Another of the symptoms of the approaching season which has, at least to us, a very pleasing effect, consists in the bursts of solemn minstrelsy by which we are aroused from our slumbers in the still hour of the winter nights, or which, failing to break our sleep, mingle with our dreams, leading us into scenes of enchantment, and filling them with unearthly music. This midnight minstrelsy, whether it comes in the shape of human voices, hallowing the night by the chanting of the Christmas carol, or breaks upon the silence of the mid-watches from the mingling instruments of those wandering spirits of harmony, the waits, has in each case its origin in the _Gloria in Excelsis_,--the song with which the angels hailed the birth of the Redeemer in the fields near Bethlehem. "As soon," says Jeremy Taylor, "as these blessed choristers had sung their Christmas carol, and taught the Church a hymn to put into her offices forever on the anniversary of this festivity, the angels returned into heaven." Accordingly, these nocturnal hymns, although they spread over the entire period of Advent, grow more and more fervent and frequent as the season approaches, and the night which ushers in the great day itself is filled throughout all its watches with the continued sounds of sacred harmony. How beautiful is the effect given to this music by this consideration of its meaning and its cause! Many and many a time have we been awakened by the melody of the waits when "The floor of heaven _Was_ thick inlaid with patines of bright gold,"-- and have lain and listened to their wild minstrelsy, its solemn swells and "dying falls" kept musical by the distance and made holy by the time, till we have felt amid all those influences as if it were "No mortal business, nor no sound That the earth owes," and could have fancied that the "morning stars" were again singing, as of old they "sang together for joy," and that the sounds of their far anthem came floating to the earth. This sort of fancy has occurred over and over again to him who has looked out from his bed upon a sky full of stars, and listened at the same time to invisible and distant music, under the holy impressions of the season. Shakspeare has helped us to this feeling, perhaps, as we can trace his influence upon _all_ our feelings, and upon none more than the most sacred or the most solemn:-- "There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st, But in his motion like an angel sings, Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims; Such harmony is in immortal souls." To the rudest carol that ever flung its notes upon the still air of these solemn hours we have hearkened with a hush of pleasure which recognized how well-- "Soft stillness, and the night, Become the touches of sweet harmony!"