where are all these, or any similar, “merry disports” in our degenerate days?  We have no “lords of misrule” now; or, if we have, they are of a much less innocent and pacific character.  Mr. Cambridge, also, (No 104, of the World) draws a glowing picture of an ancient Christmas.  “Our ancestors,” says he, “considered Christmas in the double light of a holy commemoration and a cheerful festival; and accordingly distinguished it by devotion, by vacation from business, by merriment and hospitality.  They seemed eagerly bent to make themselves and every body about them happy.  With what punctual zeal did they wish one another a merry Christmas! and what an omission would it have been thought, to have concluded a letter without the compliments of the season!  The great hall resounded with the tumultuous joys of servants and tenants, and the gambols they played served as an amusement to the lord of the mansion and his family, who, by encouraging every art that conduced to mirth and entertainment, endeavoured to soften the rigour of the season, and to mitigate the influence of winter.  How greatly ought we to regret the neglect of mince-pies, which, besides the idea of merry-making inseparable from them, were always considered as the test of schismatics!  How zealously were they swallowed by the orthodox, to the utter confusion of all fanatical recusants!  If any country gentleman should be so unfortunate in this age as to lie under a suspicion of heresy, where will he find so easy a method of acquitting himself as by the ordeal of plum-porridge?” This alludes to the Puritans, who refused to observe Christmas, or any other festival of the church, either by devotion or merriment.  And I regret to say there are certain modern “fanatical recusants,” certain modern Puritans, as schismatical in this particular as their gloomy precursors.  Mr. Cambridge then proceeds “to account for a revolution which has rendered this season (so eminently distinguished in former times) now so little different from the rest of the year,” which he thinks “no difficult task.”  The reasons he assigns are, the decline of devotion, and the increase of luxury, the latter of which has extended rejoicings and feastings, formerly peculiar to Christmas, through the whole year; these have consequently lost their raciness, the appetite for amusement has become palled by satiety, and the relish for it, reserved formerly for this particular season, is now no longer peculiar to it, having been already dissipated and exhausted.  Another cause he assigns is, “the too general desertion of the country, the great scene of hospitality.”  Now this was written just fifty-three years ago, and as all the causes assigned for the declension of this grand national festivity up to that period are incontrovertible, and have been operating even more powerfully ever since, they will sufficiently account for the still greater declension observable in our days.  And the declension appears to me to consist in this,—­there is more gastronomy and expanse, but less heartiness and hospitality; and these latter are the only legitimate characteristics of Englishmen.  Be they then restored, this very Christmas, to the English character; the opportunity is fast approaching—­be it employed.