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