Christmas, thank God, all the world over.

And if you feel

strange or lonely, what can you do better than look up in the night at this wonderfully clear American sky, and watch the twinkling stars? And when you have made out the old familiar friends, and recognise Charles's Wain, driving for ever and ever, with equal pace, through the great highway— the same Wain you saw in your Cockney Camberwell—you know and are thankful that the same kind Father is there to protect those dear to you at home, and to watch over you, a wanderer.

With a sky Italian in its dark blue tint, with the sun shining, with the streets crowded, with the shops teeming with toys and confectionery and holiday presents, and with cartloads of evergreens to deck churches and houses lumbering by, there are but two little drawbacks to your pleasurable enjoyment of the season. The first is in being told that at New York, for some reason or other difficult of explanation, Christmas Day is not held as so bright, glorious, and convivial a festival as the 1st of January. On Christmas Day, I believe, all good folks go to church, and there are family dinners; but New Year's Day is the real time for jollification, for paying visits, and drinking hot punch and making presents. The second drawback is in the constantly recurring remembrance that the country is at war. The gay and impulsive people of New York have run away with the delusion that all signs and symptoms of the existence of civil strife have been banished from their sumptuous streets; but a stranger, a foreigner, cannot be half an hour in Broadway without becoming disagreeably aware of the fact that at nearly every

hundred yards a great, insatiate monster is fuming for men to come and be killed. The natives have grown accustomed to the banners flaunting across the roadway, with inscriptions calling for "Thirty thousand more volunteers," or vaunting the enormous bounties promised to recruits by the committee of supervisors. Their ears are dulled to the monotonous croak of the horse-leech's three daughters, crying out, " Give, give." They fail to see the slatternly soldiers lounging on the steps of the recruiting offices, or the busy agents and brokers hunting up recruits in bars and groggeries, in front streets and back streets, on wharves and on ferry-boats, wherever they can lure, wherever they can catch them. The foreigner cannot help seeing this. It is not strange, perhaps, that the sight should jar on him. It is no business of his, of course. It is impertinent in him to object to war, even in the abstract, or to remind his neighbours that Christmas is a time for friendliness and forgiveness, and that the shepherds in the dawn, who saw the first Christmas Day, sang their carol when all the world was hushed and tranquil, and universal peace reigned over sea and land.

CHAPTER V.

NEW YEAR'S DAY IN NEW YORK.

NEW YEAR'S DAY is, in New York, about the most unfavourable day in the year for making up a mail to Europe. It is, at least, unpropitious when it falls on a Friday, and the steam-ship of the Inman line leaves Pier Forty-four, North River, on the ensuing Saturday, as it will to-day at noon. You should make up your mail, it may be argued, on Thursday; but how are you to do that if you only left Niagara on Wednesday night and the New York Central and Hudson River lines wouldn't keep their time? Besides, there is that "latest intelligence," so anxiously expected, so tardy in arrival. Ere you close your letter, an "extra" of the New York Plugugly and Staten Island Shoulder-hitter may announce that Charleston has fallen, that the miserable inhabitants have grown weary of spending their Christmas by Gilmore's Greek fire, and that the "flag" waves over Sumter; that Richmond has arisen in its might, torn Jeff Davis, as the ungrateful Hollanders tore their Grand Pensionary, to pieces, and rushed into the Union again, on the amalgamated platform of peace between North and South and war to the bitter end with Great Britain. Such things are quite possible, albeit not very probable, in this astound

VOL. I.

M

ing country. I once declared after a month's residence in America, that I should not be in the least surprised at meeting a citizen with eight heads and a tail walking down West Twenty-first Street, Fifth Avenue. And were I to see that sight, I should be quite prepared to find the New York press asserting that to be born with a tail was a good and holy thing, and that, to preserve the Union and punish the piracies of England and the perfidy of France, it was essential forthwith to nominate the eight-headed citizen as President of the United States. Do you think I am writing in jest? I am writing in the mournfullest earnest. I verily believe that were a deserter from one of our English regiments of foot in Canada to turn up at Washington, forswear his nationality, develop rare military capacity, march on to Richmond, and crush out the rebellion, there would be found in New York journals of vast power and influence regretting that the fact of the heroic reprobate not being an American born was a bar to his promotion as chief of a magnificent republic. They would elect Genghis Khan or Attila, King of the Huns, over the heads of a Washington, a Jefferson, an Adams, a Webster, or a Clay, did those statesmen live, or could these degenerate days produce peers for the departed worthies-they would nominate Sylla instead of Cincinnatus, if he would only undertake to "whip" the South with corpions. They would cry out for Barabbas if he would "rush" the Confeds into the Gulf of Mexico.

But this is New Year's day, and there is no question of nominating Presidents. For the next twelve hours the republic may slide or not as it pleases. Lollipops to-day

reign supreme over Greek fire. Visiting cards have precedents over the newsboy's extras. The most powerful and the most profligate of the New York papers contained this morning not one word of abuse against England. Its editorials were absolutely good-tempered-one leader being devoted to puffing a Mr. Bonner, the proprietor of a cheap periodical, full of sensation romances, somewhat resembling our London Journal, and another containing half a column of facetious advice to Mr. Horace Greely to get a new suit of clothes. The amenities of the New York Press are rare, but charming.

I have already hinted that Christmas, as we understand it -the Great Day-the day for turkey, plum-pudding, and mince-pies, forfeits, hunt the slipper, holly, and mistletoe— was not kept to any great extent in the Northern States. Boston of late years has observed something approaching our notion of Christmas; but I have been assured, and on very serious and trustworthy authority, that the convivial celebration in Massachusetts of the great Christian festival was quite a modern innovation, and was mainly due to the popularity of Mr. Charles Dickens's Christmas books. I was loth to believe this; for, with admirably quaint humour, the Americans often divert themselves by relating to a foreigner all kinds of droll fictions about their national manners and customs-simply pour rire-and screeching afterwards with rage when they find the foreigner has fallen into the funny trap, and set down in a book all the fibs that have been told him. The person who talked to me about Christmas at Boston was, however, no joker of jokes; he was a gentleman