Within the circuit of gardens and shrubberies Nature, however, reserves the evergreen pride of firs and pines; and even flowers are left to gladden the eye of the winter observer; and the rose, that sweet emblem of our fragile and transitory state, will live and prosper during this month. In the forest, the oak, beech, and hornbeam in part retain their leaves; there, too, is the endless variety of mosses, and lichens, and ivy, spreading and clinging round aged trunks, as if to protect them with their fond warmth, or mantling over the neglected labours of human art, and mocking their proud import. At this season, too, the social economy of man is wont to ripen into mirth; and in olden time, winter was the summer of hospitality, when the sunshine of Christmas shed its holy light on the hearts and faces of young and old. What the present generation have gained in head, they have lost in heart, and Christmas is almost the only surviving holiday of the calendar. But now, alas! "we live too late in time." If knowledge be valuable only in the proportion in which it conduces to our happiness, then we have cause to deplore the loss of the wassail-bowl, the sports and wrestlings of the town green, the evening tales, and the elegant pastimes of masque, song, and dance, of our ancestors, which the taste of our times has narrowed into a commercial channel, or pared down to a few formal visits and their insipid returns; and friends, families, and fortunes are often sacrificed in this exchange. But there are minds so attuned as not to be shut out from "The gayest, happiest attitudes of things," nor to allow their social blaze to be darkened by such narrow conceits; and for a picture of this portion of mankind, we quote Mr. Bucke's _Harmonies_:--