rld looks back. That day holds time together. Isaiah, standing on the
peaks of prophecy, looked across ruined empires and the desolations of
many centuries, and saw on the horizon the new star arise, and was glad.
On this night eighteen hundred years ago, Jove was discrowned, the Pagan
heaven emptied of its divinities, and Olympus left to the solitude of its
snows. On this night, so many hundred years bygone, the despairing voice
was heard shrieking on the Aegean, "Pan is dead, great Pan is dead!" On
this night, according to the fine reverence of the poets, all things that
blast and blight are powerless, disarmed by sweet influence:--

"Some say that ever 'gainst the season comes
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated
The bird of dawning singeth all night long;
And then they say no spirit dares stir abroad;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike;
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm:
So hallowed and so gracious is the time."

The flight of the Pagan mythology before the new faith has been a
favourite subject with the poets; and it has been my custom for many
seasons to read Milton's "Hymn to the Nativity" on the evening of
Christmas-day. The bass of heaven's deep organ seems to blow in the
lines, and slowly and with many echoes the strain melts into silence. To
my ear the lines sound like the full-voiced choir and the rolling organ
of a cathedral, when the afternoon light streaming through the painted
windows fills the place with solemn colours and masses of gorgeous gloom.
To-night I shall float my lonely hours away on music:--

"The oracles are dumb,
No voice or hideous hum
Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving:
Apollo from his shrine
Can no more divine
With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving.
No nightly trance or breathed spell
Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.

"The lonely mountains o'er,
And the resounding shore,
A voice of weeping heard and loud lament:
From haunted spring, and dale
Edged with poplars pale,
The parting genius is with sighing sent:
With flower-enwoven tresses torn
The nymphs in twilight shades of tangled thickets mourn.

"Peor and Baalim
Forsake their temples dim
With that twice-battered god of Palestine;
And mooned Ashtaroth,
Heaven's queen and mother both,
Now sit