DECEMBER. 307 



are collected round the social hearth, where 

 Christmas brings his annual store of frolic and 

 festivities ; and the author, like the bee, with- 

 drawn to his hive, revels amid the sweets of his 

 summer gathering. It is amusing to imagine 

 what a host of pens are at this moment in mo- 

 tion, in sundry places of this little island ! In 

 splendid libraries, furnished with every bodily 

 comfort, and every literary and scientific re- 

 source, where the noble or popular author fills 

 the sheet which the smile of the bibliopole and 

 reader awaits, and almost anticipates ; in naked 

 and ghastly garrets where the " poor-devil-au- 

 thor" scrawls, with numbed fingers and a shiver- 

 ing frame, what will be coldly received, and as 

 quickly forgotten as himself; in pleasant bou- 

 doirs, at rose-wood desks, where lady-fingers 

 pen lady-lays ; in ten thousand nooks and re- 

 cesses the pile of books is growing, under which, 

 shelves, booksellers and readers, shall groan, 

 ere many months elapse. Another season shall 

 come round, and all these leaves, like those of 

 the forest, shall be swept away, leaving only 

 those of a few hardy laurels untouched. But 

 let no one lament them, or think that all this 

 " labour under the sun" has been in vain. Li- 

 terary tradesmen have been indulged in specu- 

 lation ; critics have been employed ; and authors 

 have enjoyed the excitement of hope, the en- 



