The north of England is celebrated for its Christmas pies of a different description, composed of turkeys, geese, game, and various small birds, weighing sometimes half a hundred weight and upwards, and calculated to meet the attacks of a large Christmas party throughout the festival. Plum-pudding, of which the old name is said to have been _hackin_, until the time of Charles the Second, is another valuable dish; though, fortunately for its admirers, not confined to Christmas time. Plum-porridge seems to be something like the French edition of plum-pudding brought up to our ambassador many years since, which had been boiled without the cloth; it is, however, mentioned by Misson, and not very many years since the custom existed of serving up a tureen of it at the table of the royal chaplains at St. James’s Palace. An amusing little book, called ‘Round about our coal-fire, or Christmas Entertainments,’ gives an account of the manner of observing this festival, by the middling classes, about the middle of the seventeenth century, and as the writer, in the spirit of grumbling, refers to former times, he may be supposed to carry back his reference to old times for a century earlier. “The manner of celebrating this great course of holydays,” he says, “is vastly different now to what it was in former days: there was once upon a time hospitality in the land; an _English_ gentleman, at the opening of the great day, had all his tenants and neighbours enter’d his hall by day-break, the strong beer was broach’d, and the black-jacks went plentifully about with toast, sugar, nutmeg, and good Cheshire cheese; the rooms were embower’d with holly, ivy, cypress, bays, laurel, and misleto, and a bouncing _Christmas_ log in the chimney, glowing like the cheeks of a country milk-maid; there was the pewter as bright as _Clarinda_, and every bit of brass as polished as the most refined gentleman; the servants were then running here and there, with merry hearts and jolly countenances; every one was busy in welcoming of guests, and look’d as snug as new-lick’d puppies; the lasses were as blithe and buxom as the maids in good Queen _Bess’s_ days, when they eat sirloins of roast beef for breakfast; _Peg_ would scuttle about to make a toast for _John_, while _Tom_ run _harum scarum_ to draw a jug of ale for _Margery_.” “In these times all the spits were sparkling, the _hackin_ (pudding) must be boil’d by day-break, or else two young men took the maiden by the arms, and run her round the market-place, till she was ashamed of her laziness.” “This great festival was, in former times, kept with so much freedom and openness of heart, that every one in the country where a gentleman resided, possessed at least a day of pleasure in the _Christmas_ holydays; the tables were all spread, from the first to the last, with the sirloyns of beef, the minc’d pies, the plumb-porridge, the capons, turkeys, geese, and plumb-puddings, were all brought upon