Ye who have loved each other,
Sister, and friend, and brother,
In this fast-fading year;
Mother, and sire, and child,
Young man and maiden mild,
Come gather here.

And let your hearts grow fonder,
As memory shall ponder,

Each past unbroken vow;
Old loves and younger wooing
Are sweet in the renewing
Under the holly-bough.

Ye who have nourished sadness,
Estranged from hope and gladness,
In this fast-fading year;
Ye with o'er-burdened mind,
Made aliens from your kind,
Come gather here.

"A

CHARLES MACKAY.

So the birthday gathering is one of forgiveness, goodwill, and love, and He who turned water into wine at a public marriage, which He graced by His divine presence, will surely honour it. The salutations, merry Christmas," "A happy new Many happy returns of the day,"are they not essentially similar? Do they not breathe the spirit of the angels' song, "Peace on earth, goodwill among men ?" They tell us, after all, that

year," and "

THE EARTH IS FULL OF LOVE.

The earth is full of love, albeit the storms
Of passion mar its influence benign,

And drown its voice with discords. Every flower
That to the sun its heaving breast expands
Is born of love. And every song of bird
That floats, mellifluent, on the balmy air,
Is but a love-note. Heaven is full of love;
Its starry eyes run o'er with tenderness,
And soften every heart that meets their gaze,
As downward looking on this wayward world,
They light it back to God. But neither stars,
Nor flowers, nor song of birds, nor earth, nor
heaven,

So tell the wonders of that glorious name

As they shall be revealed, when comes the boon
Of Nature's consummation, hoped for long;
When, passed the checkered vestibule of time,
The creature in immortal youth shall bloom,
And good, unmixed with ill, for ever reign.

The celebrated Essayist from whom we have already quoted has said that "Every man hath two birthdays," one being New Year's Day.

This, like Christmas Day, is at once festive and solemn. It presents a close resemblance to our own birthday in this, that it marks the death of one year and the birth of another. When at the dawn of a birthday the joy-bells of the rich and great are vibrating in the old church towers, flinging solemn music over meadow and common, over heath and wood, over crowded dwellings and wide wild wastes, similar feelings are excited in the thoughtful mind to those which Tennyson embodies :

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light;
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow;
The year is going-let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

New Year's Day was a jovial old English festival, as the dramatists of 1661, Webb and Rowley, well expressed in their hearty and cordial "Song of January :"

Now doth jolly Janus greet your merriment;
For since the world's creation

I never changed my fashion;

'Tis good enough to fence the cold:

My hatchet serves to cut my firing yearly,

My bowl preserves the juice of grape and barley:
Fire, wine, and strong beer make me live so long here,
To give the merry New Year a welcome in!
All the potent powers of plenty wait upon
You that intend to be frolic to-day :

To Bacchus I commend ye, and Ceres eke attend ye,
To keep encroaching cares away.

That Boreas' blasts may never blow to harm you, Old Father Janeuere drinks a health to all here, To give the merry New Year a welcome in!

When this jovial song was penned, and long before and after that time, magnificent Christmas, New Year, and Birthday revels were kept at Court, in the City, and in the country houses of the nobility and gentry.

Queen Elizabeth, like her father Henry the Eighth, delighted in solemn, magnificent, and

flattering pageants, and so did her successors, James I. and Charles I. Ben Jonson's charming Masques, so rich in fancy and invention, were written for the festive anniversaries of the court of James and Charles. The queen and her ladies did not disdain to personate many allegorical characters. "The Masque of Queens" was performed by her Majesty and eleven noble ladies, at Whitehall, 1609. This consisted of a double masque, or two allegorical plays, the first being introductory to the second or Queen's Masque-in which the great ladies were seated in three chariots, the first drawn by eagles, the second by griffons," the last (the queen's) by lions. These were attended by numerous torch-bearers and masqued "After which," says Ben Jonson, (whose descriptions are often peculiarly racy,) a full triumphant music, singing this song, while they rode in state about the stage :

characters.

66

66

"Help, help, all tongues, to celebrate this wonder,
The voice of Fame should be as loud as thunder;
Her house is all of echo made,
Where never dies the sound;

And as her brow the clouds invade

Her feet do strike the ground.

Sing then, good Fame, that's out of Virtue born;
For, who doth Fame neglect, doth Virtue scorn.

Here," rare Ben continues, "they (the queen and her eleven ladies) lighted from their chariots, and danced forth their first dance: then a second immediately following it, both right curious and full of subtle and excellent changes, and seemed performed with no less spirits than of those they personated. The first was to the cornets, the second

to the violins. After which they took out the men, and danced the measures; entertaining the time, almost to the space of an hour, with singular variety; when, to give them rest from the music which attended the chariots, by that most excellent tenor voice and exact singer, Master Jo. Allin, this ditty was sung"-for the royal birthday :—

"When all the ages of the earth

Were crown'd but in this famous birth;
And that, when they would boast their store
Of worthy queens, they know no more:
How happier is that age can give

A queen, in whom all they do live.

"After it (Ben still speaks) succeeded their third dance, than which a more numerous composition could not be seen, graphically disposed into letters, and honouring the name of the most sweet and ingenious prince, Charles, Duke of York, wherein, beside that principal grace of perspicuity, the motions were so even and apt, and their expression so just, as if mathematicians had lost proportion they might there have found it. After this they danced galliards and corrantos. And then their last dance, no less elegant in the place than the rest, with which they took their chariots again, and triumphing above the stage, had their return to the House of Fame celebrated with this last song, which concludes:

all the glorious ways

"Force greatness
You can, it soon decays;

But so good Fame shall never:

Her triumphs, as their causes, are for ever."

The adulation of the poetical tributes

often

very gross was their worst feature. Happily we