"With a turf at your head, dear man, And another at your feet. Your good deeds and your bad ones They will together meet. "My song is done, and I must begone, I can stay no longer here; God bless you all, both great and small, And send you a happy new year." Our Lancashire readers know that a similar wish to that expressed in the two last lines is generally delivered in recitative at the close of each carol, or before the singers abandon our doors,--which wish, however, we have heard finally changed into a less quotable ejaculation in cases where the carolists had been allowed to sing unregarded. The gradual decay into which these ancient religious ballads are rapidly falling was in some measure repaired by Mr. Davies Gilbert in 1823, who published a collection containing upwards of twenty carols in a restored state, with the tunes to which it was usual to sing them in the West of England. Of Welsh carols various collections are mentioned both by Hone and by Sandys, and in that country the practice is in better preservation than even in England. In Ireland, too, it exists to the present day, although we have not met with any collection of Irish carols; and in France, where there are numerous collections under the title of _noëls_, the custom is universal. In Scotland, however, it was extinguished, with the other Christmas practices, by the thunders of John Knox and his precisians, and we believe has never been in any degree restored. We should add that there are numerous carols for the Christmas season scattered through the writings of our old poets, amongst whom Herrick may be mentioned as conspicuous.