A Vision Of The Christmas Tree

Hark ! The Wuits are playing, anc they break my childish sleep ! Wha Images do I associatc with the Christmas musió as I see thein set forth on the Christmas tree ? Known beforc all the otheis, keeping far apart from all the others, they gather round my little bed An angel, speaking to a group of sliep herds in a field; soine travelers, witl eyes uplifted, following a star; a bab; in a uwnger; a child in a spaeious tem ple, talkiug with grave men; a solemn figure, with a mild and beautiful face raising a dead girl by the hand; agaiu near a city gate, cnlling back the son o a widow, on his bier, to life; a crowd o people looking through the opened roo of a chamber where He sits, and letting down a sick person on a bed, ivith ropes; the same, in a tempest, walking on the water to a ship; agaiu on a seashore, teaching a great niultitude; again, with a cliild upon His knee, and other children round; again, restoring sight to Üie blind, speech to the dumb, hearing to the deaf, health to the sick, strength to the lame, knowledge to the ignorant; agnin, dying upon a cross, watched by armed soldiers, a thick darkness coming on, the earth beginning to shake, and only one voice heard: "Forgive them, for they know not what they do ?" Be the images once associated with the sweet old Waits, the softened music in the night, ever unalterable ! Encircled by the social thoughts of Christmas time, still let the benignant figure of my childhood stand unchanged ! In every cheerf nl imago and suggestion that tho season brings, may the bright star that restod above the poor roof bc the star of all the Christian world. A moment's pause, O vanishing tree, of which the lower boughs are dark to me as yet, and let me look once more ! I know there are blank spaces on thy branches, where eyes that I have loved have shone and 8iniled - from which they are departed. But, far above, I see the Kaiser of the dead girl, and the widow's son ; and God is good ! If age be hiding for me in the unseen portion of thy down wardgrowth, 0 may I, with a gray head, turn a child's heart to that figure yet, and a child's truthfulness and confidence. Now the tree is decorated with bright merriment, and song, and dance, and cheerfulness. And they are welcomo. Innocent and ivelcome be they ever held beneath the branches of tli9 Christmas tree, which cr.stH no gloomy shadow ! But, as it siuks into the grouud, I hear 1 whisper going through the leaves. " Thls, in commemoration of the law of [ove and kitulnesK, mercy, and corapassion. This, in remembriinoe oí Me ! What a beautiful picture is hexe presented by the great mastcr by which it is Irawn - the immortal Dickens - and with what vividness lias lie brought the Christmas tree of our youth beforc us.