DECEMBER. 



animate us with the proud prospect of an eternity 

 of still perfecting and ennobling existence. 



But the year draws to a close. I see symptoms 

 of its speedy exit. I see holly and misletoe in the 

 market, in every house that I visit, in every window 

 that I pass, except in those of the Society of Friends, 

 who, though they like old fashions, pay little regard 

 to old customs, but treat them as the " beggarly 

 elements" of worn-out superstitions. They are 

 philosophically right, but poetically wrong. I see 

 the apprentice boys going along the streets, from 

 house to house, distributing those little annual re- 

 membrances called Christmas-bills ; and my imagi- 

 nation follows these tyroes in trade, who now fill 

 its lowest offices, and would think more of a slide 

 or a mince-pie than of all the " wealth in Lunnun 

 bank," through a few more years, and beholds them 

 metamorphosed into grave, important, and well-to- 

 do citizens ; or, as it may chance to them, shrunk 

 into the thin, shrivelled, and grasshopper-like beings 

 that care and disappointment convert men into. 

 And this awakens in me the consciousness of how 

 little we have thought of man and his toils, and 

 anxieties, as from day to day, and month to month, 

 we have gone wandering over the glorious face of 

 the earth, drinking in its peaceful pleasures ; and 

 yet what a mighty sum of events has been con- 

 summated ! what a tide of passions and affections 

 has flowed what lives and deaths has alternately 

 arrived what destinies have been fixed for ever, 



