hearty commemorations in which our land was once so abundant—and which obtained for her, many a long day since, the name of "merrie England"—had no other recommendation than their convivial character, the community of enjoyment which they imply, they would on that account alone be worthy of all promotion, as an antidote to the cold and selfish spirit which is tainting the life-blood and freezing the pulses of society. "'Tis good to be merry and wise;" but the wisdom which eschews mirth, and holds the time devoted to it as so much wasted by being taken from the schoolmaster, is very questionable wisdom in itself, and assuredly not made to promote the happiness of nations. We love all commemorations. We love these anniversaries, for their own sakes, and for their uses. We love those Lethes of an hour which have a virtue beyond their gift of oblivion, and while they furnish a temporary forgetfulness of many of the ills of life, revive the memory of many a past enjoyment, and reawaken many a slumbering affection. We love those milestones on the journey of life beside which man is called upon to pause, and take a reckoning of the distance he has passed, and of that which he may have yet to go. We love to reach those free, open spaces at which the cross-roads of the world converge, and where we are sure to meet, as at a common rendezvous, with travellers from its many paths. We love to enter those houses of refreshment by the way-side of existence, where we know we shall encounter with other wayfarers like ourselves,—perchance with friends long separated, and whom the chances of the world keep far apart,—and whence, after a sweet communion and lusty festival and needful rest, we may go forth upon our journey new fortified against its accidents, and strengthened for its toils. We love those festivals which have been made, as Washington Irving says, "the season for gathering together of family connections, and drawing closer again those bonds of kindred hearts which the cares and pleasures and sorrows of the world are continually operating to cast loose; of calling back the children of a family who have launched forth in life and wandered widely asunder, once more to assemble about the paternal hearth, that rallying place of the affections, there to grow young and loving again among the endearing mementos of childhood." Above all, we love those seasons ("for pity is not common!" says the old ballad) which call for the exercise of a general hospitality, and give the poor man his few and precious glimpses of a plenty which, as the world is managed, his toil cannot buy; which shelter the houseless wanderer, and feed the starving child, and clothe the naked mother, and spread a festival for all,—those seasons which in their observance by our ancestors, kept alive, by periodical reawakenings, that flame of charity which thus had scarcely time wholly to expire during all the year. We love all which tends to call man from the solitary and chilling pursuit of his own separate and selfish views into the warmth of a common sympathy, and within the bands of a common brotherhood. We love these commemorations, as we have said, for themselves; we love them for their uses; and still more we love them for the memories of our boyhood! Many a bright picture do they call up in our minds, and in the minds of most who have been amongst their observers; for with these festivals of the heart are inalienably connected many a memory for sorrow or for joy, many a scene of early love, many a merry meeting which was yet the last, many a parting of those who shall part no more, many a joyous group composed of materials which separated only too soon and shall never be put together again on earth, many a lost treasure and many a perished hope,—

"Oh, the mad days that I have spent," says old Justice Shallow, "and to see how many of mine old acquaintance are dead!" Yet still we love these commemorations and hail them, each and all, as the year restores them to us, shorn and scarred as they are. And though many and many a time the welcome has faltered on our lips as we "turned from all they brought to all they could not bring," still by God's help we will enjoy them, as yet we may,—drawing closer to us, and with the more reason, the friends that still remain, and draining to the last—

The revels of merry England are fast subsiding into silence, and her many customs wearing gradually away. The affectations and frivolities of society, as well as its more grave and solemn pursuits,—the exigences of fashion, and the tongue of the pedagogue,—are alike arrayed against them; and, one by one, they are retreating from the great assemblies where mankind "most do congregate," to hide themselves in remote solitudes and rural nooks. In fact, that social change which has enlarged and filled the towns at the expense of the country, which has annihilated the yeomanry of England, and drawn the estated gentleman from the shelter of his ancestral oaks, to live upon their produce in the haunts of dissipation, has been, in itself, the circumstance most unfavorable to the existence of many of them, which delight in bye-ways and sheltered places, which had their appropriate homes in the old manor house or the baronial hall. Yet do they pass lingeringly away. Traces of most of them still exist, and from time to time reappear even in our cities and towns; and there are probably scarcely any which have not found some remote district or other of these islands in which their influence is still acknowledged, and their rites duly performed. There is something in the mind of man which attaches him to ancient superstitions even for the sake of their antiquity, and endears to him old traditions even because they are old. We cannot readily shake off our reverence for that which our fathers have reverenced so long, even where the causes in which that reverence originated are not very obvious or not very satisfactory. We believe that he who shall aid in preserving the records of these vanishing observances, ere it be too late, will do good and acceptable service in his generation; and such contribution to that end as we have in our power it is the purpose of these volumes to bestow. Of that taste for hunting out the obsolete which originates in the mere dry spirit of antiquarianism, or is pursued as a display of gladiatorial skill in the use of the intellectual weapons, we profess ourselves no admirers. But he who pursues in the track of a receding custom,—which is valuable either as an historical illustration or because of its intrinsic beauty, moral or picturesque,—is an antiquary of the beneficent kind; and he who assists in restoring observances which had a direct