Both Christmas-days were kept at the Grange. There were people in those times who refused to keep what they called Parliament Christmas. But whether the old computation or the new were right, was a point on which neither the master nor mistress of this house pretended to form an opinion. On which day the Glastonbury Thorn blossomed they never thought it necessary to enquire, nor did they go into the byre or the fields to see upon which midnight the oxen were to be found on their knees. They agreed with Mr. Bacon that in other respects it was a matter of indifference, but not so that Christmas should be celebrated on the same day throughout Christendom: and he agreed with them that as the ritual ought to be performed at the time appointed by authority, so the convivial observances might be regulated by the old kalendar, or still more fitly, repeated according to the old reckoning, in deference to old feelings and recollections which time had consecrated. In Bishopsgate Street it had been found convenient to set down the children and their young guests on these occasions at Pope-Joan, or snip-snap-snorum, which was to them a more amusing because a noisier game. But here was room for more legitimate gambols; and when a young party had assembled numerous enough for such pastime, hunt the slipper, hot cockles, or blind-man's buff were the sports of a Christmas evening. These had been days of high enjoyment to Betsey for a few years after their removal into the country; they ceased to be so when she saw that her aunt's hair was passing from the steel to the silver hue, and remembered that her father had reached the term of life, beyond which, in the ordinary course of nature our strength is but labour and sorrow;—that the one was at an age When every day that comes, comes to decay A day's work in us;[1] the other,— Even in the downfall of his mellowed years When Nature brought him to the door of Death.[1] [Footnote 1: SHAKESPEARE.] CHAPTER CX. A TRANSITIONAL CHAPTER, WHEREIN THE AUTHOR COMPARES HIS BOOK TO AN OMNIBUS AND A SHIP, QUOTES SHAKESPEARE, MARCO ANTONIO DE CAMOS, QUARLES, SPENSER, AND SOMEBODY ELSE, AND INTRODUCES HIS READERS TO SOME OF THE HEATHEN GODS, WITH WHOM PERHAPS THEY WERE NOT ACQUAINTED BEFORE. We are not to grudge such interstitial and transitional matter as may promote an easy connection of parts and an elastic separation of them, and keep the reader's mind upon springs as it were. HENRY TAYLOR'S Statesman. Dear impatient readers,—you whom I know and who do not know me,—and you who are equally impatient, but whom I cannot call equally dear, because you are totally strangers to me in my out-of-cog character,—you who would have had me hurry on In motion of no less celerity Than that of thought,—[1]