CHRISTMAS WITHIN t)OORS IN GERMANY. 263 
year, and it is to be hoped that they may long continue to practise 
them, ' 
Let the rich deride, the proud disdain. 
The simple pleasures of the lowly train ; 
Tome more dear, congenial to my heart, 
One native charm than all the gloss of art. 
Before concluding, it may not be irrelevant to observe, that Christ- 
mas is still kept as a festival in some parts of America, together with 
many of the old English usages, which are no more seen in the mother 
country. 
This affords an illustration of what time may one day effect respect- 
ing the language and literature of Britain, which America is in all 
probability destined to preserve in full bloom, when our greatness of 
population and wealth, by the vicissitudes of tinje, is no more ; and 
our rich fields and fertile meadows are again returned to the primitive 
wildness, covered with heath, and changed into a W'aste-howJing 
wilderness. 
Christmas within-doors in Germany. 
Of Christmas, as it is kept in the north of Germany, we have a 
pleasing description by Mr. Coleridge, in his very entertaining collec- 
tion of l^ssays, called “The Friend,” of which a new edition was lately 
published in three pocket volumes. Writing from Ilatzeburg, Mr. 
Coleridge says, “There is a Christmas custom here, which pleased 
and interested me. The children make little presents to their parents, 
and to each other; and the parents to the children. For three or 
four months before Christmas, the girls are all busy, and the bbys 
save up their pocket-money, to make or purchase these presents. 
What the present is to be, is cautiously kept secret, and the girls have 
a world of contrivances to conceal it— -such as working when they bre 
out on visits, and the others are not with them ; getting up in the 
morning before day-light, &c. Then on the evening before Christmas- 
day one of the parlours is lighted up by the children, into which the 
parents must not go: a great yew bough is fastened on the table at a 
little distance from the wall; a multitude of little tapers are fastened 
in the hough, but not so as to burn it, till they are nearly burnt out, 
and coloured paper, &c. hangs and flutters from the twigs. Under 
this bough the children lay out in great order the presents they mean 
for their parents, still concealing in their pockets what they intend 
for each other. Then the parents are introduced, and each presents 
his little gift: they then bring out the rest one by one from "their 
pockets, and present them with kisses and embraces. ¥/liere I wit- 
nessed the scene, there were eight or nine children, and the eidesf 
daughter and the mother wept aloud for joy and tenderness ; and th# 
tears ran down the face of the father, and he clasped ail his children 
so tight to his breast, it seemed as if he did it to stifle the sob that 
was rising within him. I was very much affected. The shadow of 
the bough and its appendages on the wail, and arching over on the 
ceiling, made a pretty picture ; and then the raptures of the Very little 
