Ye who have loved each other, And let your hearts grow fonder, Each past unbroken vow; Ye who have nourished sadness, "A CHARLES MACKAY. So the birthday gathering is one of forgiveness, goodwill, and love, and He who turned water into wine at a public marriage, which He graced by His divine presence, will surely honour it. The salutations, merry Christmas," "A happy new Many happy returns of the day,"are they not essentially similar? Do they not breathe the spirit of the angels' song, "Peace on earth, goodwill among men ?" They tell us, after all, that year," and " THE EARTH IS FULL OF LOVE. The earth is full of love, albeit the storms And drown its voice with discords. Every flower So tell the wonders of that glorious name As they shall be revealed, when comes the boon The celebrated Essayist from whom we have already quoted has said that "Every man hath two birthdays," one being New Year's Day. This, like Christmas Day, is at once festive and solemn. It presents a close resemblance to our own birthday in this, that it marks the death of one year and the birth of another. When at the dawn of a birthday the joy-bells of the rich and great are vibrating in the old church towers, flinging solemn music over meadow and common, over heath and wood, over crowded dwellings and wide wild wastes, similar feelings are excited in the thoughtful mind to those which Tennyson embodies : Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky, Ring out the old, ring in the new, Ring out the grief that saps the mind, New Year's Day was a jovial old English festival, as the dramatists of 1661, Webb and Rowley, well expressed in their hearty and cordial "Song of January :" Now doth jolly Janus greet your merriment; I never changed my fashion; 'Tis good enough to fence the cold: My hatchet serves to cut my firing yearly, My bowl preserves the juice of grape and barley: To Bacchus I commend ye, and Ceres eke attend ye, That Boreas' blasts may never blow to harm you, Old Father Janeuere drinks a health to all here, To give the merry New Year a welcome in! When this jovial song was penned, and long before and after that time, magnificent Christmas, New Year, and Birthday revels were kept at Court, in the City, and in the country houses of the nobility and gentry. Queen Elizabeth, like her father Henry the Eighth, delighted in solemn, magnificent, and flattering pageants, and so did her successors, James I. and Charles I. Ben Jonson's charming Masques, so rich in fancy and invention, were written for the festive anniversaries of the court of James and Charles. The queen and her ladies did not disdain to personate many allegorical characters. "The Masque of Queens" was performed by her Majesty and eleven noble ladies, at Whitehall, 1609. This consisted of a double masque, or two allegorical plays, the first being introductory to the second or Queen's Masque-in which the great ladies were seated in three chariots, the first drawn by eagles, the second by griffons," the last (the queen's) by lions. These were attended by numerous torch-bearers and masqued "After which," says Ben Jonson, (whose descriptions are often peculiarly racy,) a full triumphant music, singing this song, while they rode in state about the stage : characters. 66 66 "Help, help, all tongues, to celebrate this wonder, And as her brow the clouds invade Her feet do strike the ground. Sing then, good Fame, that's out of Virtue born; Here," rare Ben continues, "they (the queen and her eleven ladies) lighted from their chariots, and danced forth their first dance: then a second immediately following it, both right curious and full of subtle and excellent changes, and seemed performed with no less spirits than of those they personated. The first was to the cornets, the second to the violins. After which they took out the men, and danced the measures; entertaining the time, almost to the space of an hour, with singular variety; when, to give them rest from the music which attended the chariots, by that most excellent tenor voice and exact singer, Master Jo. Allin, this ditty was sung"-for the royal birthday :— "When all the ages of the earth Were crown'd but in this famous birth; A queen, in whom all they do live. "After it (Ben still speaks) succeeded their third dance, than which a more numerous composition could not be seen, graphically disposed into letters, and honouring the name of the most sweet and ingenious prince, Charles, Duke of York, wherein, beside that principal grace of perspicuity, the motions were so even and apt, and their expression so just, as if mathematicians had lost proportion they might there have found it. After this they danced galliards and corrantos. And then their last dance, no less elegant in the place than the rest, with which they took their chariots again, and triumphing above the stage, had their return to the House of Fame celebrated with this last song, which concludes: all the glorious ways "Force greatness But so good Fame shall never: Her triumphs, as their causes, are for ever." The adulation of the poetical tributes often very gross was their worst feature. Happily we |