The winter hearth is the very land of gossip-red. There it is that superstition loves to tell her marvels, and curiosity to gather them. The gloom and desolation without, with the wild, unearthly voice of the blast, as it sweeps over a waste of snows and cuts sharp against the leafless branches, or the wan sepulchral light that shows the dreary earth as it were covered with a pall, and the trees like spectres rising from beneath it, alike send men huddling round the blazing fire, and awaken those impressions of the wild and shadowy and unsubstantial, to which tales of marvel or of terror are such welcome food. But other inspirations are born of the blaze itself; and the jest and the laugh and the merry narration are of the spirits that are raised within the magic circles that surround it. "They should have drawn thee by the high heap't hearth, Old Winter! seated in thy great armed-chair, Watching the children at their Christmas mirth; Or circled by them, as thy lips declare Some merry jest, or tale of murder dire, Or troubled spirit that disturbs the night; Pausing at times to move the languid fire, Or taste the old October, brown and bright." The song and the story, the recitation and the book read aloud are, in town and in village, mansion and farmhouse, amongst the universal resources of the winter nights now, as they or their equivalents have at all times been. The narratives of "old adventures, and valiaunces of noble knights, in times past," the stories of Sir Bevys of Southampton and Sir Guy of Warwick, of Adam Bell, Clymme of the Clough, and William of Cloudesley, with other ancient romances or historical rhymes, which formed the recreation of the common people at their Christmas dinners and bride-ales long ago, may have made way for the wild legend of the sea, or fearful anecdote-- "Of horrid apparition, tall and ghastly, That walks at dead of night, or takes its stand O'er some new opened grave, and, strange to tell, Evanishes at crowing of the cock;" and for the more touching ballads which sing of the late repentance of the cruel Barbara Allan,-- "O mither, mither, mak my bed, O mak it saft and narrow; Since my love died for me to-day, I'll die for him to morrow;" or how the "Pretty babes, with hand in hand, Went wandering up and down; But never more could see the man Returning from the town;" or how "there came a ghost to Margaret's door," and chilled the life-blood in her veins, by his awful announcement,-- "My bones are buried in a kirk-yard, Afar beyond the sea; And it is but my sprite, Marg'ret, That's speaking now to thee;" or may have been replaced, in higher quarters, by the improved narrative literature of the present day, and the traditions or memories which haunt all homes. But the spirit of the entertainment itself is still the same, varied only by circumstances in its forms.