Even down to the present time—although the spirit has sadly abated, and been modified, and is still abating under the influence of the genius of the age, which requires work and not play—the festivities are yet kept up in many parts in a genial feeling of kindness and hospitality, not only in the dwellings of the humbler classes, who encroach upon their hard-gained earnings for the exigencies of the season, and of those of higher grade, where the luxuries mingle with the comforts of life; but also in the mansions of the opulent, and in the baronial hall, where still remain the better privileges of feudal state; and especially in the palace of our sovereign, who wisely considers the state of royalty not incompatible with the blessings of domestic enjoyment, and has shown how the dignity of a reigning queen is perfectly consistent with the exemplary performance of the duties of a wife and mother. And surely a cheerful observance of this festival is quite allowable with the requirements for mental exertion of the present times; and hospitality and innocent revelry may be used as safety valves for our high pressure educational power,— “Kind hearts can make December blithe as May, And in each morrow find a New Year’s Day.” In some parts the wassail-bowl may yet be found, though most commonly in the guise of toast and ale, without the roasted apples. In juvenile parties, snap-dragon, throwing its mysterious and witch-like hue over the faces of the bystanders, is sometimes yet permitted. Not Poins’s, who swallowed down candle-ends for flap-dragons; but the veritable Malaga fruit, carolling away in the frolicsome spirit, burning the fingers but rejoicing the palate of the adventurous youth, and half frightened little maiden reveller. The custom is old, but not quite so old as stated in the curious play of ‘Lingua;’ by the performance of one character, wherein—Tactus—Oliver Cromwell is said to have had his first dream of ambition. “_Memory._ O, I remember this dish well; it was first invented by Pluto, to entertain Proserpina withal. _Phantastes._ I think not so, Memory; for when Hercules had kill’d the flaming dragon of Hesperia, with the apples of that orchard he made this fiery meat; in memory whereof he named it snapdragon.“ There is still a species of flapdragon in the west, among the peasantry, by means of a cup of ale or cyder with a lighted candle standing in it: the difficulty being for a man to drink the liquor, without having his face singed, while his companions are singing some doggrel verses about Tom Toddy.