still, within my reach; and yet art thou to me as if the tomb, or the cloister, had received thee,—and made of thee (what the world, or the grave, makes of all things we have loved) a dream of the night-a phantom of the imagination-an angel of the memory-a creation of the hour of shadows! Whatever may be thy future fortunes-however thy name may, hereafter, be borne to my mortal ear,--my heart will ever refuse to picture thee, but as one who died in her youth! And, thou!-thou too, art there with thy long fair hair, and that harp of thine, which was so long an ark of harmony for me. "Alas! we had been friends in youth." But all things bring thee back; and I am haunted yet,—and shall be through the world,— by the airs which thou wert wont to sing me, long ago. I remember that—even in those days,—at times, in the silent night, when broken snatches of melodies imperfectly remembered stole through the chambers of my heart,- -ever in the sweet tones in which it had learnt to love them-I have asked myself if the ties that bound us might ever be like those passing and half-forgotten melodies! If the time could ever come when they should be like an old song, learnt in life's happier day,-and whose memory has been treasured, to make us weep, in the years when the heart has need to be soothed by weeping! If there would ever be a day when thy name might be sounded in mine ear, as the name of a stranger! And that day has, long since, come; "For whispering tongues will poison truth." How truly may we be said to live but in the past, and in the future-to have our hearts made up of memory and of hopefor which the present becomes, hour after hour, more and more of a void! And, alas! is it not true, as a consequence, that the more they are occupied with memory, the less room have they for hope? And thus, the one is ever gaining upon the other; and the dark waters of the memory are hourly spreading upon that shore, where hope had room to build her edifices, and to play about them, till, at length, they cover all,-and hope, having "no rest for the sole of her foot," flies forward to a higher and a better shore! And such are my visions of the misletoe !—these are amongst the spirits that rise up to wait upon my memory-" they and the other spirits of the" mystic bough! But brighter fancies has that charmed branch for many of our readers; and merrier spirits hide amid its leaves. Many a pleasant tale could we tell of the misletoe bough, which might amuse our readers more than the descriptions to which we are confined, if the limits of our volume would permit. But, already, our space is scarcely sufficient for our purpose. We think, we can promise our readers, in another volume, a series of tales connected with the traditions and superstitions which are detailed in the present, and which may serve as illustrations of the customs of the Christmas-tide. Some of the names by which this remarkable plaut were formerly called are, misselden, misseldine, and more commonly, missel. Old Tusser tells us that "If snow do continue, sheep hardly that fare, and Archdeacon Nares says "the missel thrush is so designated "from feeding on its berries." From the generality of the examples in which this plant is mentioned by the name of missel, it is suggested to us, by Mr. Crofton Croker, that the additional syllable, given to the name now in common use, is a corruption of the old tod; and that misletoe, or misletod, implies a bush or bunch of missel—such as is commonly hung up at Christmas. He quotes, in support of this suggestion, the corresponding phrase of ivy-tod, which occurs frequently in the writings of the Elizabethan age. If this be so, the expression "the misletoe bough" includes a tautology; but, as it is popularly used, we retain it, for the instruction of such antiquarians, of remote future times, as may consult our pages for some account of the good old customs, which are disappearing so fast, and may fail to reach their day. That this plant was held in veneration by the pagans, has been inferred from a passage in Virgil's description of the descent into the infernal regions. That passage is considered to have an allegorical reference to some of the religious ceremonies practised amongst the Greeks and Romans; and a comparison is therein drawn between the golden bough of the infernal regions, and what is obviously the misletoe : "Quale solet silvis brumali frigore Viscum Fronde virere nova, quod non sua seminat arbos, Et croceo fœtu teretes circumdare truncos," &c. The reference is given by Mr. Christie, in his "Enquiry into the ancient Greek Game" of Palamedes; and he mentions, likewise, the respect in which this plant was held by the Gothic, as well as the Celtic, nations. Sandys furnishes a legend from the Edda, in proof of the extraordinary qualities ascribed to it by the former. Amongst the Celtic nations, it is well known to have been an object of great veneration; and the ceremony of collecting it by the Druids, against the festival of the winter solstice, was one of high solemnity. It was cut by the prince of the Druids, himself—and with a golden sickle. It was said that those only of the oaks were sacred to the Druids, which had the misletoe upon them; and that the reverence of the people towards the priests, as well as their estimation of the misletoe, proceeded, in a great measure, from the cures which the former effected, by means of that plant. Medicinal properties, we believe, are still ascribed to it and it was, not very long ago, deemed efficacious in the subduing of convulsive disorders. Sir John Colbatch, in his dissertation concerning it, observes that this beautiful plant must have been designed by the Almighty "for further and more noble purposes than barely to feed thrushes, or to be hung up surreptitiously in houses to drive away evil spirits." Against the latter it appears to have been used as a charm, up to the last century. Its introduction into the Christian festival might therefore be considered appropriate, as emblematic of the conquest obtained over the spirits of darkness, by the event of the Nativity ;-and perhaps its supposed healing properties might be deemed to recommend it further, as a symbol of the moral health to which man was restored from the original corruption of his nature; and a fitting demonstration of the joy which hailed the "Sun of Righteousness " that had "arisen, with healing on his wings." Notwithstanding all this, however, Brand is of opinion that its heathen origin should exclude it, at all events, from the decorations of our churches;—and quotes a story told him by an old sexton at Teddington, in Middlesex, of the clergyman of that place having observed this profane plant intermingled with the holly and ivy which adorned the church, and ordered its immediate removal. Washington Irving, who has studied old English customs and manners with sincere regard, introduces a similar rebuke, from the learned parson to his unlearned clerk, in his account of the Christmas spent by him at Bracebridge Hall. The reverence of the misletoe amongst the ancient Britons, appears, however, to have been limited to that which grew upon the oak; whereas the viscum album, or common misletoe,--the sight of whose pearly berries brings the flush into the cheek of the maiden of modern days,-may be gathered, besides, from the old apple-tree, the hawthorn, the lime-tree, and the Scotch, or the silver, fir. Whether there remain any traces of the old superstitions which elevated it into a moral or a medical amulet,-beyond that which is connected with the custom alluded to in the opening of our remarks upon this plant-we know not. We should, however, be very sorry to see any light let in amongst us, which should fairly rout a belief connected with so agreeable a privilege as this. That privilege, as all our readers know, consists in the right to kiss any female who may be caught under the misletoe bough,—and, we may hope, will continue, for its own pleasantness, even if the superstition from which it springs should be finally lost. This superstition arose, clearly enough, out of the old mystic character of the plant in question,—and erects it into a charm, the neglect of which exposes to the imminent danger of all the evils of old-maidenism. For, according to archdeacon Nares, the tradition is, "that the maid who was not kissed under it, at Christmas, would not be married in that year,"-by which, we presume, the archdeacon means in the following year. Accordingly, a branch of this parasitical plant was hung (formerly with great state, but now it is generally suspended with much secresy), either from the centre of the roof, or over the door; and we recommend this latter situation to our readers, both as less exposed to untimely observation, and because every |