nouncement considerably interests the account which is a little on the wrong side this year will be a little on the wrong side in the next ensuing year of grace. A diary. Dics. Hodie. How queer to read are some of the entries in the journal! Here are the records of dinners eaten, and gone the way of flesh. The lights burn blue somehow, and we sit before the ghosts of victuals. Hark at the dead jokes resurging! Memory greets them with the ghost of a smile. Here are the lists of the individuals who have dined at your own humble table. The agonies endured before and during those entertainments are renewed, and smart again. What a failure that special grand dinner was! How those dreadful occasional waiters did break the old china! What a dismal hash poor Mary, the cook, made of the French dish which she would try out of Francatelli! How angry Mrs. Pope was at not going down to dinner before Mrs. Bishop! How Trimalchio sneered at your absurd attempt to give a feast; and Harpagon cried out at your extravagance and ostentation! How Lady Almack bullied the other ladies in the drawing-room (when no gentlemen were present): never asked you back back to dinner again left her card by her footman: and took not the slightest notice of your wife and daughters at Lady Hustleby's assembly! On the other hand, how easy, cosey, merry, comfortable, those little dinners were; got up at one or two days' notice; when everybody was contented; the soup as clear as amber; the wine as good as Trimalchio's own; and the people kept their carriages waiting, and would not go away till midnight! Along with the catalogue of by- Ah me! Every person who turns gone pleasures, balls, banquets, and this page over has his own little the like, which the pages record, diary, in paper or ruled in his memcomes a list of much more important ory tablets, and in which are set down occurrences, and remembrances of the transactions of the now dying graver import. On two days of year. Boys and men, we have Dives's diary are printed notices that our calendar, mothers and maidens. "Dividends are due at the Bank." For example, in your calendar pocketLet us hope, dear sir, that this an- book, my good Eliza, what a sad, sad That was near the end of the year -and mamma gave you a new pocket-book, perhaps, with a little coin, God bless her, in the pocket. And that pocket-book was for next year, you know; and, in that pocketbook you had to write down that sad day, Wednesday, January 24th, eighteen hundred and never mind what, - when Dr. Birch's young friends were expected to re-assemble. bers only too well: the long nightwatch; the dreadful dawning and the rain beating at the pane; the infant speechless, but moaning in its little crib; and then the awful calm, the awful smile on the sweet cherub face, when the cries have ceased, and the little suffering breast heaves no more. Then the children, as they see their mother's face, remember this was the day on which their little brother died. It was before they were born; but she remembers it. And as they pray together, it seems almost as if the spirit of the little lost one was hovering round the group. So they pass away: friends, kindred, the dearestloved, grown people, aged, infants. As we go on the down-hill journey, the mile-stones are grave-stones, and in each more and more names are written; unless haply you live beyond man's common age, when friends have dropped off, and tottering, and feeble, and unpitied, you reach the day that is how fondly and bitterly | ago it may be, and which she remem remembered when your boy went off to his regiment, to India, to danger, to battle perhaps! What a day was that last day at home, when the tall brother sat yet amongst the family, the little ones round about him wondering at saddle-boxes, uniforms, sword-cases, gun-cases, and other wonderous apparatus of war and travel which poured in and filled the hall; the new dressing-case for the beard not yet grown; the great swordcase at which little brother Tom looks so admiringly! What a dinner that was, that last dinner, when little and grown children assembled together, and all tried to be cheerful! What a night was that last night, when the young ones were at roost for the last time together under the same roof, and the mother lay alone in her chamber counting the fatal hours as they tolled one after another, amidst her tears, her watching, her fond prayers! What a night that was, and yet how quickly the melan-terminus alone. choly dawn came! Only too soon In this past year's diary is there the sun rose over the houses. And any precious day noted on which you now in a moment more the city seemed have made a new friend? This is a to wake. The house began to stir. piece of good fortune bestowed but The family gathers together for the grudgingly on the old. After a certain last meal. For the last time in the age a new friend is a wonder, like midst of them the widow kneels | Sarah's child. Aged persons are amongst her kneeling children, and seldom capable of bearing friendships. falters a prayer in which she commits Do you remember how warmly you her dearest, her eldest born, to the loved Jack and Tom when you were care of the Father of all. O night, at school; what a passionate regard what tears you hide what prayers you had for Ned when you were at you hear! And so the nights pass college, and the immense letters you and the days succeed, until that one wrote to each other? How often do comes when tears and parting shall be you write, now that postage costs nothing? There is the age of blossoms and sweet budding green: the age of generous summer; the autumn when the leaves drop; and then winter, shivering and bare. Quick, children, and sit at my feet: for they are cold, very cold: and it seems as if neither wine nor worsted will warm 'em. no more. In your diary, as in mine, there are days marked with sadness, not for this year only, but for all. On a certain day- and the sun, perhaps, shining ever so brightly—the housemother comes down to her family with a sad face, which scares the children round about in the midst of their laughter and prattle. They may have forgotten-but she has not -a day which came, twenty years In this past year's diary is there any dismal day noted in which you have lost a friend? In mine there is. : "We I do not mean by death. Those who | And he died; and his family never are gone, you have. Those who de- knew until he was gone, that he had parted loving you, love you still; and been long aware of the inevitable you love them always. They are not doom. really gone, those dear hearts and true; they are only gone into the next room and you will presently get up and follow them, and yonder door will close upon you, and you will be no more seen. As I am in this cheerful mood, I will tell you a fine and touching story of a doctor which I heard lately. About two years since there was, in our or some other city, a famous doctor, into whose consulting-room crowds came daily, so that they might be healed. Now this doctor had a suspicion that there was something vitally wrong with himself, and he went to consult another famous physician at Dublin, or may be at Edinburgh. And he of Edinburgh punched his comrade's sides; and listened at his heart and lungs; and felt his pulse, I suppose; and looked at his tongue; and when he had done, Doctor London said to Doctor Edinburgh, Doctor, how long have I to live?" And Doctor Edinburgh said to Doctor London, 'Doctor, you may last a year." it Then Doctor London came home, knowing that what Doctor Edinburgh said was true. And he made up his accounts, with man and heaven, I trust. And he visited his patients as usual. And he went about healing, and cheering, and soothing, and doctoring; and thousands of sick people were benefited by him. And he said not a word to his family at home; but lived amongst them cheerful and tender, and calm, and loving; though he knew the night was at hand when he should see them and work no more. And it was winter time, and they came and told him that some man at a distance—very sick, but very rich -- wanted him; and, though Doctor London knew that he was himself at death's door, he went to the sick man; for he knew the large fee would be good for his children after him. This is a cheerful carol for Christmas, is it not? You see, in regard to these Roundabout discourses, Ï never I know whether they are to be merry or dismal. My hobby has the bit in his mouth; goes his own way; and sometimes trots through a park, and sometimes paces by a cemetery. Two days since came the printer's little emissary, with a note saying, are waiting for the Roundabout Paper!" A Roundabout Paper about what or whom? How stale it has become, that printed jollity about Christmas ! Carols, and wassailbowls, and holly, and mistletoe, and yule-logs de commande what heaps of these have we not had for years past! Well, year after year the season comes. Come frost, come thaw, come snow, come rain, year after year my neighbor the parson has to make his sermon. They are getting together the bonbons, iced cakes, Christmas trees at Fortnum and Mason's now. The genii of the theatres are composing the Christmas pantomime, which our young folks will see and note anon in their little diaries. And now, brethren, may I conclude this discourse with an extract out of that great diary, the newspaper? I read it but yesterday, and it has mingled with all my thoughts since then. Here are the two paragraphs, which appeared following each other: "Mr. R., the Advocate-General of Calcutta, has been appointed to the post of Legislative Member of the Council of the Governor-General." "Sir R. S., Agent to the Governor-General for Central India, died on the 29th of October, of bronchitis." These two men, whose different fates are recorded in two paragraphs and half a dozen lines of the same newspaper, were sisters' sons. In one of the stories by the present writer, a man is described tottering "up the steps of the ghaut," having just parted with his child, whom he is despatching to England from India. I wrote this, remembering in long, long distant days, such a ghaut, or riverstair, at Calcutta; and a day when, down those steps, to a boat which was in waiting, came two children, whose mothers remained on the shore. One of those ladies was never to see her boy more; and he, too, is just dead in India, "of bronchitis, on the 29th October." We were first-cousins; had been little playmates and friends from the time of our birth; and the first house in London to which I was taken was that of our aunt, the mother of his Honor the Member of Council. His Honor was even then a gentleman of the long robe, being, in truth, a baby in arms. We Indian children were consigned to a school of which our deluded parents had heard a favorable report, but which was governed by a horrible little tyrant, who made our young lives so miserable that I remember kneeling by my little bed of a night, and saying, "Pray God, I may dream of my mother!" Thence we went to a public school: and my cousin to Addiscombe and to India. discharge of his duties. Lord Canning, to mark his high sense of Sir Richmond Shakespear's public services, had lately offered him the Chief Commissionership of Mysore, which he had accepted, and was about to undertake, when death terminated his career. When he came to London the cousins and playfellows of early Indian days met once again, and shook hands. "Can I do any thing for you?" I remember the kind fellow asking. He was always asking that question : of all kinsmen; of all widows and orphans; of all the poor; of young men who might need his purse or his ser. vice. I saw a young officer yesterday to whom the first words Sir Richmond Shakespear wrote on his arrival in India were, "Can I do any thing for you?" His purse was at the com mand of all. His kind hand was al ways open. It was a gracious fate which sent him to rescue widows and captives. Where could they have had a champion more chivalrous, a protector more loving and tender? Ai I write down his name in my litt book, among those of others dearly loved, who, too, have been summoned hence. And so we meet and part: we struggle and succeed; or we fail and drop unknown on the way. we leave the fond mother's knee, the rough trials of childhood and boy hood begin; and then manhood i upon us, and the battle of life with its chances, perils, wounds, defeats, distinctions. And Fort William guns are saluting in For thirty-two years," the paper says, "Sir Richmond Shakespear faithfully and devotedly served the Government of India, and during that period but once visited England, for a few months and on public duty. In his military capacity he saw much service, was present in eight gene:al engagements, and was badly wounded in the last. In 1840, when young lieutenant, he had the rare good fortune to be the means of rescuing from almost hopeless slavery in Khiva 416 subjects of the Emperor of Russia; and, but two years later, greatly contributed to the happy re- NOTES OF A WEEK'S HOLI covery of our own prisoners from a similar fate in Cabul. Throughout his career this officer was ever ready one man's honor,* while the troops are firing the last volleys over the other's grave-over the grave of the brave, the gentle, the faithful Christian soldier. DAY. Most of us tell old stories in ou and zealous for the public service, and families. The wife and children laugl: freely risked life and liberty in the * W. R. obiit March 22, 1862. |