to the dying melody. When, behold, a ray of light is seen, and splendor
grows around the stage from hidden candles, and in the glory Gabriel
appears upon a higher platform made to look like clouds. The shepherds
wake in confusion, striving to shelter their eyes from this unwonted
brilliancy. But Gabriel waves his lily, spreads his great gold wings,
and bids good cheer with clarion voice. The shepherds fall to worship,
and suddenly round Gabriel there gathers a choir of angels, and a song
of "Gloria in Excelsis" to the sound of a deep organ is heard far off.
From distant aisles it swells, and seems to come from heaven. Through
a long resonant fugue the glory flies, and as it ceases with complex
conclusion, the lights die out, the angels disappear, and Gabriel fades
into the darkness. Still the shepherds kneel, rustically chanting a
carol half in Latin, half in English, which begins "In dulci Jubilo."
The people know it well, and when the chorus rises with "Ubi sunt
gaudia?" its wild melody is caught by voices up and down the nave. This
scene makes deep impression upon many hearts; for the beauty of Gabriel
is rare, and few who see him in his angel's dress would know him for
the lad who daily carves his lilies and broad water-flags about the
pillars of the choir. To that simple audience he interprets Heaven,
and little children will see him in their dreams. Dark winter nights
and awful forests will be trodden by his feet, made musical by his
melodious voice, and parted by the rustling of his wings. The youth
himself may return to-morrow to the workman's blouse and chisel, but
his memory lives in many minds and may form a part of Christmas for the
fancy of men as yet unborn.
The next drawing of the curtain shows us the stable of Bethlehem
crowned by its star. There kneels Mary, and Joseph leans upon his
staff. The ox and the ass are close at hand, and Jesus lies in jeweled
robes on straw within the manger. To right and left bow the shepherds,
worshiping in dumb show, while voices from behind chant a solemn hymn.
In the midst of the melody is heard the flourish of trumpets, and
heralds step upon the stage, followed by the three crowned kings. They
have come from the far East, led by the star. The song ceases, while
drums and fifes and trumpets play a stately march. The kings pass by,
and do obeisance one by one. Each gives some costly gift; each doffs
his crown and leaves it at the Saviour's feet. Then they retire to a
distance and worship in silence like the shepherds. Again the angels'
song is heard, and while it dies away the curtain closes and the lights
are put out.
The play is over, and the evening has come. The people must go from the
warm church into the frozen snow, and crunch their homeward way beneath
the moon. But in their minds they carry a sense of light and music and
unearthly loveliness. Not a scene of this day's pageant will be lost.
It grows within them and creates the poetry of Christmas. Nor must we
forget the sculptors who listen to the play. We spoke of them minutely,
because these mysteries sank deep into their souls and found a way into
their carvings on the cathedral walls. The monk who made Madonna by
the southern porch will remember Gabriel and place him bending low in
lordly salutation by her side. The painted glass of the chapter-house
will glow with fiery choirs of angels learned by heart that night.
And who does not know the mocking devils and quaint satyrs that the
humorous sculptor carved among his fruits and flowers? Some of the
misereres of the stalls still bear portraits of the shepherd thief, and
of the ox and ass who blinked so blindly when the kings, by torchlight,
brought their dazzling gifts. Truly these old miracle-plays and the
carved work of cunning hands that they inspired are worth to us more
than all the delicate creations of Italian pencils. Our homely Northern
churches still retain, for the child who reads their bosses and their
sculptured fronts, more Christmas poetry than we can find in Fra
Angelico's devoutness or the liveliness of Giotto. Not that Southern
artists have done nothing for our Christmas. Cimabue's gigantic angels
at Assisi, and the radiant seraphs of Raphael or of Signorelli, were
seen by Milton in his Italian journey. He gazed in Romish churches on
graceful Nativities, into which Angelico and Credi threw their simple
souls. How much they tinged his fancy we cannot say. But what we know
of heavenly hierarchies we later men have learned from Milton; and what
he saw he spoke, and what he spoke in sounding verse lives for us now
and sways our reason, and controls our fancy, and makes fine art of
high theology.
JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS
Christmas in Dreamthorp
This, then, is Christmas. Everything is silent in Dreamthorp. The
smith's hammer reposes beside the anvil. The weaver's flying shuttle
is at rest. Through the clear, wintry sunshine the bells this morning
rang from the gray church tower amid the leafless elms, and up the walk
the villagers trooped in their best dresses and their best faces--the
latter a little reddened by the sharp wind: mere redness in the middle
aged; in the maids wonderful bloom to the eyes of their lovers--and
took their places decently in the ancient pews. The clerk read the
beautiful prayers of our Church, which seem so much more beautiful
at Christmas than at any other period. For that very feeling which
breaks down at this time the barriers which custom, birth, or wealth
have erected between man and man, strikes down the barrier of time
which intervenes between the worshipper of to-day and the great body
of worshippers who are at rest in their graves. On such a day as this,
hearing these prayers, we feel a kinship with the devout generations
who heard them long ago. The devout lips of the Christian dead
murmured the responses which we now murmur; along this road of prayer
did their thoughts of our innumerable dead, our brothers and sisters in
faith and hope, approach the Maker, even as ours at present approach
Him.
Prayers over, the clergyman--who is no Boanerges, or Chrysostom,
golden-mouthed, but a loving, genial-hearted pious man, the whole
extent of his life, from boyhood until now, full of charity and kindly
deeds, as autumn fields with heavy, wheaten ears; the clergyman, I
say--for the sentence is becoming unwieldy on my hands and one must
double back to secure connection--read out in that silvery voice of
his, which is sweeter than any music to my ear, those chapters of
the New Testament that deal with the birth of the Saviour. And the
red-faced rustic congregation hung on the good man's voice as he spoke
of the Infant brought forth in a manger, of the shining angels that
appeared in the mid-air to the shepherds, of the miraculous star that
took its station in the sky, and of the wise men who came from afar
and laid their gifts of the frankincense and myrrh at the feet of the
child. With the story every one was familiar, but on that day, and
backed by the persuasive melody of the reader's voice it seemed to
all quite new--at least they listened attentively as if it were. The
discourse that followed possessed no remarkable thoughts; it dealt
simply with the goodness of the Maker of heaven and earth, and the
shortness of time, with the duties of thankfulness and charity to the
poor; and I am persuaded that every one who heard returned to his house
in a better frame of mind. And so the service remitted us all to our
own homes, to what roast-beef and plum-pudding slender means permitted,
to gatherings around cheerful fires, to half-pleasant, half-sad
remembrances of the dead and absent.
ALEXANDER SMITH
By the Christmas Fire
When the fire has reached a degree of intensity and magnitude which
Rosalind thinks adequate to the occasion, I take down a well-worn
volume which opens of itself at a well-worn page. It is a book which I
have read and reread many times, and always with a kindling sympathy
and affection for the man who wrote it; in whatever mood I take it up,
there is something in it which touches me with a sense of kinship.
It is not a great book, but it is a book of the heart, and books of
the heart have passed beyond the outer court of criticism before we
bestow upon them that phrase of supreme regard. There are other books
of the heart around me, but on Christmas Eve it is Alexander Smith's
"Dreamthorp" which always seems to lie at my hand, and when I take up
the well-worn volume it falls open at the essay on "Christmas." It
is a good many years since Rosalind and I began to read together on
Christmas Eve this beautiful meditation on the season, and now it has
gathered about itself such a host of memories that it has become part
of our common past. It is indeed a veritable palimpsest, overlaid with
tender and gracious recollections out of which the original thought
gains a new and subtle sweetness. As I read it aloud I know that she
sees once more the familiar landscape about Dreamthorp, with the low
dark hill in the background, and over it "the tender radiance that
precedes the moon," the village windows are all lighted and the "whole
place shines like a congregation of glow-worms." There are the skaters
still "leaning against the frosty wind"; there is "the gray church
tower amid the leafless elms," around which the echoes of the morning
peal of Christmas bells still hover; the village folk have gathered,
"in their best dresses and their best faces"; the beautiful service
of the church has been read and answered with heartfelt responses,
the familiar story has been told again simply and urgently, with
applications for every thankful soul, and then the congregation has
gone to its homes and its festivities--all these things, I am sure,
lie within Rosalind's vision although she seems to see nothing but the
ruddy blaze of the fire; all these things I see as I have seen them
these many Christmas Eves agone; but with this familiar landscape there
are mingled all the sweet and sorrowful memories of our common life,
recalled at this hour that the light of the highest truth may interpret
them anew in the divine language of hope. I read on until I come to the
quotation from the "Hymn to the Nativity" and then I close the book,
and take up a copy of Milton close at hand.
HAMILTON W. MABIE in _My Study Fire_
_By permission of Dodd, Mead & Co._
Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity
This is the month, and this the happy morn
Wherein the Son of Heaven's Eternal King,
Of wedded maid and virgin mother born,
Our great redemption from above did bring;
For so the holy sages once did sing
That He our deadly forfeit should release,
And with His Father work us a perpetual peace.
That glorious Form, that Light unsufferable,
And that far-beaming blaze of Majesty
Wherewith He, wont at Heaven's high council-table
To sit the midst of Trinal Unity,
He laid aside; and, here with us to be,
Forsook the courts of everlasting day,
And chose with us a darksome house of mortal clay.
Say, heavenly Muse, shall not thy sacred vein
Afford a present to the Infant God?
Hast thou no verse, no hymn, or solemn strain
To welcome Him to this His new abode
Now while the heaven, by the sun's team untrod,
Hath took no print of the approaching light,
And all the spangled host keep watch in squadrons bright?
See how from far, upon the eastern road,
The star-led wizards haste with odours sweet:
O run, prevent them with thy humble ode
And lay it lowly at His blessed feet;
Have thou the honour first thy Lord to greet,
And join thy voice unto the Angel quire
From out His secret altar touched with hallow'd fire.
THE HYMN
It was the winter wild
While the heaven-born Child
All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies;
Nature in awe to Him
Had doff'd her gaudy trim,
With her great Master so to sympathize:
It was no season then for her
To wanton with the sun, her lusty paramour.
Only with speeches fair
She woos the gentle air
To hide her guilty front with innocent snow;
And on her naked shame,
Pollute with sinful blame,
The saintly veil of maiden white to throw;
Confounded, that her Maker's eyes
Should look so near upon her foul deformities.
But He, her fears to cease,
Sent down the meek-eyed Peace;
She, crown'd with olive green, came softly sliding
Down through the turning sphere,
His ready harbinger,
With turtle wing the amorous clouds dividing;
And waving wide her myrtle wand,
She strikes a universal peace through sea and land.
No war, or battle's sound
Was heard the world around:
The idle spear and shield were high uphung;
The hooked chariot stood
Unstain'd with hostile blood;
The trumpet spake not to the armed throng;
And kings sat still with awful eye,
As if they surely knew their sovran Lord was by.
But peaceful was the night
Wherein the Prince of Light
His reign of peace upon the earth began;
The winds, with wonder whist,
Smoothly, the waters kist,
Whispering new joys to the mild ocean--
Who now hath quite forgot to rave,
While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed wave.
The stars, with deep amaze,
Stand fix'd in steadfast gaze,
Bending one way their precious influence;
And will not take their flight
For all the morning light,
Or Lucifer that often warn'd them thence;
But in their glimmering orbs did glow
Until their Lord Himself bespake, and bid them go.
And though the shady gloom
Had given day her room,
The sun himself withheld his wonted speed,
And hid his head for shame,
As his inferior flame
The new-enlightened world no more should need;
He saw a greater Sun appear
Than his bright throne, or burning axletree could bear.
The shepherds on the lawn
Or ere the point of dawn
Sate simply chatting in a rustic row;
Full little thought they than
That the mighty Pan
Was kindly come to live with them below;
Perhaps their loves, or else their sheep
Was all that did their silly thoughts so busy keep:--
When such music sweet
Their hearts and ears did greet
As never was by mortal finger strook--
Divinely-warbled voice
Answering the stringed noise,
As all their souls in blissful rapture took:
The air, such pleasure loth to lose,
With thousand echoes still prolongs each heavenly close.
* * * * *
Such music (as 'tis said)
Before was never made
But when of old the Sons of Morning sung,
While the Creator great
His constellations set
And the well-balanced world on hinges hung;
And cast the dark foundations deep,
And bid the weltering waves their oozy channel keep.
Ring out, ye crystal spheres!
Once bless our human ears,
If ye have power to touch our senses so;
And let your silver chime
Move in melodious time;
And let the bass of heaven's deep organ blow;
And with your ninefold harmony
Make up full consort to the angelic symphony.
For if such holy song
Enwrap our fancy long,
Time will run back, and fetch the age of gold;
And speckled Vanity
Will sicken soon and die,
And leprous sin will melt from earthly mould;
And Hell itself will pass away,
And leave her dolorous mansions to the peering day.
Yea, Truth and Justice then
Will down return to men,
Orb'd in a rainbow; and, like glories wearing,
Mercy will sit between
Throned in celestial sheen,
With radiant feet the tissued clouds down steering;
And Heaven, as at some festival,
Will open wide the gates of her high palace-hall.
* * * * *
But see! the Virgin blest
Hath laid her Babe to rest;
Time is, our tedious song should here have ending:
Heaven's youngest-teemed star
Hath fix'd her polish'd car,
Her sleeping Lord with hand-maid lamp attending:
And all about the courtly stable
Bright-harnessed Angels sit in order serviceable.
JOHN MILTON
Christmas Church
When I awoke on Christmas morning, while I lay musing on my pillow,
I heard the sound of little feet pattering outside of the door, and
a whispering consultation. Presently a choir of small voices chanted
forth an old Christmas carol, the burden of which was,
Rejoice, our Saviour he was born
On Christmas Day in the morning.
I rose softly, slipped on my clothes, opened the door suddenly, and
beheld one of the most beautiful little fairy groups that a painter
could imagine. It consisted of a boy and two girls, the eldest not
more than six, and lovely as seraphs. They were going the rounds of
the house, and singing at every chamber-door; but my sudden appearance
frightened them into mute bashfulness. They remained for a moment
playing on their lips with their fingers, and now and then stealing a
shy glance from under their eyebrows, until, as if by one impulse, they
scampered away, and as they turned an angle of the gallery, I heard
them laughing in triumph at their escape.
Everything conspired to produce kind and happy feelings in this
stronghold of old-fashioned hospitality. The window of my chamber
looked out upon what in summer would have been a beautiful landscape.
There was a sloping lawn, a fine stream winding at the foot of it,
and a tract of park beyond, with noble clumps of trees, and herds of
deer. At a distance was a neat hamlet, with the smoke from the cottage
chimneys hanging over it; and a church with its dark spire in strong
relief against the clear cold sky. The house was surrounded with
evergreens, according to the English custom, which would have given
almost an appearance of summer; but the morning was extremely frosty;
the light vapour of the preceding evening had been precipitated by
the cold, and covered all the trees and every blade of grass with its
fine crystallizations. The rays of a bright morning sun had a dazzling
effect among the glittering foliage. A robin, perched upon the top of
a mountain-ash that hung its clusters of red berries just before my
window, was basking himself in the sunshine, and piping a few querulous
notes; and a peacock was displaying all the glories of his train,
and strutting with the pride and gravity of a Spanish grandee on the
terrace-walk below.
[Illustration: THE VIRGIN ADORING THE INFANT CHILD. _Correggio._]
I had scarcely dressed myself, when a servant appeared to invite me
to family prayers. I afterwards understood that early morning service
was read on every Sunday and saint's day throughout the year, either
by Mr. Bracebridge or by some member of the family. It was once almost
universally the case at the seats of the nobility and gentry of
England, and it is much to be regretted that the custom is fallen into
neglect; for the dullest observer must be sensible of the order and
serenity prevalent in those households, where the occasional exercise
of a beautiful form of worship in the morning gives, as it were, the
keynote to every temper for the day, and attunes every spirit to
harmony.
"If you are disposed to go to church," said Frank Bracebridge, "I can
promise you a specimen of my cousin Simon's musical achievements. As
the church is destitute of an organ, he has formed a band from the
village amateurs, and established a musical club for their improvement;
he has also sorted a choir, as he sorted my father's pack of hounds,
according to the directions of Jervaise Markham, in his Country
Contentments; for the bass he has sought out all the 'deep solemn
mouths,' and for the tenor the 'loud ringing mouths,' among the country
bumpkins; and for 'sweet mouths,' he has culled with curious taste
among the prettiest lasses in the neighbourhood; though these last, he
affirms, are the most difficult to keep in tune; your pretty female
singer being exceedingly wayward and capricious, and very liable to
accident."
As the morning, though frosty, was remarkably fine and clear, the
most of the family walked to the church, which was a very old building
of gray stone, and stood near a village, about half-a-mile from the
park gate. Adjoining it was a low snug parsonage, which seemed coeval
with the church. The front of it was perfectly matted with a yew-tree
that had been trained against its walls, through the dense foliage of
which apertures had been formed to admit light into the small antique
lattices. As we passed this sheltered nest, the parson issued forth and
preceded us.
* * * * *
The usual services of the choir were managed tolerably well, the vocal
parts generally lagging a little behind the instrumental, and some
loitering fiddler now and then making up for lost time by travelling
over a passage with prodigious celerity, and clearing more bars than
the keenest fox-hunter to be in at the death. But the great trial was
an anthem that had been prepared and arranged by Master Simon, and on
which he had founded great expectation. Unluckily there was a blunder
at the very outset; the musicians became flurried; Master Simon was in
a fever, everything went on lamely and irregularly until they came to
a chorus beginning "Now let us sing with one accord," which seemed to
be a signal for parting company: all became discord and confusion; each
shifted for himself, and got to the end as well, or rather as soon,
as he could, excepting one old chorister in a pair of horn spectacles
bestriding and pinching a long sonorous nose; who, happening to stand
a little apart, and being wrapped up in his own melody, kept on a
quavering course, wriggling his head, ogling his book, and winding all
up by a nasal solo of at least three bars' duration.
The parson gave us a most erudite sermon on the rites and ceremonies
of Christmas, and the propriety of observing it not merely as a day
of thanksgiving, but of rejoicing; supporting the correctness of his
opinions by the earliest usages of the Church, and enforcing them by
the authorities of Theophilus of Cesarea, St. Cyprian, St. Chrysostom,
St. Augustine and a cloud more of Saints and Fathers, from whom he made
copious quotations. I was a little at a loss to perceive the necessity
of such a mighty array of forces to maintain a point which no one
present seemed inclined to dispute; but I soon found that the good
man had a legion of ideal adversaries to contend with; having, in the
course of his researches on the subject of Christmas, got completely
embroiled in the sectarian controversies of the Revolution, when the
Puritans made such a fierce assault upon the ceremonies of the Church,
and poor old Christmas was driven out of the land by proclamation of
parliament. The worthy parson lived but with times past, and knew but a
little of the present.
Shut up among worm-eaten tomes in the retirement of his antiquated
little study, the pages of old times were to him as the gazettes of the
day; while the era of the Revolution was mere modern history. He forgot
that nearly two centuries had elapsed since the fiery persecution of
poor mince-pie throughout the land; when plum-porridge was denounced as
"mere popery," and roast beef as anti-christian; and that Christmas has
been brought in again triumphantly with the merry court of King Charles
at the Restoration. He kindled into warmth with the ardour of his
contest, and the host of imaginary foes with whom he had to combat; had
a stubborn conflict with old Prynne and two or three other forgotten
champions of the Roundheads, on the subject of Christmas festivity;
and concluded by urging his hearers, in the most solemn and affecting
manner, to stand to the traditionary customs of their fathers, and
feast and make merry on this joyful anniversary of the Church.
I have seldom known a sermon attended apparently with more immediate
effects; for on leaving the church the congregation seemed one and all
possessed with the gaiety of spirit so earnestly enjoined by their
pastor. The elder folks gathered in knots in the churchyard, greeting
and shaking hands; and the children ran about crying Ule! Ule! and
repeating some uncouth rhymes, which the parson, who had joined us,
informed me had been handed down from days of yore. The villagers
doffed their hats to the Squire as he passed, giving him the good
wishes of the season with every appearance of heartfelt sincerity, and
were invited by him to the Hall, to take something to keep out the cold
of the weather; and I heard blessings uttered by several of the poor,
which convinced me that, in the midst of his enjoyments, the worthy old
cavalier had not forgotten the true Christmas virtue of charity.
WASHINGTON IRVING
Dolly urges Silas Marner to go to Church on Christmas Day
"There's the bakehus if you could make up your mind to spend a twopence
on the oven now and then,--not every week, in course--I shouldn't like
to do that myself,--you might carry your bit o' dinner there, for it's
nothing but right to have a bit o' summat hot of a Sunday, and not
to make it as you can't know your dinner from Saturday. But now, upo'
Christmas-day, this blessed Christmas as is ever coming, if you was to
take your dinner to the bakehus, and go to church, and see the holly
and the yew, and hear the anthim, and then take the sacramen', you'd be
a deal the better, and you'd know which end you stood on, and you could
put your trust i' Them as knows better nor we do, seein' you'd ha' done
what it lies on us all to do."
Dolly's exhortation, which was an unusually long effort of speech for
her, was uttered in the soothing persuasive tone with which she would
have tried to prevail on a sick man to take his medicine, or a basin of
gruel for which he had no appetite.
* * * * *