offence, and waking in two hours, with a
sensation of having been asleep two nights;
of the leaden hopelessness of morning ever
dawning; and the oppression of a weight of
remorse.

And now, I see a wonderful row of little
lights rise smoothly out of the ground, before
a vast green curtain. Now, a bell rings—a
magic bell, which still sounds in my ears
unlike all other bells—and music plays,
amidst a buzz of voices, and a fragrant smell
of orange-peel and oil. Anon, the magic bell
commands the music to cease, and the great
green curtain rolls itself up majestically, and
The Play begins! The devoted dog of Montargis
avenges the death of his master, foully
murdered in the Forest of Bondy; and a
humorous Peasant with a red nose and a very
little hat, whom I take from this hour forth
to my bosom as a friend (I think he was a
Waiter or an Hostler at a village Inn, but
many years have passed since he and I have
met), remarks that the sassigassity of that
dog is indeed surprising; and evermore this
jocular conceit will live in my remembrance
fresh and unfading, overtopping all possible
jokes, unto the end of time. Or now, I learn
with bitter tears how poor Jane Shore, dressed
all in white, and with her brown hair hanging
down, went starving through the streets; or
how George Barnwell killed the worthiest
uncle that ever man had, and was afterwards
so sorry for it that he ought to have been let
off. Comes swift to comfort me, the Pantomime
—stupendous Phenomenon!—when Clowns
are shot from loaded mortars into the
great chandelier, bright constellation that it
is; when Harlequins, covered all over with
scales of pure gold, twist and sparkle, like
amazing fish; when Pantaloon (whom I deem
it no irreverence to compare in my own mind
to my grandfather) puts red-hot pokers in his
pocket, and cries "Here's somebody coming!"
or taxes the Clown with petty larceny, by
saying " Now, I sawed you do it! " when
Everything is capable, with the greatest ease,
of being changed into Anything; and
"Nothing is, but thinking makes it so."
Now, too, I perceive my first experience of the
dreary sensation—often to return in after-life
—of being unable, next day, to get back
to the dull, settled world; of wanting to live
for ever in the bright atmosphere I have
quitted; of doting on the little Fairy, with
the wand like a celestial Barber's Pole, and
pining for a Fairy immortality along with her.
Ah she comes back, in many shapes, as my
eye wanders down the branches of my
Christmas Tree, and goes as often, and has
never yet stayed by me!

Out of this delight springs the toy-theatre,
—there it is, with its familiar proscenium,
and ladies in feathers, in the boxes!—and all
its attendant occupation with paste and glue,
and gum, and water colors, in the getting-up
of The Miller and his Men, and Elizabeth, or
the Exile of Siberia. In spite of a few besetting
accidents and failures (particularly an
unreasonable disposition in the respectable
Kelmar, and some others, to become faint in
the legs, and double up, at exciting points of
the drama), a teeming world of fancies so
suggestive and all-embracing, that, far below it
on my Christmas Tree, I see dark, dirty, real
Theatres in the day-time, adorned with these
associations as with the freshest garlands of
the rarest flowers, and charming me yet.

But hark! The Waits are playing, and they
break my childish sleep! What images do I
associate with the Christmas music as I see
them set forth on the Christmas Tree?
Known before all the others, keeping far
apart from all the others, they gather round
my little bed. An angel, speaking to a group
of shepherds in a field; some travellers, with
eyes uplifted, following a star; a baby in a
manger; a child in a spacious temple, talking
with grave men; a solemn figure, with a mild
and beautiful face, raising a dead girl by
the hand; again, near a city-gate, calling
back the son of a widow, on his bier, to life;
a crowd of people looking through the
opened roof of a chamber where he sits, and
letting down a sick person on a bed, with
ropes; the same, in a tempest, walking on
the water to a ship; again, on a sea-shore,
teaching a great multitude; again, with a
child upon his knee, and other children round;
again, restoring sight to the blind, speech to
the dumb, hearing to the deaf, health to the
sick, strength to the lame, knowledge to the
ignorant; again, dying upon a Cross, watched
by armed soldiers, a thick darkness coming
on, the earth beginning to shake, and only
one voice heard. " Forgive them, for they
know not what they do!"

Still, on the lower and maturer branches of
the Tree, Christmas associations cluster thick.
School-books shut up; Ovid and Virgil
silenced; the Rule of Three, with its cool
impertinent enquiries, long disposed of; Terence
and Plautus acted no more, in an arena of
huddled desks and forms, all chipped, and
notched, and inked; cricket-bats, stumps, and
balls, left higher up, with the smell of trodden
grass and the softened noise of shouts in the
evening air; the tree is still fresh, still gay.
If I no more come home at Christmas time,
there will be girls and boys (thank Heaven!)
while the World lasts; and they do! Yonder
they dance and play upon the branches of my
Tree, God bless them, merrily, and my heart
dances and plays too!

And I do come home at Christmas. We
all do, or we all should. We all come home,
or ought to come home, for a short holiday
—the longer, the better—from the great
boarding-school, where we are for ever
working at our arithmetical slates, to take,
and give a rest. As to going a visiting, where
can we not go, if we will; where have we not
been, when we would; starting our fancy
from our Christmas Tree!

Away into the winter prospect. There are