January. To this month there is an ode with a verse beautifully descriptive of the Roman symbol 
of the year: 
’Tis he ! the two-fac’d Janus comes in view ; 
Wild hyacinths his robe adorn, 
And snow-drops, rivals of the morn. 
He spurns the goat aside, 
But smiles upon the new 
Emerging year with pride ; 
And now unlocks, with agate key, 
The ruby gates of orient day. 
We stop a moment to peep into the “Mirror of the Months/’ and inquire “Who can see a new year 
open upon him, without being better for the prospect — without making sundry wise reflections, (for any 
reflections on this subject must be comparatively wise ones,) on the step he is about to take towards the 
goal of his being? Every first of January that we arrive at, is an imaginary mile-stone on the turnpike 
track of human life; at once a resting place for thought and meditation, and a starting point for fresh ex- 
ertion in the performance of our journey. The man who does not at least propose to himself to be better 
this year than he was last, must be either very good or very bad indeed ! And only to propose to be better, is 
something; if nothing else, it is an acknowledgment of our need to be so, which is the first step towards 
amendment. But, in fact, to propose to oneself to do well, is in some sort to do well, positively; for there 
is no such thing as a stationary point in human endeavours; he who is not worse to-day, than he was 
yesterday, is better; and he who is not better, is worse.” 
It is written, “ Improve your time,” in the text-hand set of copies put before us when we were better 
taught to write than to understand what we wrote. How often these three words recurred at that period 
without their meaning being discovered! How often and how serviceably they have recurred since to some 
who have obeyed the injunction ! How painful has reflection been to others, who recollecting it, preferred 
to suffer rather than to do ! 
The author of the paragraph quoted above, expresses forcible remembrance of his youthful pleasures 
on the coming in of the new year. — “Hail! to thee, January! — all hail! cold and wintry as thou art, if it be 
but in virtue of thy first day. The day, as the French call it, par excellence , ‘ Le jour de l’an.’ Come 
about me, all ye little schoolboys that have escaped from the unnatural thraldom of your taskwork — come 
crowding about me, with your untamed hearts shouting in your unmodulated voices, and your happy spirits 
dancing an untaught measure in your eyes! Come, and help me to speak the praises of new-year’s day! — 
your day — one of the three which have, of late, become yours almost exclusively, and which have bettered 
you, and have been bettered themselves, by the change. Christmas-day, which was; New-year’s-day, which 
is ; and Twelfth-day, which is to be; let us compel them all three into our presence — with a whisk of our 
imaginative wand convert them into one, as the conjurer does his three glittering balls, and then enjoy them 
all together, with their dressings, and coachings, and visitings, and greetings, and gifts, and “many happy 
returns” with their plum-puddings, and mince-pies, and twelfth-cakes, and neguses, with their forfeits, and 
fortune-tellings, and blindman’s-buffs, and sittings up to supper, with their new penknives, and pastrycooks’ 
shops, in short, with their endless round of ever new nothings, the absence of a relish for which is but ill 
supplied, in after life, by that feverish lingering and thirsting after excitement, which usurp without filling 
its place. Oh ! that I might enjoy those nothings once again in fact, as I can in fancy ! But I fear the wish 
is worse than an idle one ; for it not only may not be, but it ought not to be. “We cannot have our cake 
and eat it too,” as the vulgar somewhat vulgarly, but not less shrewdly, express it. And this is as it should 
be ; for if we could, it would neither be worth the eating nor the having.” 
