Passing by sundry minor festivals of the year, we come to Christmas, which is a day of feasting and merrymaking in England even now, though but a "starveling Christmas" compared with that of the olden time. "Where now," as Mr. Knight asks, "is the real festive exhilaration of Christmas; the meeting of all ranks as children of a common father; the tenant speaking freely in his landlord's hall; the laborers and their families sitting at the same great oak table; the Yule Log brought in with shout and song? 'No night is now with hymn or carol blest.' There are singers of carols even now at a Stratford Christmas. Warwickshire has retained some of its ancient carols. But the singers are wretched chorus-makers, according to the most unmusical style of all the generations from the time of the Commonwealth.... But in an age of music we may believe that one young dweller in Stratford gladly woke out of his innocent sleep, after the evening bells had rung him to rest, when in the stillness of the night the psaltery was gently touched before his father's porch, and he heard, one voice under another, these simple and solemn strains:-- "'As Joseph was a-walking He heard an angel sing, This night shall be born Our heavenly King. "'He neither shall be born In housen nor in hall, Nor in the place of Paradise, But in an ox's stall. "'He neither shall be clothed In purple nor in pall, But all in fair linen, As were babies all. "'He neither shall be rock'd In silver nor in gold, But in a wooden cradle That rocks on the mould.' London has perhaps this carol yet, among its halfpenny ballads. A man who had a mind attuned to the love of what was beautiful in the past has preserved it; but it was for another age. It was for the age of William Shakespeare. It was for the age when superstition, as we call it, had its poetical faith....