time of the song, 'in sweeping the floor with her broomstick, or in playing any other antics that she thinks may amuse the indwellers. The common reward of this entertainment is a halfpenny; but many churlish persons fall upon the unfortunate guizards, and beat them out of the house. Let such persons, however, keep a good watch upon their cabbage gardens next Halloween! Guizarding is proper to four nights of the year:-Christmas, Hogmanay, New-year's Day, and Hansel Monday. We observe it is tried in a small and unpretending way at Edinburgh.

It were unnecessary, in this place, to enter into an account of the practices at the midnight between Hogmanay and New-Year's-Day, which are already so minutely described in other works. Neither, for the same reason, is it worth while to 'particularize the customs of the first day of the year itself. I may only mention, that the custom of New-Year gifts, still so rife in France, was formerly much more common in this country than it is at present. We find, for instance, from Mr Pitcairn's great work, that James IV. would have a gift of ten angels presented to him'in his bed on New-Year's morning; as also a caudle, which, by the way, must have been exactly the same thing which the modern people of Edinburgh know by the term het-pint. It is pleasant also to find that, on the 1st of January, 1490-1, the same monarch presented Blind Harry, the minstrel, author of the "Life of Wallace," with eighteen shillings. Still more delightful is it to know, that on the New-Year's-Day of 1507, the monarch gave to diverse "Menstrallis, schawmeris, trumpeteris, tabrounaris, fithelaris, luteris, clarshaaris, and piparis," the aggregate sum of forty-one pounds sixteen shillings. The custom of giving and receiving NewYears' gifts was still more common at the court of James VI., who was exactly the kind of man to give encouragement to at least one branch of the system. We find Elizabeth also a great receiver of New-Year's gifts. And after James went to England, the practice had reached such a height, and was so indispensable, that it is, grievously complained of as a tax upon the pockets of the

courtiers.

I shall conclude this rambling and imperfect article with an account of a very curious New-Year's-Day custom of the Highlands of Scotland. In many parts of this wild territory, young and old collect on the first night of the year, and perform the following strange ceremony. One of the stoutest of the party drags behind him a dried cow-hide, while all the rest follow, and beat it with sticks, singing the following rhyme:

But, oh aunt! how I wish you had seen That dearest of men, Mr Croker, Whose wit is so polished and keen,

It would draw out a smile from a poker. John Lockhart was just by his side;As he watch'd the assembly fantastic, I could see o'er his fine features glide Expressions intensely sarcastic.

More than all living authors, these two
Can write with the sharpness of steel;
Their words, like fine needles, pierce through,
And the prick of their point make you feel;
Had it not been for one who drew nigh,
I might have been sorely afraid,
But I caught his benevolent eye,
And the critics fell into the shade.

'Twas an elderly, lame, grey-hair'd man,
Yet nobler by far in my sight,
Though sunk were his features and wan,
Than all that were round me that night;
I may ne'er see the Wizard again,
The monarch of northern romance,
His ship is now far o'er the main,

But my heart will still treasure his glance.

It is late, and I must lay me down,

Else I'll not have a rose for the spring ; O Aunt ! a wbole season in town

Is really a terrible thing!

It withers the freshness of youth

It makes the heart cautious and cold It gives us the dulness of truth,

For the fancies we cherish'd of old ; It bas stolen my heroes away,

Or exchanged them for commonplace men ; My goddesses, too, are of clay,

I wish I were with you again!

a

I wish I were with you again!

With our garden, our flowers, and our books ; la the stillness of mountain and plain,

In the music of birds and of brooks, I might find what I miss when I roam,

What I weep for sometimen till I'm hoarse, Is dear cousin William at home?

My kindest remembrance, of course.

So easy and artless his air,

I hoped it the truth might recall To the coxcombs and flatterers there,

That high minds are the simplest of all; And in silence a prayer I breathed

For the Minstrel, Historian, and Sage, May the fame of his manhood be wreathed

As a crown for the brow of his age!
He pass'd—and up came Mrs Norton,

With a look of command and display;
But her husband, dear aunt, is "a short ’un,"

As Pbilip, our coachman, would say:
The tall Mr Bulwer came next,

Who has publish'd so many nice tales ; With his weaknesses, though, I am vext,

And in Magazine writing he fails. Then Campbell, your favourite poet,

The sweetest and briskest of beaux; He has only one fault, and I owe it

To you, aunt, that fault to disclose;
For “ Gertrude of Wyoming,” sare

You never will now care a figs.
And the “ Pleasures of Hope” you '11 abjure,

For the author, 0, aunt! wears a wig!
Miss Edgeworth, a qecer "little woman,

Who had on her head a red turban, Look'd certainly rather uncommon,

And fully more rural than urban; She is dumpy, and little, and round,

Miss Mitford is somewhat the same;
Alas! I have rarely yet found

That beauty accompanies fame.
There were Rogers, and Coleridge, and Moore,

Three names that might frighten a dunce;
But I counted that night on the floor

Forty pretty good poets at once ! As the stars are a hundred or more,

That furnish the sign of Orion,
It needs now at least seven score

Of poets to make up one lion.
What amused me the most, I must say,

Were the airs of "the little unknown,"
Who basily chatter'd away,

As if each bad a fame of his own; There were Blanchard, and Reynolds, and Redding,

And Tennyson, Bayly, and Hunt,
All smirking like guests at a wedding

All wofully stupid and blant,
There was Martin, the painter of foods,

And total despiser of form,
Whose pictures seem made of soap suds,

Or puddles attempting a storm ;
Crofton Croker, a small Terry Alt,

Marching under a bit of a pepoon, And Campbell the sculptor ; and Galt,

The author, you know, of " Southennan."

“ CHRISTMAS RECOLLECTIONS." He's

By Professor Gillespie. Great efforts have of late been made to reduce the seasons to rule. To say to one season or month, for example, " hitherto shalt thou go, but no farther." AIL this appears to me to be labour lost; 'in fact, as if in absolute despite and contempt of such curbings the steeds of the sun, like untamed and untameable coursers, seem to have sah wila, dragging along with them the influences of August 'into the very middle of January,-besprinkling the 'head of November with untimely snows, and causing December to frisk and gambol it about in all the awkwardness of playful decrepitude a kind of Anacreon run mad ! " I wish," said my Uncle Toby, " they would let the devil alone;" and, in the same spirit of cautious anxiety for the regular successions of beat 'aod cold, storm and calm, summer and winter, I wish that our wise men of the nineteenth century would leave meteorology to the old women of the eighteenth. I do not find fault with a modest and moderate guess to the extent of twelve or even twenty-four hours.— I once knew an old shepherd who could manage eight-and-forty pretty correctly, but your wholesale dispensers of rain, and sun, and snow-wise ones, who let down the plummet a thousand fathoms into the stream of futurity, and bring you up certain intelligence respecting every inch, and foot, and yard of the depth ! I say to all such, beware what you are doing! don't you see that, as if it were in direct disconcertion of you, every thing concerning the weather is going topsy-turvy?

This, bowever, was not the case, as every person upwards of fifty will distinctly recollect, towards the close, and I should suppose during the whole of the last century. With Christmas and New Year's Day--as regularly as they returned—came the snow-shower-the hard frost -the clear sky—the bracing air-and the roaring rink.' Bless you, what a joyous time it was of yore through all the rinks, and lochs, and pools of merry, joyous, jolly • Closeburn !" Such days as I have seen! We have, at Wallacehall, had the play for a whole week; not altogether, you dolt! in a lump, like a dole of plum-pudding, but cut out into the most delightful slices. First, there was Monday morning-and what a Monday! It should have been called Sunday—as the sun never shone more lovely -never was more himself—since first be shot his beams ath wart a sheet of ice. The earth rung like a tinker's budget, and from one end of the parish to the other all was slide, or race-way-snow trodden into paste, or ice barnished into splendour. No old woman could keep her feet on it. The Master--the best man that ever

T. K. Harvey was better, and Proctor -

And Cunningham, better than both; And Bowring's a classical doctor,

Though bis politics make him a Goth ;With the rest of these worthies to mingle,

Came Landon, the brilliant and pretty, Will the men recollect she is single,

Judicious, good-hearted, and witty ?

But my taper has nearly expired,

And my paper as nearly is fillid, And, in truth, my dear aunt, I am tired,

And my fingers are dreadfully child;

:

Again we are met on Tuesday morning-whose features are somewhat sulky; in fact, there is a threatened change, and who can tell when it may freeze againperhaps not till the Millennium! Who, then, would lose a moment's sport in such circumstances?—Not we, indeed but, then, there's the Master and here are we, grammar in hand, and fear and palpitation in our bosoms. The Factor! by all that is jovial! William Steuart, in all the jolly importance of port and spiel. His words are not many, but they are to the point-" To the ice, boys! and study to-morrow!" Oh, that wives were as implicitly obeyed by their husbands, or Priests by their hearers, as the factor of Closeburn was by us! Wednesday dawns on many a pocket-handkerchief wrung out from hot water, and spread on thorn or saugh, to catch the earliest and nicest intimations of returning frost; for, during the night, the cloud sat down on the Barmoorhill, and there was we fear it cannot be denied a thaw-not a real decided relaxation through all the chinks and crevices, and pores of stone and earth, and mud and water-but a rawness-a thing to be felt, rather than seen-suspected rather than proven! It had, however, broken up towards dawn, and " Sutor Fergusson's handkerchief" was taken from the hedge as stiff as buckram. What is now to be done? The Minister! the Minister! the keenest and the best curler, the most eloquent preacher, and the most benevolent man that ever bore the honoured name of Yorston! The minister must be petitioned by a deputation of to ask the play." Accordingly, off we set, ten in front, and ten times ten on the outer side of the garden wall. Our errand, however, is anticipated, and ere we have got half-way back, a "card" from the Manse has filled the school area with tumultuous and desperate acclamations. The battle, now, is our own, for Thursday is Christmas, and who would think of meeting on Friday, when Saturday comes immediately after it?, bi ng cage

་

But what were the days to the nights-the long, clear, suell, moonlit nights. The spiel is finished, and the curlers have dispersed, or convened to curlers' fare; but we the boys-every skater, slider, player, are in possession, in undisturbed possession, of the ice. Bless yon, I do not feel cold, though I have just now with Vin some diffculty dragged both my skated-feet from the depths of that confounded "well-ee" that lay hidden amidst the reeds! And there comes Watty Tweedie, the wellknown travelling packman, to head our sport, and urge us on to combat. It is of this same Watty that I have often heard the following anecdote :

Watty, whose migrations were often through the more mountainous parts of Closeburn, happened, upon a Sabbath afternoon, (for Watty was not particularly scrupulous,) to be making the best of his way from Gilchristland to Mitchelslacks. Loch Ettrick, a wild and broad mountain loch, or tarn, lay in his way, from which, late on Saturday night, a set of jolly curlers had retired. The stones still lay on the ice, and presented a temptation, which, by a keen curler, was not easy to be resisted. It must be borne in mind all the while that Watty, like many of his day, was very superstitious, and had as firm a belief (by night, in particular) in all manner of demonry," as he had in his own existence. Upon this very loch of the wilderness, fairies had often been heard playing, particularly on Sabbath, and during divine ser

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glass, it struck him that he had never seen such iceand the rink, too, was ready made, swept, and bright a a mirror. There was for an instant a struggle in Watty's bosom betwixt inclination, superstition, and something which Watty took for religion; but at last the fine day, the secludedness of the place, the harmlessness of the sport, together with a few equally cogent reasons, induced Watty to fit the tee, and send the "gre hen" booming to the other end of the rink. No sooner had this been done, than back there comes upon Wattya corresponding challenge an invisible stone, roaring and thundering along, as if it had been întentionally aimed at Watty's feet. The truth at once came upon Watty with all the force which a guilty conscience is sure to impart to it; and without waiting to contest the honours of the ice with his "invisible opponent,” be was off with the rapidity of lightning; nor did he once stop, or lock over his shoulder, till he had gained a shieling about a couple of miles from the spot. It was then that he recollected of his pack, and that, like the ark of vid, i was still in the hands of the Philistanes, and that, with the help of "Willy Crosbie”—whose belief in fairy-craf was not quite so strong as his own-he recovered his property, and resumed his wanderings.

Fifteen Christmases have converted the schoolboy ints the man, and the man into the minister: tempora m tantur, sed nos non mutamur in illis, as the following liner will attest:

"The sun has set in azure sky,
When home we jolly curlers hie;
Our brooms are safely stored away,
Reserved for use 'some other day;
The ground is flint-the air is keen,
And every puff of breath is seen.

A

213744 "To beef and greens, the curler's dinner, Sits down each hungry, joyous sinner ; Our jaws in silence move awhile, The beef is plied, iu curler style,mi ynof i was Till first a dram, and then ajug wouldns11 Of porter, makes the dinner snug→ 4 the sillər (Well-bottled porter, air'd, and meek. dt s All reaming from the chimney-cheeki)...11 tot use

The smack is heard, the sentence pass'd,

We've hit the very thing at last.
And now around the fire we gather,
(A fire looks well in frosty weather,)
Our half-moon table suits our numbers-
And neither wife nor care encumbers.

"The shot is play'd-the port is runThe winner hit-the end is won: A solid reason'd-sound objection Is stated to our skip's direction— The game discuss'd; next spiel is fix'd, And where we eat our dinner next. Thus felt the boy each pulse alive, At Christmas, seventeen ninety-five; And thus the parson felt, I ween, In Eighteen Hundred and Fifteen; And thus may still my bosom feel, O'er many a canty Christmas spiel." Christopher North has somewhere observed, that all shers are good-natured; with much more truth may he same observation be made of all curlers; and, in stimony of the truth of this, I hereby advertise the rious author of Curliana of whom, as well as of e and Closeburn (ego et rez meus), Old Kit has spoken handsomely in this month's Maga-that I have not, id never had, the slightest quarrel with him, or with y one that ever threw a line or a chanuel-stane. To e best of my belief, we never met; but there is, in the wn of Lochmaben, and that not half a mile from the ¡urch, an old Closeburnian who will assure him, if he ants such assurance, that he has been all along beating e wind, and that the very indifferent jeux d'esprits hich he construed into offence, were only written to ass an idle hour, and amuse my good friends in Closeuru. The knout has been threatened him by North; nd when the Old Boy wields the lash, it is not matter { amusement. Instead of this somewhat uncurler-like pplication, however, I would propose a bottle of the linister's best the next time we visit Lochmaben.

"Claudite jam rivos, pueri, sat prata biberunt!"

Back looks he through the mist of many years,
And far away, as in another clime,

The sunlight of his own bright youth appears,
Endear'd by all which ties us down to time;
For happiness is there, which knows not tears——
Friendship and love which glow with warmth sublime,
And all that cheer'd his heart, or charm'd his eyes,
In rainbow tints, or magic gleams arise.

For hoary, wither'd, palsied though he be

Scarce link'd to earth, and tottering to the tomb,
Once throbb'd his young heart by the hawthorn tree,
Sitting with her he loved, while twilight's gloom
(Veiling in tenderest tints the earth and sea)
Came with its one bright star, and sweet perfume
Rose from the wild thyme rich, as if to tell **
That he who lives to wisdom, liveth well.

Look at the widow weeping o'er the grave

He, whom she loved in life, lies cold beneath! Vain were her hopes of help, her prayers to save, sa Hush'd is the voice she loved to hear-in death; She hung above him, as a breaking wavelow tescos O'erhangs the shore, and caught his latest breath; Then turning from the clay, which was her mate, Clasp'd her lone babes, and felt how desolate!

Blows through his rags, and chills his pallid cheek; Look closely in his eyes-there you shall find Imprinted hunger! and his limbs are weak From long disease; across his joyless mind. Flit dreams of past delight he dare not speak ; And often in hot tears his eyelids swim,

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