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tions which we are called upon to make. The purpose of the present chapter is rather to insist generally, and by some of its more striking features, upon the high and lengthened festivity with which this portion of the year was so long and so universally welcomed; and to seek some explanation of the causes to which the diminution of that spirit, and the almost total neglect of its ancient forms, are to be ascribed.

As early as the twelfth century, we have accounts of the spectacles and pageants by which Christmas was welcomed at the court of the then monarch, Henry II.,-and, from this period, the wardrobe rolls, and other Household-Books of the English kings, furnish continual evidences of the costly preparations made for the festival. Many extracts from these books have been made by Mr. Sandys and others; from which it appears, that the mirth of the celebration, and the lavish profusion expended upon it, were on the increase from year to year, excepting during that distracted period of England's history when these, like all other gracious arrangements and social relations, were disturbed by the unholy contests between the houses of the rival roses. There is, however, a beautiful example of the sacred influence of this high festival mentioned by Turner, in his History of England; and showing that its hallowed presence had power, even in those warlike days, to silence even the voice of war,—of all war save that most impious of (what are almost always impious) wars, civil war. During the siege of Orleans, in 1428, he says, "the solemnities and festivities of Christmas gave a short interval of repose. The English lords requested of the French commanders, that they might have a night of minstrelsy, with trumpets and clarions. This was granted, and the horrors of war were suspended by melodies, that were felt to be delightful.”

In the peaceful reign of Henry VII., the nation, on emerging from that long and unnatural struggle, appears to have occupied itself, as did the wise monarch,-in restoring, as far as was possible, and by all means, its disrupted ties, and re-baptizing its apostate feelings;-and during this period, the festival of Christ. mas was restored with revived splendor, and observed with. renewed zeal. The Household-book of that sovereign, preserved in the chapter-house, at Westminster, contains numerous items

for disbursements connected with the Christmas diversions, in proof of this fact.

The reign of Henry VIII. was a reign of justs and pageants, till it became a reign of blood; and accordingly the Christmas pageantries prepared for the entertainment of that execrable monarch, were distinguished by increased pomp, and furnished at a more profuse expenditure. The festivities of Eltham and Greenwich figure in the pages of the old chroniclers; and the account books at the chapter-house abound in payments made in this reign, for purposes connected with the revels of the season.

We shall, by-and-by, have occasion to present our readers with some curious particulars, illustrative of the cost and pains bestowed upon this court celebration, during the short reign of the young monarch Edward VI.

Not all the gloom and terror of the sanguinary Mary's reign, was able entirely to extinguish the spirit of Christmas rejoicing throughout the land,—though the court itself was too much occupied with its auto-da-fé spectacles to have much time for pageants of less interest.

Our readers, we think, need scarcely be told that the successor of this stern and miserable queen (and, thank God! the last of the bad family) was sure to seize upon the old pageantries,― as she did upon every other vehicle which could, in any way, be made to minister to her intolerable vanity, or by which a public exhibition might be made, before the slaves whom she governed, of her own vulgar and brutal mind. Under all the forms of ancient festival observance, some offering was presented to this insatiable and disgusting appetite ;-and that, too, by men entitled to stand erect, by their genius or their virtues, yet whose knees were rough with kneeling before as worthless an idol as any wooden god that the most senseless superstition ever set up, for worship. From all the altars which the court had reared to old Father Christmas, of yore, a cloud of incense was poured into the royal closet, enough to choke anything but a woman-that woman a queen—and that queen a Tudor. The festival was preserved, and even embellished; but the saint, as far as the court was concerned, was changed. However, the example of the festivity to the people was the same; and the land was a merry

land, and the Christmas time a merry time, throughout its length and breadth, in the days of queen Elizabeth.

Nay, out of this very anxiety to minister to the craving vanity of a weak and worthless woman,-the devices to which it gave rise, and the laborers whom it called into action,-have arisen results which are not amongst the least happy or important of those, by its connexion with which the Christmas festival stands recommended. Under these impulses, the old dramatic entertainments, of which we shall have occasion to speak more at large hereafter,—took a higher character and assumed a more consistent form. The first regular English tragedy, called “Ferrex and Porrex," and the entertainment of" Gammer Gurton's Needle," were both productions of the early period of this queen's reign and amid the crowd of her worshippers (alas! that it is so!) rose up with the star upon his forehead which is to burn for all time, the very first of all created beings, William Shakspeare. These are amongst the strange anomalies which the world, as it is constituted, so often presents; and must present, at times, constitute it how we will.-Shakspeare doing homage to Queen Elizabeth !—The loftiest genius and the noblest heart that have yet walked this earth, in a character merely human, bowing down before this woman, with the soul of a milliner, and no heart at all!-The "bright particular star" humbling itself before the temporal crown!-The swayer of hearts, the ruler of all men's minds, in virtue of his own transcendent nature, recognizing the supremacy of this overgrown child, because she presided over the temporalities of a half-emancipated nation, by rights derived to her from others, and sanctioned by no qualities of her own!

And yet, if to the low passions of this vulgar queen, and the patronage which they led her to extend to all who could best minister to their gratification, we owe any part of that development by which this consummate genius expanded itself, then do we stand, in some degree, indebted to her, for one of the greatest boons which has been bestowed upon the human race; and-as between her and mankind in general (for the accounts between her and individuals,—and still more that between her and God,— stand uninfluenced by this item), there is a large amount of good to be placed to her credit. Against her follies of a day there

would have to be set her promotion of a wisdom whose lessons are for all time;—against the tears which she caused to flow, the human anguish which she inflicted, and the weary pining hours of the captives whom she made, would stand the tears of thousands dried away, many and many an aching heart beguiled of its sorrow, and many a captive taught to feel that

"Stone walls do not a prison make,

Nor iron bars a cage ;"

all the chords of human feeling touched with a hand that soothes as did the harp of David—all the pages of human suffering stored with consolations!

To any one who will amuse himself by looking over the miracle-plays and masques which were replaced by the more regular forms of dramatic entertainment, and will then regale himself by the perusal of "Gammer Gurton's Needle," or "Ferrex and Porrex," which came forward with higher pretensions in the beginning of this reign,—there will appear reason to be sufficiently astonished at the rapid strides by which dramatic excellence was attained before its close, and during the next,--even without taking Shakspeare into the account at all. But when we turn to the marvels of this great magician, and find that, in his hands, not only were the forms of the drama perfected, but that-without impeding the action or impairing the interest invested in those forms, and besides his excursions into the regions of imagination and his creations out of the natural world,―he has touched every branch of human knowledge, and struck into every train of human thought,-that, without learning, in the popular sense, he has arrived at all the results, and embodied all the wisdom, which learning is only useful if it teaches,—that we can be placed in no imaginable circumstances, and under the influence of no possible feelings, of which we do not find exponents (and such exponents!" in sweetest music,") on his page, and above all, when we find that all the final morals to be drawn from all his writings are hopeful ones,-that all the lessons which all his agents-joy or sorrow, pain or pleasure, are made alike to teach, are lessons of goodness,-it is impossible to attribute all this to aught but a revelation, or ascribe to him any character but that

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of a prophet. Shakspeare knew more than any other mere man ever knew; and none can tell how that knowledge came to him. "All men's business and bosoms lay open to him. We should not like to have him quoted against us, on any subject. Nothing escaped him, and he never made a mistake (we are not speaking of technical ones). He was the universal interpreter into language of the human mind; and he knew all the myriad voices by which nature speaks. He reminds us of the vizier in the eastern story, who is said to have understood the languages of all animals. The utterings of the elements, the voices of beasts and of birds, Shakspeare could translate into the language of men; and the thoughts and sentiments of men he rendered into words as sweet as the singing of birds. If the reign of Elizabeth had been illustrated only by the advent of this great spirit, it might itself have accounted for some portion of that prejudice which (illustrated as, in fact, it was, by much that was great and noble), blinds men, still,—or induces them to shut their eyes,-to the true personal claims and character of that queen.

But we are digressing, again;- -as who does not, when the image of Shakspeare comes across him? To return:

The court celebrations of Christmas were observed throughout the reign of the first James; and the Prince Charles, himself, was an occasional performer in the pageantries prepared for the occasion, at great cost. But at no period do they appear to have been more zealously sought after, or performed with more splendor, than during that which immediately preceded the persecution, from whose effects they have never since recovered, into anything like their former lustihood. In the early years of Charles the First's reign, the court-pageants of this season were got up with extraordinary brilliancy-the king with the lords of his court, and the queen with her ladies, frequently taking parts therein. This was the case in 1630-1; and at the Christmas of 1632-3, the queen, says Sandys, "got up a pastoral in Somerset House, in which it would seem she herself took a part. There were masques at the same time, independently of this performance, the cost of which considerably exceeded £2,000; besides that portion of the charge which was borne by the office of the revels, and charged to the accounts of that department." In the same year,

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