Our festivals come rather too near together, since we have so few of them; thanksgiving, Christmas, new year's day,--and then none again till July. We know not but these four, with the addition of "a day set apart for fasting and prayer," might answer the purposes of rest and edification, as well as a calendar full of saints' days, if they were observed in a better spirit. But thanksgiving is devoted to good dinners; Christmas and new year's days, to making presents and compliments; fast day, to playing at cricket and other games; and the fourth of July, to boasting of the past, rather than to plans how to deserve its benefits and secure its fruits. We value means of marking time by appointed days, because man, on one side of his nature so ardent and aspiring, is on the other so slippery and indolent a being, that he needs incessant admonitions to redeem the time. Time flows on steadily, whether he regards it or not; yet unless _he keep time_, there is no music in that flow. The sands drop with inevitable speed, yet each waits long enough to receive, if it be ready, the intellectual touch that should turn it to a sand of gold. Time, says the Grecian fable, is the parent of Power; Power is the father of Genius and Wisdom; Time, then, is grandfather of the noblest of the human family, and we must respect the aged sire whom we see on the frontispiece of the almanacs, and believe his scythe was meant to mow down harvests ripened for an immortal use. Yet the best provision made by the mind of society, at large, for these admonitions, soon loses its efficacy, and requires that individual earnestness, individual piety, should continually reanimate the most beautiful form. The world has never seen arrangements which might more naturally offer good suggestions, than those of the church of Rome. The founders of that church stood very near a history, radiant at every page with divine light. All their rites and ceremonial days illustrate facts of a universal interest. But the life with which piety, first, and afterwards the genius of great artists, invested these symbols, waned at last, except to a thoughtful few. Reverence was forgotten in the multitude of genuflections; the rosary became a string of beads, rather than a series of religious meditations, and "the glorious company of saints and martyrs" were not so much regarded as the teachers of heavenly truth, as intercessors to obtain for their votaries the temporal gifts they craved. Yet we regret that some of these symbols had not been more reverenced by Protestants, as the possible occasion of good thoughts. And among others we regret that the day set apart to commemorate the birth of Jesus should have been stripped, even by those who observe it, of many impressive and touching accessories.