nd fear. Darkness and silence have a power of sorcery over the
past; the soul has then, too, often restored to it feelings and thoughts
that it had lost, and is made to know that nothing it once experiences
ever perishes, but that all things spiritual possess a principle of
immortal life.

Why linger on the shadowy wall some of those phantasmagoria--returning
after they have disappeared--and reluctant to pass away into their
former oblivion? Why shoot others athwart the gloom, quick as spectral
figures seen hurrying among mountains during a great storm? Why do some
glare and threaten--why others fade away with a melancholy smile? Why
_that one_--a Figure all in white, and with white roses in her
hair--come forward through the haze, beautifying into distincter form
and face, till her pale beseeching hands almost touch our neck--and
then, in a moment, it is as nothing?

But now the room is disenchanted--and feebly our lamp is glimmering,
about to leave us to the light of the moon and stars. There it is
trimmed again--and the sudden increase of lustre cheers the heart within
us like a festal strain. And To-Morrow--To-Morrow is Merry Christmas;
and when its night descends there will be mirth and music, and the
light sound of the merry-twinkling feet within these now so melancholy
walls--and sleep, now reigning over all the house save this one room,
will be banished far over the sea--and morning will be reluctant to
allow her light to break up the innocent orgies.

Were every Christmas of which we have been present at the celebration,
painted according to nature--what a Gallery of Pictures! True that a
sameness would pervade them all--but only that kind of sameness that
pervades the nocturnal heavens. One clear night always is, to common
eyes, just like another; for what hath any night to show but one moon
and some stars--a blue vault, with here a few braided, and there a few
castellated, clouds? Yet no two nights ever bore more than a family
resemblance to each other before the studious and instructed eye of him
who has long communed with Nature, and is familiar with every smile and
frown on her changeful, but not capricious, countenance. Even so with
the Annual Festivals of the heart. Then our thoughts are the stars that
illumine those skies--and on ourselves it depends whether they shall be
black as Erebus, or brighter than Aurora.

"Thoughts! that like spirits trackless come and go"--

is a fine line of Charles