you should now and then acquire a
better knowledge of other nations than you
had before, it will not be time misspent; for
I honestly believe that most of the wars and
ill feeling between nations, arise from not
knowing each other better.

           HOLIDAYS.

THEY come to us but once in life,
    The holidays of Yule;
When, wild as captives from the cage,
    We bounded home from school.
Unshackled by the dreary task—
    All lessons put away;
The world a bright revolving mask
    Of pantomime and play.

What welcome shall we ever have
    Till this long journey ends.
Like that which marked the merry time
    From sisters and from friends?
When presents given and received,
    Brought heart to heart in view,
And every day was golden-leaved,
    With wonders rich and new!

The Christmas sights, the Christmas lights,
    The Christmas nights, how grand
To us who walked the glittering lanes
    Of boyhood's fairyland!
Remote among its spangled bowers
    Old memories parade,
And watch the gorgeous bubbling hours
    All rise, and burst, and fade.

We will not sigh to see them pass—
    To know them was enough;
Nay, Father, let us joy that we
    Were made of sterner stuff.
Who then enjoyed the Yule Log's blaze
    In retrospect enjoys:
So, welcome to your holidays,
    My merry girls and boys!

Be blissful in the time of bliss,
    Unloosed from toil and school:
They come to you but once in life,
    These holidays of Yule.
For us, among the world's dark ways,
    Our eyes are on one star,
Beyond which shine our holidays,
    Though dim, and distant far.

       GHOSTLY PANTOMIMES.

WE take it for granted that every reader
of Household Words has a due respect for
Pantomimes. Whether Pantomime be of
Greek or Italian origin; whether it be a mere
exuberance of animal spirits, or whether it
possess a psychological meaning beneath its
grotesque exterior; are questions into which
we shall not enter. We do not (like Chaucer's
Wife of Bath) " speak of many hundred years
ago," but only of one hundred; simply
proposing to show the sort of Christmas
entertainment which beguiled the holidays of our
great grandmothers and great grandfathers,
in the reign of George the Second. We will
enter, in the spirit, a theatre of those days,
and see it, as Dr. Johnson and Hogarth
might have seen it. We will behold the
oil-lamps, and the candles that required snuffing;
the beaux with their periwigs and swords,
and the belles with their hoops and powder.
We will hear the laughter of lips that have
become mere earth in unnumbered graves,
and the whispering of silks; we will see the
fluttering of the fans, like butterflies in summer
air. And we will see the actors and
the scenery which our forefathers and
foremothers saw, and applaud or hiss, as it
pleases us, the " new Pantomime " which is
now a century old.

We propose to effect this necromancy by
means of a magazine of the day. There is
something, we think, strangely interesting
in those old records which bring us into close
and vital connexion with our predecessors in
their daily life. To be informed of the great
events of any era, however distant, seems
to be a matter of course: but to be able
to rescue the trivialities of an hour from
utter extinction; to live with our ancestors
whom we never knew, and to see them,
not on the public stage of history, but in
their private and familiar ways; to be able
to fix and perpetuate what might have
seemed as evanescent as a breath, as
quickly-fading as the hues of sunset;—this is the
true association of our own humanities with
those of perished generations. We see the
sparkle of eyes, and hear the sound of
voices, that had faded into the great Eternity
before ourselves were born. Surely
these things have their interest. They are
the electric telegraphs of Time, which link
the living and the dead in a common
brotherhood.

Before we start for the theatre, a few
observations on the general character of
pantomimic entertainments a century ago, may not
be amiss. At that period—if contemporary
accounts may be trusted—as great a
preponderance of spectacle over the more intellectual
features of the drama existed, as that with
which the present age has been charged.
Pantomimes, accordingly, were highly popular;
and in number nine of The World, bearing
date March first, seventeen hundred and
fifty-three, we find a suggestion which might do
admirably for reproduction by any dramatic critic
of our own day, exasperated at the withdrawal
of the double orders, and finding his stock of
original irony approaching nearly to a close.
"It were to be wished," says this writer, "that
the managers would have done entirely both
with tragedy and comedy, and resolve at once
to entertain the town only with Pantomime;
people of taste and fashion having already
given sufficient proof that they think it the
highest entertainment the stage is capable of
affording." And in number forty- three of
the same publication, it is remarked that when
certain reforms shall have been introduced
into this species of drama, " Everybody must
allow that a Pantomime will be a most
rational and instructive entertainment; and it is
to be hoped that none but principal performers