THE masks and pageants at court appear to have been gradually abandoned from the time of the Restoration, as before mentioned. They were succeeded by grand feasts and entertainments, which also fell gradually into disuse, and latterly even that relic, the Christmas tureen of plum-porridge, served up at the royal chaplains’ table, was omitted, and the crown-pieces under their plates for New Year’s Gifts soon followed. The poet-laureat has long since been relieved from that tax on his imagination, the New Year’s Ode; and the only remaining ceremony is, I believe, the offering on Twelfth Day. George the First and Second were in the habit of playing at hazard in public at the groom-porter’s, where several of the nobility, and even some of the princesses, staked considerable sums; but in the time of George the Third the practice was abolished, and a handsome gratuity given to the groom-porter by way of compensation. It will be understood that the remarks as to the abatement in Christmas festivities, apply more particularly to what may be considered as state or public observances; for Christmas feasting and revelry were still kept up throughout the last century in many parts, according as the spirit of hospitality prevailed, accompanied, but too frequently, by that excess for which those times have gained an unenviable celebrity, and where the motto appears to have been— “Fill up the bowl, then, fill it high, Fill all the glasses then, for why Should every creature drink but I? Why, man of morals, tell me why?” Hals, in that very scarce book, his ‘History of Cornwall,’ reprinted, with some omissions, a few years since, by the late Davies Gilbert, P.R.S., mentions the hospitality existing in that county in the beginning of the eighteenth century, referring particularly to the establishment of John Carminow, who kept open house for all comers and goers, drinkers, minstrels, dancers, and what not, during the Christmas time; his usual allowance of provisions for that season being twelve fat bullocks, twenty Cornish bushels of wheat (about sixty of usual measure), thirty-six sheep, with hogs, lambs, and fowls, of all sorts, and drink made of wheat and oat malt proportionable; barley-malt being then little known in those parts. Genuine hospitality was indeed to be met with in most of the provinces; but still the general effect was a falling off in the observance of Christmas. Garrick, in returning thanks to his friend Bunbury (the caricaturist) for some Norfolk game, at Christmas, says,— “Few presents now to friends are sent, Few hours in merry-making spent; Old-fashioned folks there are indeed, Whose hogs and pigs at Christmas bleed; Whose honest hearts no modes refine, They send their puddings and their chine.”