226 



JULY. 



merry-makings, but they have, in no degree, 

 lost their soul of mirth and happiness. Many 

 of the sports and pastimes of our forefathers 

 are, in the retrospect, picturesque, and plea- 

 sant but attempt to practise them at the 

 present day, and the very villagers would 

 laugh at them as ridiculous child's play, and 

 in fact they are child's play. They were the 

 amusements of a generation children in in- 

 tellectual culture, though of brawny growth 

 in body they were the pastimes of beings 

 whom in the race of real knowledge, our 

 very clowns have left behind. Nay, I question 

 whether our peasantry could witness, with- 

 out an internal feeling of contempt, what were 

 at one day the highest entertainment of the 

 highest classes at which "lords and dukes 

 and noble captains" toiled day after day, and 

 the proudest and brightest dames sate wit- 

 nesses, not in impatience but in pleasure. In 

 vain then do we lament our Christmas sports, 

 and the old games of gentle and simple they 

 are pleasant pictures in pleasant associations 

 they are highly to be valued as relics and 

 remembrances of the olden time of the good 

 olden time good to the good people who en- 



