s for later times to traverse. Milton felt the true
sentiment of Northern Christmas when he opened his poem with the
'winter wild,' in defiance of historical probability and what the
French call local colouring. Nothing shows how wholly we people of
the North have appropriated Christmas, and made it a creature of our
own imagination, more than this dwelling on winds and snows and
bitter frosts, so alien from the fragrant nights of Palestine. But
Milton's hymn is like a symphony, embracing many thoughts and
periods of varying melody. The music of the seraphim brings to his
mind the age of gold, and that suggests the judgment and the
redemption of the world. Satan's kingdom fails, the false gods go
forth, Apollo leaves his rocky throne, and all the dim Phoenician
and Egyptian deities, with those that classic fancy fabled, troop
away like ghosts into the darkness. What a swell of stormy sound is
in those lines! It recalls the very voice of Pan, which went abroad
upon the waters when Christ died, and all the utterances of God on
earth, feigned in Delphian shrines, or truly spoken on the sacred
hills, were mute for ever.

After Milton came the age which, of all others, is the prosiest in
our history. We cannot find much novelty of interest added to
Christmas at this time. But there is one piece of poetry that
somehow or another seems to belong to the reign of Anne and of the
Georges--the poetry of bells. Great civic corporations reigned in
those days; churchwardens tyrannised and were rich; and many a
goodly chime of bells they hung in our old church-steeples. Let us
go into the square room of the belfry, where the clock ticks all
day, and the long ropes hang dangling down, with fur upon their hemp
for ringers' hands above the socket set for ringers' feet. There we
may read long lists of gilded names, recording mountainous
bob-majors, rung a century ago, with special praise to him who
pulled the tenor-bell, year after year, until he died, and left it
to his son. The art of bell-ringing is profound, and requires a long
apprenticeship. Even now, in some old cities, the ringers form a
guild and mystery. Suppose it to be Christmas Eve in the year 1772.
It is now a quarter before twelve, and the sexton has unlocked the
church-gates and set the belfry door ajar. Candles are lighted in
the room above, and jugs of beer stand ready for the ringers. Up
they bustle one by one, and listen to the tickings of the clock that
tells the pa