necessary to reason upon our enjoyments, to philosophize upon our mirth, to analyze our gladness, their free and unmingled character is gone. The toy is taken to pieces to see of what it was composed, and can no more be put together in the same perfect form. They who have entered upon the paths of knowledge, or gone far into the recesses of experience, like the men of yore who ventured to explore the cave of Trophonius, may perhaps find something higher and better than the light-heartedness they lose, but they smile never more as they smiled of old. The fine, clear instrument of the spirit that we bring with us from heaven is liable to injury from all that acts upon it here; and the string that has once been broken or disordered, repair it as we may, _never_ again gives out the precise tone which it did before. The old man,--nay, even the young man,--let him be as merry as he may, and laugh as long and loudly as he will, never laughs as the school-boy laughs. But of all this, and all the slumbering passions yet to be awakened in those young breasts, and of many a grief to come, there is no token to darken the joy of to-day. The mighty pleasures towards which they are hastening have as yet never "broken the word of promise to their hope." The postilions are of their party, and even he with the bottle-nose, who seems to be none of the youngest, is a boy for the nonce. The very horses appear to have caught the spirit of the occasion, and toss their heads and lay their haunches to the ground and fling out their forelegs as if they drew the car of Momus. The village boys return them shout for shout, fling up their hats as the triumph approaches, and follow it till their breath fails. The older passer-by returns their uproarious salute, taking no umbrage at their mischievous jokes and impish tricks, and turning, as the sounds of the merry voices die in the distance, to a vision of the days when he too was a boy, and an unconscious rehearsal of the half-forgotten song of "Dulce, dulce domum!" And then the "limen amabile," and the "matris oscula," and the "Penates," towards which they are advancing; the yearning hearts that wait within those homes to clasp them; the bright eyes that are even now looking out from windows to catch the first token of "their coming, and look brighter when they come;" the quiet halls that shall ring to-night to their young voices; and the lanes and alleys whose echoes they shall awaken to-morrow, and still more loudly when the ice comes; and, above all, the Christmas revelries themselves! The whole is one crowded scene of enjoyment, across whose long extent the happy school-boy has as yet caught no glimpse of that _black Monday_ which forms the opposite and distant portal of this haunted time.