curdling
ghost story at Christmas quite as much as their twentieth-century
descendants. They confided in prognostics, and believed in the
influence of particular times and seasons; and at Christmastide they
derived peculiar pleasure from their belief in the immunity of the
season from malign influences--a belief which descended to Elizabethan
days, and is referred to by Shakespeare, in "Hamlet":--

"Some say that ever 'gainst that 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."

[Illustration: ADORATION OF THE MAGI
OLD GLASS WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL]

We cannot pass over this period without mentioning a great Christmas
in the history of our Teutonic kinsmen on the Continent, for the
Saxons of England and those of Germany have the same Teutonic origin.
We refer to

THE CROWNING OF CHARLEMAGNE EMPEROR OF THE ROMANS ON CHRISTMAS DAY.

The coronation took place at Rome, on Christmas Day, in the year 800.
Freeman[11] says that when Charles was King of the Franks and Lombards
and Patrician of the Romans, he was on very friendly terms with the
mighty Offa, King of the Angles that dwelt in Mercia. Charles and Offa
not only exchanged letters and gifts, but each gave the subjects of
the other various rights in his dominions, and they made a league
together, "for that they two were the mightiest of all the kings that
dwelt in the Western lands." As conqueror of the old Saxons in
Germany, Charles may be regarded as the first King of all Germany, and
he was the first man of any Teutonic nation who was called Roman
Emperor. He was crowned with the diadem of the Caesars, by Pope Leo, in
the name of Charles Augustus, Emperor of the Romans. And it was held
for a thousand years after, down to the year 1806, that the King of
the Franks, or, as he was afterwards called, the King of Germany, had
a right to be crowned by the Pope of Rome, and to be called Emperor of
the Romans. In the year 1806, however, the Emperor Francis the Second,
who was also King of Hungary and Archduke of Austria, resigned the
Roman Empire and the Kingdom of Germany. Since that time no Emperor of
the Romans has been chosen; but a new German Emperor has been created,
and the event may be regarded as one of Christ