But what we would allude to more particularly here are the evergreens, which, with their rich and clustering berries, adorn the winter season, offering a provision for the few birds that still remain, and hanging a faint memory of summer about the hedges and the groves. The misletoe with its white berries, the holly (Virgil's acanthus) with its scarlet berries and pointed leaves, the ivy whose berries are green, the pyracanthus with its berries of deep orange, the arbutus exhibiting its flowers and fruit upon adjacent boughs, the glossy laurel and the pink-eyed laurestine (not to speak of the red berries of the May-bush, the purple sloes of the blackthorn, or others which show their clusters upon leafless boughs, nor of the evergreen trees,--the pine, the fur, the cedar, or the cypress), are all so many pleasant remembrancers of the past, and so many types to man of that which is imperishable in his own nature. And it is probably both _because_ they are such remembrancers of what the heart so much loves, and such types of what it so much desires, that they are gathered about our doors and within our homes at this period of natural decay and religious regeneration, and mingle their picturesque forms and hopeful morals with all the mysteries and ceremonies of the season. [Illustration: COUNTRY CAROL SINGERS.--_Page 157._] SIGNS OF THE SEASON. WE have said that the coming festivities of the season "fling their shadows" long before: the _avant-couriers_ of the old man are to be seen advancing in all directions. At home and abroad, in town and in country, in the remote farmstead and on the king's highway, we are met by the symptoms of his approach, and the arrangements making for his reception.