none of us had then ever seen itself or its pic- and is poor pussy in view before the whole ture-wonderfully like the Parthenon. Enter- murderous pack, opening in full cry on her ing, you found yourself in a superb hall, haunches? Why-Imagination, thou art an lighted up-not with gas, for up to that era gas ass, and thy long ears at all times greedy of had not been used except in Pandemonium-deception! "Tis but the country Schoolhouse but with a vast multitude of farthing candles, pouring forth its long-imprisoned stream of life each in a turnip stuck into the wall-while a as in a sudden sunny thaw, the Mad Master chandelier of frozen snow-branches pendent flying in the var. of his helter-skelter scholars, from the roof set that presence-chamber in a and the whole yelling mass precipitated, many blaze. On a throne at the upper end sat young of them headlong, among the snow. Well do Christopher North-then the king of boys, as we know the fire-eyed Poet-pedagogue, who, now of men-and proud were his subjects to more outrageous than Apollo, has "ravished do him homage. In niches all around the all the Nine." Ode, elegy, epic, tragedy, or side-walls were couches covered with hare, farce-all come alike to him; and of all the rabbit, foumart, and fox's skins-furnished by bards we have ever known-and the sum-total these animals slain by us in the woods and cannot be under a thousand-he alone, judging among the rocks of that silvan and moorland from the cock and the squint of his eye, laparish-the regal Torus alone being spread bours under the blessing or the curse-we wot with the dun-deer's hide from Lochiel Forest not whilk it be-of perpetual inspiration. A in Lochaber. Then old airs were sung-in rare eye, too, is his at the setting of a spring sweet single voice-or in full chorus that for woodcocks, or tracking a mawkin on the startled the wandering night traveller on his snow. Not a daredevil in the school that way to the lone Kingswell; and then, in the durst follow the indentations of his toes and intermediate hush, old tales were told "of fingers up the wall of the old castle, to the goblin, ghost, or fairy," or of Wallace Wight holes just below the battlements, to thrust his at the Barns of Ayr or the Brigg o' Stirling- arm up to the elbows harrying the starlings or, a glorious outlaw, harbouring in caves nests. The corbies ken the shape of his shoul among the Cartlane Craigs-or of Robert ders, as craftily he threads the wood; and let Bruce the Deliverer, on his shelty cleaving in them build their domicil as high as the swingtwain the skull of Bohun the English knight, ing twigs will bear its weight, agile as squir on his thundering war-steed, armed cap-a-pie, rel, and as foumart ferocious, up speels, by while the King of Scotland had nothing on his the height undizzied, the dreadless Dominie; unconquered head but his plain golden crown. and should there be fledged or puddock-haired Tales of the Snow-house! Had we but the young ones among the wool, whirling with gutgenius to recall you to life in undying song! tural cawings down a hundred feet descent, on the hard rooty ground-floor from which springs pine, oak, or ash, driven out is the life, with a squelsh and a squash, from the worthless carrion. At swimming we should not boggle to back him for the trifle of a cool hundred against the best survivor among these waterserpents, Mr. Turner, Dr. Bedale, Lieutenant Ekenhead, Lord Byron, Leander, and Our selves-while, with the steel shiners on his soles, into what a set of ninnies in their ring would he not reduce the Edinburgh Skating Club? Nor was our frozen hall at all times uncheered by the smiles of beauty. With those smiles was heard the harmless love-whisper, and the harmless kiss of love; for the cottages poured forth their little lasses in flower-like bands, nor did their parents fear to trust them in the fairy frozen palace, where Christopher was king. Sometimes the old people themselves came to see the wonders of the lamp, and on a snowtable stood a huge bowl-not of snow-steaming with nectar that made Hyems smile as he hung his beard over the fragrant vapour. Nay, the minister himself-with his mother and Saw ye ever a Snowball Bicker? Never? sister-was with us in our fantastic festivities, Then look there with all the eyes in your head and gave to the architecture of our palace his-only beware of a bash on the bridge of your wondering_praise. Then Andrew Lindsey, the blind Paisley musician, a Latin scholar, who knew where Cremona stood, struck up on his famous fiddle jig or strathspey-and the swept floor, in a moment, was alive with a confused flight of foursome reels, each begun and ended with kisses, and maddened by many a whoop and yell-so like savages were we in our glee, dancing at the marriage of some island king! Countless years have fled since that Snowpalace melted away-and of all who danced there, how many are now alive! Pshaw! as many probably as then danced anywhere else. It would never do to live for ever-let us then live well and wisely; and when death comes -from that sleep how blessed to awake! in a region where is no frost-no snow-but the sun of eternal life! Mercy on us! what a hubbub!-can the harriers be hunting in such a snow-fall as this, nose, a bash that shall die the snow with your virgin blood. The Poet-pedagogue, alias the Mad Dominie, with Bob Howie as his Second in Command, has chosen the Six stoutest strip lings for his troop, and, at the head of that Sacred Band, offers battle to Us at the head of the whole School. Nor does that formidable force decline the combat. War levels all foolish distinctions of scholarship. Booby is Dux now, and Dux Booby-and the obscure dunce is changed into an illustrious hero. "The combat deepens-on, ye brave, Who rush to glory or the grave! Wave, Nitton, all thy banners wave, And charge with all thy schoolery!" Down from the mount on which it had been drawn up in battle-array, in solid-square comes the School army, with shouts that might waken the dead, and inspire with the breath of life the nostrils of the great Snow-giant built up at the end of yonder avenue, and indurated by last night's frost. But there lies a fresh fall-overthrow! Heavens and earth! sixty are and a better day for a Bicker never rose flakily flying before Six!—and half of sixty-oh! that from the yellow East. Far out of distance, we should record it!—are pretending to be dead!! and prodigal of powder lying three feet deep on Would indeed that the snow were their windthe flats, and heaped up in drifts to tree and ing-sheet, so that it might but hide our dischimney-top, the tirailleurs, flung out in front, honour! commence the conflict by a shower of balls that, from the bosom of the yet untrodden snow between the two battles, makes spin like spray the shining surface. Then falling back on the main body, they find their places in the front rank, and the whole mottled mass, gray, blue, and scarlet, moves onwards o'er the whiteness, a moment ere they close, "Calm as the breeze, but dreadful as the storm!" "Let fly," cries a clear voice-and the snowball-storm hurtles through the sky. Just then the valley-mouth blew sleety in the faces of the foe-their eyes, as if darkened with snuff or salt, blinked bat-like-and with erring aim flew their feckless return to that shower of frosty fire. Incessant is the silent cannonade of the resistless School-silent but when shouts proclaim the fall or flight of some doughty champion in the adverse legion. See-see-the Sacred Band are broken! The cravens taken ignominiously to flight-and the Mad Domine and Bob Howie alone are Look, we beseech you, at the Mad Dominie! like Hector issuing from the gates of Troy, and driving back the Greeks to their ships; or rather-hear, spirit of Homer!-like some great shaggy, outlandish wolf-dog, that hath swum ashore from some strange wreck, and, after a fortnight's famine on the bare seacliffs, been driven by the hunger that gnaws his stomach like a cancer, and the thirst-fever that can only be slaked in blood, to venture prowling for prey up the vale, till, snuffing the scent of a flock of sheep, after some grim tiger-like creeping on his belly, he springs at last, with huge long spangs, on the woolly people, with bull-like growlings quailing their poor harmless hearts, and then fast throttling them, one after another-till, as it might seem rather in wantonness of rage than in empty pangs, he lies down at last in the midst of all the murdered carcasses, licking the blood off his flews and paws-and then, looking and listening round with his red turbid eyes, and left to bear the brunt of battle. A dreadful sharp-pointed ears savagely erect, conscious brotherhood! But the bashing balls are show-of crime and fearful of punishment, soon as ered upon them right and left from scores of catapultic arms-and the day is going sore against them, though they fight less like men than devils. Hurra! the Dominie's down, and Bob staggers. "Guards, up and at them!" "A simultaneous charge of cocks, hens, and yearocks!" No sooner said than done. Bob Howie is buried-and the whole School is trampling on its Master! "Oh, for a blast of that dread horn, That to King Charles did come, On Roncesvalles died!" The smothered ban of Bob, and the stifled denunciations of the Dominie, have echoed o'er the hill, and, "Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell," he sees and hears that all the coast is clear hind the ears, and then eats into the kidneys and still, again gloatingly fastens his tusks beof the fattest of the flock, till, sated with gore and tallow, he sneaks stealthily into the wood, and coiling himself up all his wiry lengthnow no longer lank, but swollen and knotted like that of a deer-devouring snake-he falls suddenly asleep, and re-banquets in a dream of murder. That simile was conceived in the spirit of Dan Homer, but delivered in that of Kit North. No matter. Like two such wolf-dogs are now Bob Howie and the Mad Dominie-and the School like such silly sheep. Those other hell dogs are leaping in the rear-and to the eyes of fear and flight each one of the Six seems more many-headed than Cerberus, while their mouths kindle the frosty air into fire, and thun the runaways, shaking the snows of panic derbolts pursue the pell-mell of the panic. from their pows, "Like dewdrops from the lion's mane," come rushing to the rescue. Two of the Six tremble and turn. The high heroic scorn of their former selves urges four to renew the charge, and the sound of their feet on the snow is like that of an earthquake. What bashes on bloody noses! What bungings-up of eyes! Of lips what slittings! Red is many a spittle! And as the coughing urchin groans, and claps his hand to his mouth, distained is the snowball that drops unlaunched at his feet! The School are broken-their hearts die within them-and-can we trust our blasted eyes?— the white livers show the white feather, and fly! O shame! O sorrow! O sin! they turn their backs and fly! Disgraced are the mothers that bore them-and "happy in my mind," wives and widows, "were ye that died," undoomed to hear the tidings of this wretched Such and so imaginative is not only mental but corporal fear. What though it be but a Snowball bicker! The air is darkened-no, brightened by the balls, as in many a curve they describe their airy flight-some hard as stones-some soft as slush-some blae and drippy in the cold-hot hand that launches them on the flying foe, and these are the teazerssome almost transparent in the cerulean sky, and broken ere they reach their aim, abortive "armamentaria cœli ”—and some useless from the first, and felt, as they leave the palm, to be fozier than the foziest turnip, and unfit to bash a fly. Far and wide, over hill, bank, and brae, are spread the flying School! Squads of us, at sore sixes and sevens, are making for the frozen woods. Alas! poor covert now in their naked leaflessness for the stricken deer! Twos and threes, in miserable plight floundering in drift-wreaths! And here and there-wofulest sight of all-single boys distractedly ettling at | bless him!-to guard us from scathe, would the sanctuaries of distant houses-with their have risked his life against a whole crael of heads all the while insanely twisted back over tinkers. their shoulders, and the glare of their eyes to receive us; but our blood is up-and we With open arms they come forward fixed frightfully on the swift-footed Mad Dom- are jealous of the honour of the School, which inie, till souse over neck and ears, bubble and has received a stain which must be wiped out squeak, precipitated into traitorous pitfall, and in blood. From what mixed motives act boys in a moment evanished from this upper world! and men in the deeds deemed most heroic, and Disturbed crows fly away a short distance worthy of the meed of everlasting fame! Even and alight silent-the magpies chatter pert so is it now with us-when sternly eyeing the even in alarm-the lean kine, collected on the other Six, and then respectfully the Mad Domilown sides of braes, wonder at the rippet-nie, we challenge-not at long bowls-but toe their horns moving, but not their tails-while to toe, at the scratch on the snow, with the the tempest-tamed bull-almost dull now as an naked mawlies, the brawny boy with the red ox-gives a short sullen growl as he feebly shock-head, the villain with the carrots, who paws the snow. by moonlight nights, But who is he-the tall slender boy-slender, "But be hush'd, my dark spirit-for wisdom condemns, had dared to stand between us and the ladye winking?" And now we play around him, Half a century is annihilated as if it had never been: it is as if young Kit had become not old Kit but were standing now as then front to-and ask considerately, "what he means by front, with but a rood of trampled snow between them, before the Mad Dominie and Bob Howie-both the bravest of the brave in Snowball or Stone bicker-in street, lane, or muir fight-hand to hand, single-pitched with Black King Carey of the Gipsies-or in irregular high-road row-two to twelve-with a gang of Irish horse-cowpers from the fair of Glasgow returning by Portpatrick to Donaghadee. "Tis a strange thing so distinctly to see One's Self as he looked of yore-to lose one's present frail personal identity in that of the powerful past. Or rather to admire One's Self as he was, without consciousness of the mean vice of egotism, because of the pity almost bordering on contempt with which One regards One's Self as he is, shrivelled up into a sort of shrimp of a man-or blown out into a flounder. The Snowball bicker owns an armisticeand Kit North-that is, we of the olden and the golden time-advance into the debatable ground between the two armies, with a frozen branch in our hand as a flag of truce. The Mad Dominie loved us, because then-a-daysbating and barring the cock and the squint of his eye-we were like himself a poet, and while a goose might continue standing on one leg, could have composed one jolly act of a tragedy, or book of an epic, while Bob-God He is brought down now to our own weight- And so ended the famous Snowball Bicker of all life-long, and carry with them their puer all imaginable orders of architecture-till the shadowy roof, gleaming with golden cupolas, like the cloud-region of the setting sun, set the ility to the grave. Twould be well for the that "The boy is father of the man," and thus libelling the author of their existence. A poor boy indeed must he have been, who submitted to misery when the sun was new in heaven. Did he hate or despise the flowers around his feet, congratulating him on being young like themselves? the stars, young always, though Heaven only knows how many million years old, every night sparkling in happiness which they manifestly wished him to share? Did he indeed in his heart believe that the moon, in spite of her shining mid-| night face, was made of green cheese? Not only are the foundations dug and laid in boyhood, of all the knowledge and the feelings of our prime, but the ground-flat too built, and often the second story of the entire superstructure, from the windows of which, the soul looking out, beholds nature in her state, and leaps down, unafraid of a fall on the green or white bosom of earth, to join with hymns the front of the procession. The soul afterwards perfects her palace-building up tier after tier of Gaze up on the highest idea-gaze down on the profoundest emotion-and you will know and feel in a moment that it is not a new birth. You become a devout believer in the Pythago rean and Platonic doctrine of metempsychosis and reminiscence, and are awed by the mysterious consciousness of the thought "BEFORE!" Try then to fix its date, and back travels your soul, now groping its way in utter darkness, and now in darkness visible-now launching along lines of steady lustre: such as the moon throws on the broad bosoms of starry lakesnow dazzled by sudden contrast "Blind with excess of light!" But back let it travel, as best or worst it may, through and amidst eras after eras of the wan or radiant past; yet never, except for some sweet instant of delusion, breaking dewdroplike at a touch or a breath, during all that perilous pilgrimage-and perilous must it be, haunted by so many ghosts- -never may it reach the shrine it seeks the fountain from which first flowed that feeling whose origin seems to have been out of the world of timedare we say-in eternity! CHRISTMAS DREAMS. How graciously provided are all the subdivisions of Time, diversifying the dream of human life! And why should moralists mourn over the mutability that gives the chief charm to all that passes so transitorily before our eyes!-leaving image upon image in the waters of memory, that can bear being stirred without being disturbed, and contain steadier and steadier reflections as they seem to repose on an unfathomable depth!-the years, the months, the weeks, the days, the nights, the hours, the minutes, the moments, each in itself a different living, and peopled, and haunted world. One Life is a thousand lives, and each individual, as he fully renews the past, reappears in a thousand characters; yet all of them bearing a mysterious identity not to be misunderstood, and all of them, while every passion has been shifting and ceasing, and reascending into power, still under the dominion of the same Conscience, that feels and knows it is from God. Who will complain of the shortness of human life, that can re-travel all the windings, and wanderings, and mazes that his feet have trodden since the farthest back hour at which memory pauses, baffled and blindfolded, as she vainly tries to penetrate and illumine the palpable, the impervious darkness that shrouds the few first years of our inscrutable being? Long, long, long ago seems it to be indeed, when we now remember it, the Time we first | pulled the primroses on the sunny braes, wondering in our first blissful emotions of beauty at the leaves with a softness all their owna yellowness nowhere else so vivid-" the bright consummate flower" so starlike to our awakened imagination among the lowly grass lovely indeed to our admiring eyes as any one of all the stars that, in their turn, did seem themselves like flowers in the blue fields of heaven! Long, long, long ago, the time when we danced hand in hand with our goldenhaired sister! Long, long, long ago, the day on which she died-the hour, so far more dismal than any hour that can now darken us on this earth, when her coffin descended slowly, slowly into the horrid clay, and we were borne deathlike, and wishing to die, out of the churchyard, that, from that moment, we thought we could enter never more! What a multitudinous being must ours have been, when, before our boyhood was gone, we could have forgotten her buried face! Or at the dream of it, dashed off a tear, and away, with a bounding heart, in the midst of a cloud of playmates, breaking into fragments on the hill-side, and hurrying round the shores of those wild moorland lochs, in vain hope to surprise the heron that slowly uplifted his blue bulk, and floated away, regardless of our shouts, to the old castle woods. It is all like a reminiscence of some other state of existence. Then, after all the joys and sorrows of those 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 de scends there will be mirth and music, and the light sounds of the merry-twinkling feet with in 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. few years, which we now call transitory, but | athwart the gloom, quick as spectral figures which our BoYHOOD felt as if they would be seen hurrying among the mountains during ndless-as if they would endure for ever-great storm? Why do some glare and threatarose upon us the glorious dawning of another en-why others fade away with a melancholy new life-YOUTH-with its insupportable sun- smile? Why that one-a Figure all in white, shine, and its agitating storms. Transitory, and with white roses in her hair-come for. too, we now know, and well deserving the ward through the haze, beautifying into dissame name of dream. But while it lasted, tincter form and face, till her pale beseeching long, various, and agonizing; as, unable to hands almost touch our neck-and then, in a sustain the eyes that first revealed to us the moment, it is as nothing? light of love, we hurried away from the parting hour, and, looking up to moon and stars, invocated in sacred oaths, hugged the very heavens to our heart. Yet life had not then nearly reached its meridian, journeying up the sunbright firmament. How low hung it there exulting, when "it flamed on the forehead of the noontide sky!" Let not the Time be computed by the lights and shadows of the years, bnt by the innumerable array of visionary thoughts, that kept deploying as if from one eternity into another-now in dark sullen masses, now in long array, brightened as if with spear-points and standards, and moving along through chasm, abyss, and forest, and over the summits of the highest mountains, to the sound of ethereal music, now warlike and tempestuous-now, as "from flutes and soft recorders" accompanying not pæans of victory but hymns of peace. That Life, too, seems, now that it is gone, to have been of a thousand years. Is it gone? Its skirts are yet hovering on the horizon. And is there yet another Life destined for us? That Life which men fear to face-Age, Old Age! Four dreams within a dream-and where to awake? At dead of night—and it is now dead of night -how the heart quakes on a sudden at the silent resurrection of buried thoughts! Perhaps the sunshine of some one single Sabbath of more exceeding holiness comes first glimmering, and then brightening upon us, with the very same sanctity that filled all the air at the tolling of the kirk-bell, when all the parish was hushed, and the voice of streams heard more distinctly among the banks and braes. Then, all at once, a thunder-storm that many years before, or many years after, drove us, when walking alone over the mountains, into a shieling, will seem to succeed; and we behold the same threatening aspect of the heavens that then quailed our beating hearts, and frowned down our eyelids before the lightning began to flash, and the black rain to deluge all the glens. No need now for any effort of thought. The images rise of themselves-independently of our volition-as if another being, studying the working of our minds, conjured up the phantasmagoria before us who are beholding it with love, wonder, and 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 .hings spiritual possess a principle of immor al life. Why linger on the shadowy wall some of hose phantasmagoria-returning after they have disappeared-and reluctant to pass away mto their former oblivion? Why shoot others 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 Lloyd's. But no bird skims, no arrow pierces the air, without producing some change in the Universe, which will last to the day of doom. No coming and going is absolutely trackless; nor irrecover. able by Nature's law is any consciousness. however ghostlike; though many one, even the most blissful, never does return, but seems to be buried among the dead. But they are not dead-but only sleep; though to us whe recall them not, they are as they had never been, and we, wretched ingrates, let them re for ever in oblivion! How passing sweet when of their own accord they arise to greet us in our solitude!-as a friend who, having sailed away to a foreign land in our youth, has been thought to have died many long years ago, may suddenly stand before us, with face still familiar and name reviving in a moment, and all that he once was to us brought from utter forgetfulness close upon our heart. My Father's House! How it is ringing like a grove in spring, with the din of crea tures happier, a thousand times happier, than |