The Christmas Prince on this occasion was Mr. Francis Vivian, who expended from his own private purse the large sum of £2,000 in support of his dignities. Really, it must have tried the philosophy of these gentlemen to descend from their temporary elevation, into the ranks of ordinary life. A deposed prince like that high and mighty prince, Henry, Prince of Purpoole, must have felt, on getting up on the morrow of Candlemas-day, some portion of the sensations of Abou Hassan on the morning which succeeded his Caliphate of a day, when the disagreeable conviction was forced upon him that he was no longer Commander of the Faithful, and had no further claim to the services of Cluster-of-Pearls, Morning-Star, Coral-Lips or Fair-Face. In the case, however, of Mr. Francis Vivian, it is stated that after his deposition he was knighted by the king,--by way, we suppose, of breaking his fall. In Wood's "Athenæ Oxonienses," mention is made of a very splendid Christmas ceremonial observed at St. John's College, Oxford, in the reign of our first James, which was presided over by a Mr. Thomas Tooker, whom we elsewhere find called "Tucker." From a manuscript account of this exhibition, Wood quotes the titles assumed by this gentleman in his character of Christmas Prince; and we will repeat them here, for the purpose of showing that the legal cloisters were not the only ones in which mirth was considered as no impeachment of professional gravity, and that humor (such as it is) was an occasional guest of the wisdom which is proverbially said to reside in wigs--of _all_ denominations. From a comparison of these titles with those by which Mr. Henry Helmes illustrated his own magnificence at Gray's Inn, our readers may decide for themselves upon the relative degrees of the wit which flourished beneath the shelter of the respective gowns. Though ourselves a Cantab, we have no skill in the measurement of the relations of small quantities. Of the hearty mirth in each case there is little doubt; and humor of the finest quality could have done no more than produce that effect, and might probably have failed to do so much. The appetite is the main point. "The heart's all," as Davy says. A small matter made our ancestors laugh, because they brought stomachs to the feast of Momus. And, Heaven save the mark! through how many national troubles has that same joyous temperament (which is the farthest thing possible from levity,--one of the phases of deep feeling,--) helped to bring the national mind! The "merry days" of England were succeeded by what may be called her "age of tears,"--the era of the sentimentalists, when young gentlemen ceased to wear cravats, and leaned against pillars in drawing-rooms in fits of moody abstraction or under the influence of evident inspiration, and young ladies made lachrymatories of their boudoirs, and met together to weep, and in fact went through the world weeping. Amid all its absurdity, there was some real feeling at the