And with a holier fervour, even, are all things animate and inanimate said to feel the birth of a great poet, a hero, a genius, a prophet; all Nature thrills with joy at his advent and makes known her satisfaction with the good that has fallen to the lot of earth. With such men, as Goethe said, Nature is in eternal league, watching, waiting for their coming. How Nature must have rejoiced on that auspicious day, nineteen centuries ago, when the Messiah, long looked for, long expected, came! The sacred historians tell us that the carol of angels heralded his birth and the bright star in the East led the wise men to the modest manger where he lay. Never had there been such gladness abroad in the world since "The morning stars sang together, And all the sons of God shouted for joy." Shakespeare, in _Hamlet,_--a play in which so many items of folk-lore are to be found,--makes Marcellus say:-- "It faded on the crowing of the cock. Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated, The bird of dawning singeth all night long: And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad; The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike, No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm, So hallow'd and so gracious is the time," to which Horatio replies:-- "So have I heard, and do in part believe it." This belief in the holy and gracious season of the birth of Christ,--a return to the old ideas of the Golden Age and the kinship of all Nature,--finds briefest expression in the Montenegrin saying of Christmas Eve: "To-night, Earth is blended with Paradise." According to Bosnian legend, at the birth of Christ: "The sun in the East bowed down, the stars stood still, the mountains and the forests shook and touched the earth with their summits, and the green pine tree bent; heaven and earth were bowed." And when Simeon took the Holy Child from the mother's arms:-- "The sun leaped in the heavens and the stars around it danced. A peace came over mountain and forest. Even the rotten stump stood straight and healthy on the green mountain-side. The grass was beflowered with opening blossoms, and incense sweet as myrrh pervaded upland and forest, and birds sang on the mountain-top, and all gave thanks to the great God" (_Macmil-lan's Mag.,_ Vol. XLIII, p. 362). Relics of the same thoughts crop out from a thousand Christmas songs and carols in every country of Europe, and in myriads of folk-songs and sayings in every language of the Continent. And in those southern lands, where, even more than with us, religion and love are inseparable, the environment of the Christ-birth is transferred to the beloved of the human heart, and, as the Tuscans sing in their _stornelli_ (415. 104):-- "Quando nascesti tu, nacque un bel flore; La luna si fermò di camminare, Le stelle si cambiaron di colore," in Mrs. Busk's translation:--