befall.
But stay! but stay! methinks my sight,
Better inform'd by clearer light,
Discerns sereneness in that brow,
That all contracted seem'd but now.
His revers'd face may show distaste,
And frown upon the ills are past;
But that which this way looks is clear,
And smiles upon the New-born Year.
He looks too from a place so high,
The Year lies open to his eye;
And all the moments open are
To the exact discoverer.
Yet more and more he smiles upon
The happy revolution.
Why should we then suspect or fear
The influences of a year,
So smiles upon us the first morn,
And speaks us good so soon as born?
Plague on't! the last was ill enough,
This cannot but make better proof;
Or, at the worst, as we brush'd through
The last, why so we may this too;
And then the next in reason shou'd
Be superexcellently good:
For the worst ills (we daily see)
Have no more perpetuity,
Than the best fortunes that do fall;
Which also bring us wherewithal
Longer their being to support,
Than those do of the other sort:
And who has one good year in three,
And yet repines at destiny,
Appears ungrateful in the case,
And merits not the good he has.
Then let us welcome the New Guest
With lusty brimmers of the best;
Mirth always should Good Fortune meet,
And renders e'en Disaster sweet:
And though the Princess turn her back,
Let us but line ourselves with sack,
We better shall by far hold out,
Till the next Year she face about.

How say you, reader--do not these verses smack of the rough
magnanimity of the old English vein? Do they not fortify like a
cordial; enlarging the heart, and productive of sweet blood, and
generous spirits, in the concoction? Where be those puling fears of
death, just now expressed or affected?--Passed like a cloud--absorbed
in the purging sunlight of clear poetry--clean washed away by a wave
of genuine Helicon, your only Spa for these hypochondries--And now
another cup of the generous! and a merry New Year, and many of them,
to you all, my masters!

MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST

"A clear fire, a clean hearth, and the rigour of the game." This was
the celebrated _wish_ of old Sarah Battle (now with God) who, next
to her devotions, loved a good game at whist. She was none of your
lukewarm gamesters, your half and half players, who have no objection
to take a hand, if you want one to make up a rubber; who affirm that