Ye who have scorn'd each other, Or injured friend or brother, In this fast fading year; Ye who, by word or deed, Have made a kind heart bleed, Come gather here. Let sinn'd against, and sinning, Forget their strife's beginning, And join in friendship now; Be links no longer broken, Be sweet forgiveness spoken Under the Holly-bough. Ye who have loved each other, Sister and friend and brother, In this fast fading year; Mother and sire and child, Young man and maiden mild, Come gather here; And let your hearts grow fonder, As Memory shall ponder Each past unbroken vow: Old loves and younger wooing Are sweet in the renewing Under the Holly-bough. Ye who have nourish'd sadness. Estranged from hope and gladness, In this fast fading year; Ye with o'erburden'd mind, Made aliens from your kind, Come gather here. Let not the useless sorrow Pursue you night and morrow, If e'er you hoped, hope now-- Take heart, uncloud your faces, And join in our embraces Under the Holly-bough. MACKAY [Illustration: THE HOLLY CART.] * * * * * THE UNIVERSE. To us who dwell on its surface, the earth is by far the most extensive orb that our eyes can any where behold; but, to a spectator placed on one of the planets, it looks no larger than a spot. To beings who dwell at still greater distances, it entirely disappears. That which we call alternately the morning and the evening star, as in the one part of the orbit she rides foremost in the procession of night, in the other ushers in and anticipates the dawn, is a planetary world, which, with the five others that so wonderfully vary their mystic dance, are in themselves dark bodies, and shine only by reflection; have fields, and seas, and skies of their own; are furnished with all accommodations for animal subsistence, and are supposed to be the abodes of intellectual life. All these, together with our earthly habitation, are dependent on the sun, receive their light from his rays, and derive their comfort from his benign agency. The sun, which seems to us to perform its daily stages through the sky, is, in this respect, fixed and immovable; it is the great axle about which the globe we inhabit, and other more spacious orbs, wheel their stated courses. The sun, though apparently smaller than the dial it illuminates, is immensely larger than this whole earth, on which so many lofty mountains rise, and such vast oceans roll. A line extending from side to side through the centre of that resplendent orb, would measure more than 800,000 miles: a girdle formed to go round its circumference, would require a length of millions. Are we startled at these reports of philosophers? Are we ready to cry out in a transport of surprise, "How mighty is the Being who kindled such a prodigious fire,