CHRISTMAS OUT OF DOORS.

The whole Lake of Ratzeburg is one mass of thick, transparent ice, a spotless mirror of nine miles in extent. The lowness of the hills, which rise from the shores of the lake, precludes the awful sublimity of alpine landscape, yet compensates for the want of it by beauties of which this very lowness is a necessary condition. Yester morning I saw the lesser lake completely hidden by mist; but, the moment the sun peeped over the hill, the mist broke in the middle, and in a few seconds stood divided, leaving a broad road all across the lake: and between these two walls of mist the sunlight burnt upon the ice, forming a road of golden fire, intolerably bright, and the mist-walls themselves partook of the blaze in a multitude of shining colours. This is our second frost. About a month ago, before the thaw came on, there was a storm of wind; and, during the whole night, such were the thunders and howlings of the breaking ice, that they have left a conviction on my mind that there are sounds more sublime than any sight can be, more absolutely suspending the power of comparison, and more utterly absorbing the mind's self-consciousness in its total attention to the object working upon it. Part of the ice, which the vehemence of the wind had shattered, was driven shoreward, and froze anew. On the evening of the next day, at sunset, the shattered ice thus frozen appeared of a deep blue, and in shape like an agitated sea; beyond this, the water, that ran up between the great islands of ice which had preserved their masses entire and smooth, shone of a yellow green; but all these scattered ice islands, themselves, were of an intensely bright blood colour-they seemed blood and light in union. On some of the largest of these islands the fishermen stood pulling out their immense nets through the holes made in the ice for this purpose; and the men, their net-poles, and their huge nets were a part of the glory-say rather, it appeared as if the rich crimson light had shaped itself into these forms, figures, and attitudes, to make a glorious vision in mockery of earthly things.

The lower lake is now all alive with skaters, and with ladies driven onward by them in their ice cars. Mercury, surely, was the first maker of skates, and the wings at his feet are symbols of the invention. In skating there are three pleasing circumstances: the infinitely subtle particles of ice which the skate cuts up, and which creep and run be

fore the skate like a low mist, and in sunrise or sunset become coloured; second, the shadow of the skater in the water, seen through the transparent ice; and, third, the melancholy undulating sound from the skate, not without variety; and, when very many are skating together, the sounds and the noises give an impulse to the icy trees, and the woods all round the lake tinkle.

Here I stop, having in truth transcribed the preceding, in great measure, in order to present the lovers of poetry with a descriptive passage, extracted, with the author's permission, from an unpublished poem on the growth and revolutions of an individual mind by Wordsworth :

an Orphic tale indeed,

A tale divine of high and passionate thoughts,

To their own music chaunted!"

GROWTH OF GENIUS FROM THE INFLUENCES OF NATURAL OBJECTS ON THE IMAGINATION IN BOYHOOD AND EARLY YOUTH.

VOL. IV.

Wisdom and spirit of the universe!

Thou soul, that art the eternity of thought!
And giv'st to forms and images a breath
And everlasting motion! not in vain,
By day or starlight, thus from my first dawn
Of childhood didst thou intertwine for me
The passions that build up our human soul,
Nor with the mean and vulgar works of man,
But with high objects, with enduring things,
With life and nature: purifying thus
The elements of feeling and of thought,
And sanctifying by such discipline
Both pain and fear, until we recognise
A grandeur in the beatings of the heart.

Nor was this fellowship vouchsafed to me
With stinted kindness. In November days,
When vapours rolling down the valleys made
A lonely scene more lonesome; among woods
At noon, and 'mid the calm of summer nights,

E E

When, by the margin of the trembling lake,
Beneath the gloomy hills I homeward went
In solitude, such intercourse was mine;

"T was mine among the fields both day and night, And by the waters all the summer long.

And in the frosty season, when the sun Was set, and, visible for many a mile, The cottage-windows through the twilight blazed, I heeded not the summons. Happy time It was indeed for all of us, to me

It was a time of rapture: clear and loud

The village clock toll'd six;-I wheel'd about,
Proud and exulting, like an untired horse
That cared not for its home.-All shod with steel,
We hiss'd along the polish'd ice, in games
Confederate, imitative of the chase

And woodland pleasures, the resounding horn,
The pack loud bellowing, and the hunted hare.
So through the darkness and the cold we flew,
And not a voice was idle: with the din
Meanwhile the precipices rang aloud,
The leafless trees and every icy crag
Tinkled like iron, while the distant hills
Into the tumult sent an alien sound

Of melancholy-not unnoticed, while the stars,
Eastward, were sparkling clear, and in the west
The orange sky of evening died away.

Not seldom from the uproar I retired
Into a silent bay, or sportively

Glanced sideway, leaving the tumultuous throng,
To cut across the image of a star

That gleam'd upon the ice: and oftentimes,
When we had given our bodies to the wind,
And all the shadowy banks on either side
Came sweeping through the darkness, spinning still
The rapid line of motion, then at once
Have I, reclined back upon my heels,

Stopp'd short; yet still the solitary cliffs
Wheel'd by me even as if the earth had roll'd
With visible motion her diurnal round:

Behind me did they stretch in solemn train
Feebler and feebler, and I stood and watch'd
Till all was tranquil as a summer sea.

333.-THE OLD AND YOUNG COURTIER.

ANONYMOUS.

[THE whole of the sixteenth century was marked by important changes of every kind-political, religious, and social. The wars with France, and the internal contests of the Roses were over, and the energy of the nation was directed to new objects. Trade and commerce were extended; fresh sources of wealth were developed; and new classes of society sprung up into importance, whose riches enabled them to outvie the old landed gentry, but who had few of their hereditary tastes and habits. Hence the innovation of old customs, and the decay of ancient manners, to which the gentry themselves were compelled to conform. The following old song, which is printed in the Percy Reliques,' from an ancient black-letter copy in the 'Pepys Collection,' is a lament over the changes which had taken place in the early part of the seventeenth century, as compared with the days of Queen Elizabeth.]

An old song made by an aged old pate,

Of an old worshipful gentleman, who had a great estate,

That kept a brave old house at a bountiful rate,
And an old porter to relieve the poor at his gate;
Like an old courtier of the queen's,

And the queen's old courtier.

With an old lady, whose anger one word assuages,
That every quarter paid their old servants their wages,
And never knew what belong'd to coachmen, footmen, nor pages,

But kept twenty old fellows with blue coats and badges ;

Like an old courtier, &c.

With an old study fill'd full of learned old books,

With an old reverend chaplain, you might know him by his looks;
With an old buttery hatch, worn quite off the hooks,

And an old kitchen that maintain'd half-a-dozen old cooks;
Like an old courtier, &c.

With an old hall hung about with pikes, guns, and bows,
With old swords, and bucklers, that had borne many shrewd blows,
And an old frieze coat to cover his worship's trunk hose;
And a cup of old sherry to comfort his copper nose;

Like an old courtier, &c.

With a good old fashion, when Christmas was come,
To call in all his old neighbours with bagpipe and drum,
With good cheer enough to furnish every old room,
And old liquor able to make a cat speak and a man dumb;
Like an old courtier, &c.

With an old falconer, huntsman, and a kennel of hounds,
That never hawk'd nor hunted but in his own grounds,
Who, like a wise man, kept himself within his own bounds,
And when he died gave every child a thousand good pounds;
Like an old courtier, &c.

But to his eldest son his house and lands he assign'd,
Charging him in his will to keep the old bountiful mind,
To be good to his old tenants, and to his neighbours be kind;
But in the ensuing ditty you shall hear how he was inclined;
Like a young courtier of the king's,

And the king's young courtier.

Like a flourishing young gallant, newly come to his land,
Who keeps a brace of painted madams at his command,
And takes up a thousand pounds upon his father's land,
And gets drunk in a tavern till he can neither go nor stand;
Like a young courtier, &c.

With a new-fangled lady, that is dainty, nice, and spare,
Who never knew what belong'd to good house-keeping, or care;
Who buys gaudy-colour'd fans to play with wanton air,
And seven or eight different dressings of other women's hair;
Like a young courtier, &c.