hopes? [An organ strikes up in the street at
this word, as if to answer me in the affirmative. Right thou old
spirit of harmony, wandering about in that ark of thine, and touching
the public ear with sweetness and an abstraction! Let the multitude
bustle on, but not unarrested by thee and by others, and not
unreminded of the happiness of renewing a wise childhood.] As to our
old friends the chestnuts, if anybody wants an excuse to his dignity
for roasting them, let him take the authority of Milton. 'Who now,'
says he lamenting the loss of his friend Deodati,--'who now will help
to soothe my cares for me, and make the long night seem short with his
conversation; while the roasting pear hisses tenderly on the fire, and
the nuts burst away with a noise,--

'And out of doors a washing storm o'erwhelms
Nature pitch-dark, and rides the thundering elms?'"

[Illustration]

CHRISTMAS IN THE HIGHLANDS.

[Illustration]

From Grant's "Popular Superstitions of the Highlands" Hone gathered
the following account:--

"As soon as the brightening glow of the eastern sky warns the anxious
house-maid of the approach of Christmas Day, she rises full of
anxiety at the prospect of her morning labours. The meal, which was
steeped in the _sowans-bowie_ a fortnight ago, to make the
_Prechdachdan sour_, or _sour scones_, is the first object of her
attention. The gridiron is put on the fire, and the sour scones are
soon followed by hard cakes, soft cakes, buttered cakes, brandered
bannocks, and pannich perm. The baking being once over, the sowans pot
succeeds the gridiron, full of new sowans, which are to be given to
the family, agreeably to custom, this day in their beds. The
sowans are boiled into the consistence of molasses, when the
_Lagan-le-vrich_, or yeast bread, to distinguish it from boiled
sowans, is ready. It is then poured into as many bickers as there are
individuals to partake of it, and presently served to the whole, old
and young. It would suit well the pen of a Burns, or the pencil of a
Hogarth, to paint the scene which follows. The ambrosial food is
despatched in aspiring draughts by the family, who soon give evident
proofs of the enlivening effects of the _Lagan-le-vrich_. As soon as
each despatches his bicker, he jumps out of bed--the elder branches to
examine the ominous signs of the day,[84] and the younger to enter on
its amusements. Flocking to the swing, a favourite amusement on this
occasion, the youngest of