Of this day we have little left to say; almost all that belongs to it having been of necessity anticipated in the progress of those remarks which have brought us up to it. It is a day of universal congratulation; and one on which, so far as we may judge from external signs, a general expansion of the heart takes place. Even they who have no hearts to open, or hearts which are not opened by such ordinary occasions, adopt the phraseology of those whom _all_ genial hints call into sympathy with their fellow-creatures; and the gracious compliments of the season may be heard falling from lips on which they must surely wither in the very act of passing. To have your morning's salutation from a worthy like our friend with the umbrella in the plate, must be much the same thing as riding out into the highway, and getting your New Year's greeting from a raven by the roadside. Mathews's undertaker, who used to sing the song of "Merry I have been, and merry could I be," at his club, to a tune considerably below a dirge in point of liveliness, was a brother of the same family. Of New Year's gifts, which are the distinguishing feature of this day, we have already said enough, in pointing out the distinction betwixt them and Christmas-boxes. They still pass generally from friend to friend, and between the different members of a family; and are in such cases, very pleasant remembrancers; but the practice in ancient times had some very objectionable features. It was formerly customary for the nobles and those about the court to make presents on this day to the sovereign; who, if he were a prince with anything like a princely mind, took care that the returns which he made in kind should at least balance the cost to the subject. The custom, however, became a serious tax when the nobles had to do with a sovereign of another character; and in Elizabeth's day it was an affair of no trifling expense to maintain ground as a courtier. The lists of the _kind_ of gifts which she exacted from all who approached her (for the necessity of giving, the consequences of not giving, amounted to an exaction), and the accounts of the childish eagerness with which she turned over the wardrobe finery, furnished in great abundance as the sort of gift most suited to her capacity of appreciation, furnish admirable illustrations of her mind. She is said to have taken good care that her returns should leave a very substantial balance in her own favor. The practice is stated to have been extinguished in the reign of George III. A worse custom still, however, was that of presenting gifts to the Chancellor by suitors in his court, for the purpose of influencing his judgments. The abuses of the New-Year's-gift practice have, however, been cleared away, and have left it what it now is,--a beautiful form for the interchanges of affection and the expression of friendship.