. How his
imagination dwells on the family party at Christmas. When I first saw
him, he was fancying how the presence of Miss Dorothy would gladden his
father's heart at that season. Now he enlarges the circle, but it is
still the same predominant idea. He has lost his mother. She must have
been a good woman, and his early home must have been a happy one. The
Christmas hearth would not be so uppermost in his thoughts if it had
been otherwise. This speaks well for him and his. I myself think much of
Christmas and all its associations. I always dine at home on Christmas
Day, and measure the steps of my children's heads on the wall, and see
how much higher each of them has risen since the same time last year,
in the scale of physical life. There are many poetical charms in the
heraldings of Christmas. The halcyon builds its nest on the tranquil
sea. "The bird of dawning singeth all night long." I have never verified
either of these poetical facts. I am willing to take them for granted.
I like the idea of the Yule-log, the enormous block of wood carefully
selected long before, and preserved where it would be thoroughly dry,
which burned on the old-fashioned hearth. It would not suit the stoves
of our modem saloons. We could not burn it in our kitchens, where a
small fire in the midst of a mats of black iron, roasts, and bakes,
and boils, and steams, and broils, and fries, by a complicated apparatus
which, whatever may be its other virtues, leaves no space for a
Christmas fire. I like the festoons of holly on the walls and windows;
the dance under the mistletoe; the gigantic sausage; the baron of beef;
the vast globe of plum-pudding, the true image of the earth, flattened
at the poles; the tapping of the old October; the inexhaustible bowl
of punch; the life and joy of the old hall, when the squire and his
household and his neighbourhood were as one. I like the idea of what has
gone, and I can still enjoy the reality of what remains. I have no doubt
Harry's father bums the Yule-log, and taps the old October. Perhaps,
instead of the beef, he produces a fat pig roasted "hole, like Eumaeus,
the divine swineherd in the _Odyssey_. How Harry will burn the Yule-log
if he can realise this day-dream of himself and his six friends with
the seven sisters! I shall make myself acquainted with the position and
characters of these young suitors. To be sure, it is not my business,
and I ought to recollect the words of Cicero: "Est enim diffic