humana, most beloved of stops. There was
one cathedral, I remember, in which there
were by the altar twelve apostolic seats, like
huge gilt ottomans; we came away possessed
with the idea that they were twelve huge
masses of gold—for we knew nothing of the
world's gold-leaf and veneer.

The festival of festivals was Christmas.
The joy of it extended over half the year;
three months were happily spent in preparation
for it; three in recollection of its glories.
We prepared for this festival by writing
lists of articles that we described as presents,
within reasonable bounds, of which we
never felt the limit. The school gave to each
of us at Christmas, what his boyish heart
desired. Such gifts, doubtless, were set down
in the bill sent home; but, inasmuch as that
bill was a moderate one, such extras nobly
filled the place of what we, in England, call
accomplishments on the usual terms. There,
we were taught music and modern languages
and all such matters, as things of course.
We had these gifts to expect, with doses
of sweetmeat and wax tapers, and we
had also our own Christmas decorations to
prepare.

No manager, engaged in mounting a grand
opera or fairy-piece, can be busier than we
were, or conceited ourselves to be, in preparation
for the Christmas festival. Pocket-money
was diverted from its usual channels; and,
instead of milk, eggs, chocolate, and cider,
we bought coloured wax-tapers, coloured
cardboard, coloured paper, and coloured
pictures. The pictures and papers were sold
by the drawing-master. The world was then
in a ferment on the subject of the gallant
Poles, and we liked nothing so well for
Christmas ornament as gay pictures of
Polish lancers dashing down into the thick
of battle. Such scenes, and the Siege of
Antwerp, very rich in reds and yellows, and,
next to these, pictures of horses, we
conceived to be at the head of the Fine Arts, and
sought accordingly; for, during the Christmas
week, our rooms were to be picture-galleries.
That was not all. Every desk was to be
illuminated with the greatest attainable
blaze of little tapers; and there was a rivalry
among us, each attempting to outshine his
neighbours. That was not all. We devoted
our leisure to constructive works, erected stables
and mangers, cottages, palaces, and cathedrals
of cardboard; cut out elaborately
ornamented windows, and filled them with bits of
coloured paper oiled to represent stained
glass. Into our stables, cottages, palaces and
cathedrals, we put tapers, and made the
whole school a complete maze of tapers,
pictures, and transparencies, combined with
a tasteful and liberal display of sugar-ornaments,
apples, walnuts, and presents generally,
among which, skates and butterfly-cases
were the leading articles. The good people
of the town, whom we saw only then, and at
our school oratorios, came round to wonder
at our fairy-land; a very fairy-land it was to
us, whatever they in their wisdom may have
thought about it. For weeks afterwards we
played at marbles for our walnuts, and so
great was the glut of them that one
successful speculator, who was master of the
bottom drawer of a chest, was commonly
supposed to have filled that drawer with his
winnings.

When the year was on the point of departure,
we sat up and went to chapel soon after
eleven o'clock. Then, when the worthy
preacher, on the stroke of midnight, was
balancing a sentence on his two extended
fingers, the clock would chime, and our dear
friends, the trumpets, would dash in with a
sudden crash, and smash the discourse in an
instant without mercy; down sat the
preacher and up rose the people with a
stirring hymn, accompanied by the pealing
organ, and the flutes, and horns, and
fiddles.

So we began the year with a stir at
our hearts and quickened fancy; so we
carried it through. The faculties that made
us happiest, and that were given for wise
purposes in special strength to children, were
called into full play.

We kept all birthdays in a room. If there
were twenty boys and two brothers, there
were twenty-two birthdays a year to keep.
Each boy received on his anniversary, little
love-tokens from his comrades, and
contributed in return a scrap of pocket-money
towards the establishment of a small feast on
the next half holiday: a feast of cakes and
cider in a country orchard, when the season
favoured: or, in cold weather, of chocolate and
cakes at home. The birthday of either of the
two brothers would be kept more solemnly.
Before he came down in the morning, a little
table before his desk would be covered with
a snowy napkin, and upon the napkin would
be placed our offerings. Always, there was a
pipe with cunningly-worked stem and splendid
bowl. Every working brother possessed
a cupboard full of such pipes, and was as glad
to be so richly stocked, as any English lady is
when she is mistress of a wardrobe full of
dresses. If it were not really so, we thought so,
and were never interrupted in such thinking.
To the pipe, we added any other trifles that
we imagined likely to give pleasure, and
some articles contributed by individuals out
of their own possessions. We put a mighty
nosegay in the background, and tricked out
with flowers all our sacrifice. Then, when
the good brother came down, of course we said
many a kind thing to him, and had many a kind
thing said to us. And in the afternoon we
were repaid with perhaps a sail down the
broad river to some celestial inn among the
mountains and the vines, where we had real
Malaga wine instead of cider, and cakes only
fit to be eaten with such nectar.

Very puerile, perhaps, all this was, but
therefore, as a Dominie would say, most fit for