the moralist is right! But who can assure us of its ever having been present? Where are the proofs ? The old year!-Hath it not passed away like a summer cloud?-True, but the shower which hath descended therefrom has widely altered the aspect and appearance of our earth. The bud has expanded into blossom-the gay blossom, likewise, has "fallen into the sere and yellow leaf;" and the withered leaf itself has been swept away by the stream! In the breast of youth, hope has given place to disappointment, and there is a wrinkle on the brow of age, like the traces of the shower, bearing witness that it has been! And ask you for further proof? Now it is that the brain of man is teeming with new projects, and busying itself in forming good resolves! Projects and resolutions are, however, easier formed than executed; and therefore, of the thousands who start upon a fresh race, the majority never attain the imaginary goal. Some, afflicted wit shortness of breathing, are soon obliged to relinquish the contest, and contentedly take to their old paces; whilst others, like the over-hasty Nisus, stumble at the very threshhold of success, when the prize is all but won! This is the month of abundant snows, and all the intensity of frost. Keen biting frost is in the ground; and in the air a bitter, scythe-edged, perforating wind from the north to the north-east, sweeps the descending snow along, whirling it from the open fields, and driving it against whatever opposes its course. People who are obliged to be passing to and fro muffle up their faces, and bow their heads to the blast. There is no loitering, no street gossiping, no stopping to make recognition of each other; they shuffle along, the most winterly objects of the scene, bearing on their fronts the tokens of the storm. Against every house, rock, or bank, the snowdrift accumulates. It curls over the tops of walls and hedges in fantastic wildness, forming often the most perfect curves, resembling the scrolls of Ionic capitals, and showing beneath them romantic caves and canopies. -Hollow lanes, pits, and bogs, now become traps for the unwary traveller, the snow filling them up, and the wind leveling all to one deceitful plain. It is a dismal time for the traversers of the wide and open heaths, and one of toil and danger to the shepherd in mountainous tracts. There the snows fall in amazing quantities in the course of a few hours; and, driven by the powerful winds of those lofty regions, soon fill up the dells and glens to a vast depth. The delights of the social hearth on such evenings as these, when the wild winds are howling around uor dwellings, dashing the snow or hail or splashing rain against our windows, are a favorite theme with poets and essayists, and truly it is an inspiring topic. All our ideas of comfort, of domestic affection, of social and literary enjoyment, are combined in the picture which they draw of the winter's fire-side. When Cowper exclaims, "Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast," who does not feel his heart expand at the thoughts of his own beloved fireside circle, and follow the poet with kindling sympathy through his ensuing apostrophe to winter, and his picture of evening enjoyment ? Such is a Winter Fireside! and we love to hear our writers speaking of its pleasures in strains of enthusiasm. But we may expand the picture. We may add, to the zest of its personal and almost too selfish enjoyments, touches of generous and philanthropic sentiment, which will signally heighten its pleasures, and enlarge its power of improving the heart. How delightful, whilst sitting in the midst of our family or friendly group, in the actual possession of all these pleasures, not only to contemplate our own happiness, but to send our thoughts abroad over the whole ing our sympathies to the joys and sorrows of our kind, and arousing us to a course of active benevolence. land, and to think what thousands of families are, at the same moment, thus blessedly collected round the social flame! What hearths are lighted up with all the charms of kindred affection, of mature wisdom, and parental pride; of youthful gladness, gaiety, and beauty! Here rural halls and city-homes, like stars, are shining in their own spheres, in unabated warmth and splendor, though hidden beneath the broad veil of wintry darkness; -the lover's evening visit,-song, the wild tale told to the listening circle, or the unfolded stores of polite literature, making each a little paradise. But we must turn our eyes from the bright side of the picture to the dark one ;-to the "huts where poor men lie," where the elegances and amenities of life are not casting their glow, but a frosty wind blows upon shivering groups, who have little fire or clothes to defend them from its bitterness where no light laugh rings through the room; no song is heard; no romantic tale, or mirthful conversation, circles among smiling faces and happy hearts; but the father, "Il satisfied keen nature's clamorous call, Stretch'd on his straw, himself lies down to sleep, While through the rugged roof and chinky wall Chill o'er his slumbers piles the drifty heap ;" where the mother sees not her rosy and laughing children snugly consigned to their warm, soft beds, but contemplates, with a heart deadened by the miseries of to-day, and the fears of to-morrow, a sad, little squalid crew around her, who, instead of pleasures and pastimes, know only wants and evils which oppress both soul and body; where perhaps illness has added its aggravations to the pains and languors of that poverty, which renders the indulgences of a sick room the most hopeless of all things. These are the speculations which tend to enhance our fireside pleasures, and to make those pleasures fruitful, link Of all the cold months in the year, commend me to January ! It is the May of winter! A season in which the ever-active mind culls its choicest flowers of recollection, while the heart is warmed with looks of happiness, and the hands with the blazing fire! When gay evergreens flourish upon shelves and chimney-pieces, and by the brightness and variety of their colors within doors, make up for the barren monotony of nature without! May the time be yet far distant, when this last link of the chain which unites the past with the present, shall be broken! It hath now, I know, become a fashion to heap ridicule and scorn upon every thing connected with the Good Old Times. But however much the plain manners and customs of our ancestors may be despised by the transcendant sapience of our own day, there is that about them, for which modern improvements can never fully compensate-the Romance of life! Long, then, very long, may it be, ere the few faint traces of antiquity which yet linger around us at the commencement of the New Year, are scouted hence by the unfeeling hand of self-constituted wisdom! I pretend not to be wiser than my forefathers, and would fain see the laurel, the holly, and the mistletoe, still adorn our habitations, and the reeking wassail bowl of proverbial hospitality in request, at least once in the year! May the joyous, because innocent, pleasure of the young (and who is not young amid youth and festivity ?), continue long to revive in our breasts the glorious remembrance of what we once were, and the faerie and the goblin tale share alternate attention with the laughter-creating sports of forfeits and blindman's buff. Seasons of the olden time-Oh that the honey-drop of inspiration had fallen on my lips!* Then indeed would I have caused your glories to bloom forever in immortal song, and enshrined your reminiscences in the breasts of unborn generations! As it is, I must content myself with merely breathing— A SIGH FOR THE PAST. Oh for the faeries' mystic dance! Ere science had torn the soft veil of romance When earth was but Fancy's domain ! And mountain and meadow, and forest, and vale, Were peopled by wonders:-and legend and tale Held captive the heart and the brain! Oh for the seasons of wild delight! And stript the dread wizard of power.- Wide scattering destruction from Lapland to Rejoicing in mortal despair! Oh for the laugh of innocent mirth! The revel and glee of the boisterous hearth, And left only sunshine behind. Oh for the feelings that then had birth! Ere sorrow had fix'd its abode on the earth, When Hope, with her " pencil of light," Portray'd the dark future, anclouded and gay, And years of regret 'neath its hallowing ray, ADVENTURE OF A LONDON TRAVELLER. "Take heed-have open eyes, for thieves do foot by night."-SHAKSPEARE. ALTHOUGH it may not occupy any very exalted rank in public estimation, there are perhaps few modes of active life more cheerful and pleasurable than the occupation of a commercial traveller. I mean the personage strictly and literally so termed, who, with a brace of saddle-bags, or a couple of dromedary-like bumps, traverses the country on horseback from one extremity to the other, exhibiting samples, procuring orders, and collecting debts for some substantial house in the city of London. Such has been my occupation for many years, and I would not change situation with my employers, though I believe them to be as opulent and as much respected as any firm upon 'Change. We travellers are the only representatives of your ancient knights-errant ;-the only trading amateurs who combine bu siness with pleasure; variety, air, exercise, and health, with debts and day-books, samples, shipping, and shopkeeping. If a man of this sort be fond of natural scenery, who can enjoy it in such diversity, and with so leisurely a luxury? If he delight in studying human nature, who has more pregnant opportunities He passes not through the country like a stage-coachman, conversant only with its external features, but dives into the heart of its society in his daily negotiations with its natives, and in his cosmopolitan and comprehensive views is enabled, much better than the philosopher in his closet, to compare, contrast, and relish the never-ending diversities of individual and collective character, Collison and observation make him, even in spite of himself, a citizen of the world. His cockneyism, if he had any, According to the ancient Druidic mythology, the bard received his inspiration from a drop of liquid, the produce of certain herbs and other mystic ingredients which were, for one twelvemonth and a day, boiled unceasingly in the cauldron of poetical endowment; and which drop, whoever was fortunate enough to swallow, became immediately possessed of poetic genius, and the secrets of the veiled future were revealed to his ken. forsakes him after the first journey; a second ruffian, which stretched me senseless upon the grass. his views become general and elemental, and he looks down from the high table-land of his own calm mind upon the moral as well as the material landscape, both of which seem to be outspread before him for his special observation and amusement. I assume his mind to be calm, for he is only an agent; he has the stimulus of business and the excitement of hope, without the constant cares of the one, or the painful disappointment of the other. Whenever I have an idle hour upon my hands, I love to devote it to billiards, which I consider a healthy and delightful recreation. In one of our great_manufacturing towns in the North, I had entered a public house for this purpose, which, as I afterwards found, was frequented by characters of the worst description; and incautiously mentioning that I was going to walk to Mr. M'B's, who resided two or three miles off, for the purpose of receiving a sum of money, I inquired the shortest road to his residence. One of the party present told me there was a way across the fields which would save half a mile, and gave me particular instructions how to find it, adding that it was a common thoroughfare, and I should doubtless see some of the men going or returning from the manufactory. Interested in my play, I pursued it rather longer than usual, but at length hurried away, discovered the footpath across the fields, received the banknotes, which, according to my invariable practice, I concealed in the lining of my waistcoat, and was returning briskly by the same path, just as the evening began to close around me, when, as I crossed a stile, I heard a rustling in the hedge, and on looking round beheld a villain advancing towards me with an uplifted bludgeon. I raised a stout stick with which I was provided, to repel the assault; but at the same moment received a tremendous blow upon the head from The villains, as it afterwards appeared, rifled my pockets of my watch, loose cash and papers, but without discovering my hidden treasure; and in this state of insensibility I was soon afterwards found by some good Samaritans of the lower orders, who, having ascertained that my pockets were empty, generously contented themselves with my hat and coat, as a fair remuneration for the trouble of carrying me to the hospital of a large suburban poor-house at no great distance. In this miserable establishment I fell into the hands of two occasional nurses then in the place, who, upon exercising a more rigorous scrutiny into my habiliments, with a view to those strays and waifs of plunder which such callous practitioners usually claim as their perquisite, discovered the hidden bank-notes, and divided them upon the spot as the best security for mutual secrecy. My wound was shortly examined and dressed by the hospital surgeon; but the severity of the blow, combining with a violent cold caught by lying upon the wet grass, produced a brain fever, which deprived me of my faculties for several days. In this state the nurse removed me from the public ward to a small detached room, under the pretext of my disturbing the other patients, but in reality that she might have a private chamber in which to give little suppers to her friends with the bank-notes which she had pilfered from my person. It was in this small chamber that, on awaking to recovered consciousness, I found myself lying upon a miserable truckle-bed, and felt that my arms were pinioned to my sides by a straight waistcoat, while I heard the hospital-clock toll the hour of midnight, accompanied by the hollow howling of the wind through the two long wards into which the building was divided. At first my faculties seemed but slowly to recover their power; and the attempt to arouse my memory to a recollection of the past, only served to mix it up in one confused mass with the present. By degrees, however, beginning to suspect that I had suffered under a temporary privation of reason, I endeavored, without speaking or moving, to divine the meaning of the scene before me, which was well calculated to confound and puzzle apprehension. Close to the blazing hearth was a large round table, whereon were flaring three unsnuffed tallow-candles, and in the centre of which fumed a brimming and capacious bowl, surrounded by a profuse display of viands, liquors, lemons, sugar, bottles, and glasses. On the mantel-piece were phials, boxes, lint, rags, cataplasms and surgical instruments; and on the fire beneath, a kettle of goodly dimensions was singing its quiet tune to two female figures who completely filled a couple of wide arm-chairs beside the board, eating, drinking, and chuckling with infinite perseverance and complacency. As one of them had her back to the bed, I could *not catch a glimpse of her face; but I observed a pair of red Atlantean shoulders, the flesh of which, heaving up on either side of the shoulder-strap, seemed anxious to escape from the restraint of its bandages. This, as I found by their conversation, was Mrs. Potts, a visitant to my appointed nurse Mrs. Graves, who sat opposite to her in all the dignity of voluminous and undulating fat; and I was enabled to make the further discovery that they were carousing upon the spoil which had been ferreted from the lining of my waistcoat. Falstaff typifying Mother Pratt, the fat woman of Brentford, was not a whit more corpulent and cumbersome than these triple-chinn'd harpies; and as their dialogue proceeded, I was more than once tempted to wish that I had Ford's cudgel in my hand, and Ford's vigor and good-will for its exercise. "Come, Mrs. Potts," quoth the worthy nurse, you don't drink ; fill your glass, fill your glass. Here have I been drinking Madeira ever since this lucky Godsend, to see if I could fancy it as well as Booth's best; but it's sad watery, washy stuff, compared to blue ruin or heavy wet. Howsomever, I put a bottle into this here bowl of punch, and I don't think it's much the worse." "Hark! there's the gentleman awake," cried Mrs. Potts, as I gave an involuntary groan at this appropriation of my money." Well, never mind if he is," replied Mrs. Graves. "Lord love you, he's as mad as a March hare; knows no more what he's talking about than the Pope of Rome."-"Oh, ay, cracked in the upper-story is he?they're rummish customers to deal with, those crazy chaps; but I don't dislike 'em, for one's not bound to pay any attention to their freaks and fancies. It isn't as if one had Christians to deal with. One on 'em played me a slippery trick, though, some years ago. I was dosing away in my chair, not much caring to get up and notice his clamor for water, when, would you believe it, ma'am? he jumps out of bed, and ere you could say Jack Robinson, whips me up in his arms, and claps me right slap upon a great blazing fire!" "Lord!" exclaimed Mrs. Graves, shrieking with laughter till her whole system swagged with repeated undulations, "how shocking! but it was monstrous comical though, warn't it?"-" Not so comical neither, ma'am, if I hadn't happened to have a thick stuff gown on, and a couple of flannel petticoats, so that I got off for this here burn upon my arm and the loss of my clothes. Business runs shameful slack, now, Mrs. Graves; no good jobs stirring; though, to be sure, the little bundle of flimsies done up so knowing in this chap's waistcoat was a famous haul; but we have no nice fevers; a terrible time since we had a good measles among the children, and no influenzy this here season as there |