and velvets, and loaded with parcels which she goes to distribute as New-
Year's gifts. The door is shut, the windows are drawn up, the carriage
sets off.

Thus all the world are exchanging good wishes and presents to-day. I
alone have nothing to give or to receive. Poor Solitary! I do not even
know one chosen being for whom I might offer a prayer.

Then let my wishes for a happy New Year go and seek out all my unknown
friends--lost in the multitude which murmurs like the ocean at my feet!

To you first, hermits in cities, for whom death and poverty have created
a solitude in the midst of the crowd! unhappy laborers, who are
condemned to toil in melancholy, and eat your daily bread in silence and
desertion, and whom God has withdrawn from the intoxicating pangs of love
and friendship!

To you, fond dreamers, who pass through life with your eyes turned toward
some polar star, while you tread with indifference over the rich harvests
of reality!

To you, honest fathers, who lengthen out the evening to maintain your
families! to you, poor widows, weeping and working by a cradle! to you,
young men, resolutely set to open for yourselves a path in life, large
enough to lead through it the wife of your choice! to you, all brave
soldiers of work and of self-sacrifice!

To you, lastly, whatever your title and your name, who love good, who
pity the suffering; who walk through the world like the symbolical Virgin
of Byzantium, with both arms open to the human race!