A COUNTRY CHRISTMAS-AGREEABILITY.

"I am as melancholy as a gib cat, or a lugged bear, or an old lion, or a lover's hute, or the drone of a Lincolnshire bagpipe. What say'st thou to a hare, or the melancholy of Moor-ditch ?"-HENRY IV.

THOSE Who, living in London, meet their friends at a six-o'clock dinner,—when the return of appetite, and the fatigue of an assiduous application to business, render a man any thing but fastidious in his company, and who, after amusing themselves for the greater part of the time with eating and drinking, take their leave of society at ten o'clock,-know very little of the charm and the importance of agreeability. He must indeed be a dull dog, who under these circumstances will not pass muster; and with the help of "taking wine," commending and carving dishes, cursing the climate, and discussing the fall of stocks and the elevation of Monsieur Chateaubriand,—the salvation of the agriculturists, and the d-nation of the last new pantomime,-Cobbett and Clara Fisher, the Marchioness and the Mermaid, Tom and Jerry and the Holy Allies,--cannot contrive to pass away an afternoon “for self and company" in some degree of hilarity and enjoyment.

Not so the man, whose evil destiny leads him to spend the Christmas holidays in the country, and to crib himself up under one roof with the Glaucumque, Medontaque Thersilochumque of society,-there to get on, as well as he can, till time and the twelfth-cake shall restore him once more to the bosom of his family. All the particulars and details of country habits are wearisome and trying to citizens who have passed the first freshness of life, and no longer find that

Simply but To Be,

To live, to breathe, is purest ecstasy :"

And when, more especially, the party is accustomed to employment, and is inexperienced in the art of "killing time," the listless idleness of a country morning is beyond all expression intolerable. But if there be one thing more annoying than another, it is the endless breakfast-table of the large party usually assembled on such occasions,-with the necessity it involves of making" company conversation," and being witty, before one's intellects are awakened, and the tea has had its action on the nervous system. Oh! for the delicious repose of one's own study breakfast; the feet on the fender, the newspaper spread before one, and the mind indulging in its own reflections, till they lapse from thought to reverie.-At this time of the day, the men are all muzzy with the last night's claret, and the women's faces, and consequently their tempers, are discomposed by their late hours. A pun, a quotation, or a smart sensible remark, falls as flat as the great poet on the plains of Waterloo*; and the most palpable joke can no more penetrate such an atmosphere of dulness, than a sunbeam find its way through the fog and smoke of a London December.

When, however, the tea-urn is dismissed, then "comes the tug of war." I speak not to hunters and shooters; though if the morning be too rainy for the one, or too frosty for the other, they too may understand what

"Of all that fell by sword or shot,

None fell so flat," &c. &c.

I mean. First huddle your ladies round the fire, strew your men at full length on the sofas, and place the children, s'il y en a (and the picture would be incomplete without them), in high and noisy romps on the middle of the floor. Then conceive the eternal, never-ending, still beginning, lackadaisicalities touching the matter of Walter Scott's more last dying words,"-the ferocious attack of some matronly partizan of "my grandmother's review" on poor Don Juan,-the diatribe against the heterodox and fugitive poet, its author, who won't submit to the chains of matrimony, and who will write what he thinks fit, in spite of Bowles, Southey, and the Constitutional Society. Then follows, by a natural transition, the customary prose on tracts, missions, the wonderful charities of the lady of the house, and all the good she does among her own tenants, by her intervention-or, I should rather say, her interference-in their most private and domestic concerns. Next come," skipping, rank and file," her cuttings out of linen for the girls, her cuttings out of employment for the boys,-the Bell and Lancaster war,-slates and samplers,-combs and catechisms,-and soup, soap, and sobriety :—all very good things in their way, but terribly dull in a morning's conversation. Nor is this all. Ever in the vicinage of a great house there is a vicarage; and the vicar's wife is always a nonpareil, with the most detestable set of interminable good qualities that ever "vexed the dull ear of a drowsy" listener. E poi, there is, to be sure, a maiden sister, who has had every disease in Buchan; and whose history, from the first cough to the last blister, is duly inflicted upon every new comer in his turn. Relieved from this fire by the failure of the ammunition, some facetious country gentleman takes you up; and seizing on your button-I wish to heavens the tailors would sew them tighter-plunges you incontinently into a sea of grand jury politics, neighbourly disputes about game, the intricate operations of a turnpike act, intrigues for draining a duck-pond, and manoeuvres for inclosing a

common

"Verum ubi oves furto, morbo periere capellæ,
Spem mentita seges, bos est enectus arando ;"

it becomes almost impossible to hold out longer; and one is tempted not to wait for the "media de nocte," but to take one's horse at once, and be off at a tangent.

By this time, however, relief arrives in the shape of a luncheon—– (people who have nothing to do, always eat luncheons)—and then follows the tiresome, draggling, lounging walk, without object and without animation: or, perhaps, (worst of all) that consummation of bore --a drive to pay a visit. Oh! ye, who, inhabiting a great city, have no other ideas excited by these words, than a peregrination through Bondstreet and the squares, dropping a ticket here and a compliment there, a "how d'ye do" at one house, and a "don't forget" at another, little do ye dream of the misery of a morning visit in the country. First, out come the four horses and the outriders, all in apple-pie order ;-the coachman's wig in full buckle, and the lady visitants in full demi-toilette (excuse the bull):-then off you set for seven or more miles of cold splashing through the deep ruts of by-roads and lanes; the carriage windows all closed, to stew you in your own steam, or lowered to introduce the "winter's flaw," and give you the tooth-ach. On arrival, you

course.

find a cold drawing-room, with the fire just lighted, and smoking, of After some half-quarter's preparation, enter the lady of the house, cold as her room, and formal as the regiment of chairs marshalled, with the drum-major of a sofa at their head, along its walls. The conversation, a repetition of all you have already heard in the morning, with some episodes to give time for the entrance of the luncheon(mem. your second luncheon)—which is never ready. At last the moment of parting arrives:-you curt'sy, bob, and return to your carriage, to skelter back your seven miles home, with the additional agrement of a snow-storm and darkness.

These are pleasant preliminaries for encountering at dinner the same faces you have been seeing every day till your eyes ache. All the good stories are moreover exhausted, the got-up wit expended, and the prescribed topics of the day discussed and worn out. Unless some one of the company has been kind enough to go out skaiting on horseback, and has broken his own or his horse's bones, for the amusement of the party, nothing remains but the claret for getting through the long, long evening.

It is under these circumstances that we become acquainted with the full value of agreeability; and know the worth of the man who "in the worst of times" has within himself the sources of amusement. To describe what agreeability is-in what it consists, is next to an impossibility. It is a quality rather to be felt than understood, and far more susceptible of being enjoyed than analyzed. It is an aggregate of many particulars, differs in different subjects, and depends in some measure on the company as well as on the person himself in whom it is found. Generally speaking, an agreeable person should not be a man of strong passions, or of deep views or feelings; he should have vanity enough to wish to please, and not sufficient to be wholly engaged with himself. There are men of the most lively and brilliant wit, with minds stored with anecdote, who are extremely wearisome in society, simply because they are not good listeners, and take no pains to make the company satisfied with themselves, to draw out each man in his turn, to return him his own thoughts in a new or a better dress, and flatter him with the fancy that the novelty is his own. Without the aid of some one possessed of this talent, society is apt to fall into the hands of some egregious coxcomb, who has no other qualification for possessing "the general ear," than impudence and self-sufficience.

Agreeability is a much rarer and more difficultly attainable excellence among women, than with men; owing to their more circumscribed intercourse with the world, and their more defective education. We are indeed most frequently indebted to a slight dash of coquetry in females, when we pass our time agreeably in their society. Clever wo

men are too often tranchantes, or too pedantic, to please; while a fool is the whole antipodes away from agreeability. But when one finds a female truly agreeable, there is nothing in the round of life so fascinating, so enjoyable! Beauty cloys; wit dazzles and fatigues; but genuine agreeability is as durable as it is exquisite. The male sex has nothing like it; nothing so winning, nothing so delightful, nothing so intoxicating. Hours, days, years, under its influence, " roll unperceived away;" and a long life will not suffice to exhaust its powers.

To be agreeable, the desire to please is not sufficient. Often, indeed,

the very effort mars the design. Quoters, strainers after points and antitheses, are any thing on the face of the earth but agreeable: and it often occurs, that when even men of wit and celebrity are brought together for the express purpose of " making a charming day of it," mutual apprehension and mutual effort render the society as dull as a Methodist meeting.

To be simple and natural, on the other hand, goes far; and it is not unusual to find even aged females (those synonymes for bore, among the half-witted,) extremely agreeable, upon no other fund than this simplicity and a little good sense.

One source of the agreeable is sympathy. A noisy, obstreperous, story-telling, song-singing invader of ears, is deemed agreeable in the club, of which he is the centre; and a prosing, long-winded follower of the doublings of a hare, the patient historiographer of the day's labour of a pointer-are good company in the society of country-squires. To this cause we must attribute the rarity of agreeability among the cultivators of abstruse science, and among men of high-toned character, who have little 'in common with the mass of mankind, and whose thoughts, habitually turned inward, are incapable of external demonstration, except on great occasions.

For a somewhat similar reason, mothers of large families are uniformly deficient in the agreeable, being wholly pre-occupied with the cares and delights of maternity, and absorbed in contemplation of the great qualities of Tommy, or the budding beauties of the infant Jane.

The scarcity of agreeability exalts it in our estimation above far more important attributes. For, to be agreeable, implies, of necessity, no virtue, if it be not that of good-nature; and a very agreeable creature

may be a downright villain. Whatever value we may set upon the higher qualities of head or heart, we are still more intolerant of dulness than of vice, and prefer too often an agreeable companion to a true friend

"Nil ego contulerim jucundo sanus amico,"

says Horace; and in so saying bears involuntary testimony to the triumph of the agreeable over the estimable.

Agreeability is a quality eminently dependent upon civilization. Our ancestors knew not the thing; and were obliged to employ professional jesters, mummers, and morrice-dancers, to help them through their long winter's evenings, and to pass their Christmas for them in cheerfulness. The youth of both sexes find agreeability in their own animal spirits, in their young hopes and desires: a ball, or a small game, finds them in full employment. Infancy, therefore, (both in society and in individuals) is not fastidious:-but as life and society advance, men become intolerant, demand more intellectual excitement, and are more prone to retire from the world to the bosom of the select few, who happen to be congenial with their own habits and propensities*. It is in France alone that old men retain their faculty of pleasing and being pleased to the last. This is an endowment which results much from temperament; but something likewise must be attributed to the smaller pressure of the cares of life, and to the diminished necessity for great

* Those who live most in the world, complain the most of its stupidity, insomuch that ennui has become the tone of good society.

exertions in the mere attainment of subsistence. An Englishman's mind and temper are early worn out by his excessive effort to maintain his place in society; and the intellectual machine is destroyed, long before the failure of the digestive and circulating organs fits the body for the grave. They manage these things better in France;" and the French are accordingly a more social and entertaining people.

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But it is high time to have done. This paper was intended to be agreeable," but the influence of a country Christmas has prevailed. Beginning in fun and ridicule, the subject has conducted itself, like all other human subjects,-" to the grave." If, however, the reader should be tired of this our "country Christmas," he will afford an additional instance of the truth it has been attempted to illustrate: and he has this advantage over the invited guest-that he can cut whenever he pleases, without the trouble of a formal apology, or the necessity for a lying excuse, to his humble servant, M.

THE WHITE ROSE.

Or the Lument of the Year 1745.

Он, thou pale, snowy rosebud, though rent and laid low
By the rude hand of Power in the day of despair,
Yet thou still in the breasts of the loyal shalt blow,
Full as lovely, as fragrant, as fresh, and as fair.

Though our bosoms no longer may glow with the dream
Of royalty righted, and exiles restored,

Yet still they may swell with the rapturous theme

Of the faith they long cherished, the prince they adored;
And still they in silence may weep o'er the woes
Endured by the chieftains who bore the white rose.
With that deep thrilling interest, where pleasure and pain
Contend in the bosom and struggle for sway,

We muse on the emblem of Loyalty vain,

And sigh o'er its fall on Culloden's dark day:
Yet the cloud that o'ershadowed the dawning so bright,
And obscured wtih its darkness the valley and heath,
With the beam of the meteor flashed radiance and light,
And illumed with its splendour the pale field of death,
And bright o'er the fallen its lustre arose,
And hallowed their sufferings, their valour and woes.
Oh, still whilst our bosoms shall glow with the flame,
Which Heaven itself in its mercy inspired,

Shall awaken each thrill as it dwells on the fame
Of the heroes so loyal, devoted, adınired.
And still the loved emblems of loyalty true

Shall honoured and blest in our bosoms remain,
And whilst its white blossoms we pensively view,
We behold no dishonour, or sully, or stain;
And
ages to come shall admiring disclose,
The virtues and fame of the pure, snowy rose.

The Editor gives Jacobite poetry as a curiosity. He needs scarcely say that the name of his clan entitles him to abjure all attachment to the doctrine of "Monarchs restored."