Not that our firesides are altogether without domestic fortune-tellers or amateur practitioners in the art of sleight-of-hand. But the prophecies of the former are drawn from, and the feats of the other performed with the cards. Indeed we must not omit to particularize cards as furnishing in all their uses one of the great resources at this season of long evenings and in-door amusements, as they appear also to have formed an express feature of the Christmas entertainments of all ranks of people in old times. We are told that the squire of three hundred a-year in Queen Anne's time "never played at cards but at Christmas, when the family pack was produced from the mantel-piece;" and Stevenson, an old writer of Charles the Second's time, in an enumeration of the preparations making for the mirth of the season, tells us that "the country-maid leaves half her market and must be sent again, if she forgets a pack of cards on Christmas Eve." And who of us all has not shared in the uproarious mirth which young and unclouded spirits find, amid the intrigues and speculations of a round game! To the over-scrupulous on religious grounds, who, looking upon cards as the "devil's books," and to the moral alarmist who, considering card-playing to be in itself gaming, would each object to this species of recreation for the young and innocent, it may be interesting to know that the practice has been defended by that bishop of bishops, Jeremy Taylor himself, and that he insists upon no argument against the innocence of a practice being inferred from its abuse. We have before alluded to the bards and harpers who assembled in ancient days at this time of wassail, making the old halls to echo to the voice of music, and stirring the blood with the legends of chivalry or chilling it with the wizard tale. And the tale and the song are amongst the spirits that wait on Christmas still, and charm the long winter evenings with their yet undiminished spells. Many a Christmas evening has flown over our heads on the wings of music, sweeter, far sweeter, dearer, a thousand times dearer, than ever was played by wandering minstrel or uttered by stipendiary bard; and we have formed a portion of happy groups, when some thrilling story has sent a chain of sympathetic feeling through hearts that shall beat in unison no more, and tales of the grave and its tenants have sent a paleness into cheeks that the grave itself hath since made paler still.