Leaving, however, those proceedings which are going on within our homes, and of which the manufacture of mince-pies forms so important an article, we must turn to the symptoms of the approaching holiday that meet the eye at every turn which we make out of doors. He who will take the king's highway in his search after these, planting himself on the outside of a stage-coach, will have the greater number of such signs brought under his observation in the progress of a journey which whirls him through town and village, and by park and farmhouse.

The road is alive with travellers; and along its whole extent there is an air of aimless bustle, if we may so express ourselves,—an appearance of active idleness. No doubt he who shall travel that same road in the days of hay-making or harvest will see as dense a population following their avocations in the open air and swarming in the fields. But then at those periods of labor the crowds are more widely scattered over the face of the country, and each individual is earnestly engaged in the prosecution of some positive pursuit, amid a silence scarcely broken by the distant whistle or occasional song that comes faintly to the ear through the rich sunny air. People are busier without being so bustling. But now all men are in action, though all men's business seems suspended. The population are gathered together in groups at the corners of streets or about the doors of ale-houses, and the mingling voices of the speakers and the sound of the merry laugh come sharp and ringing through the clear frosty air. There is the appearance, every way, of a season of transition. The only conspicuous evidence of the business of life going forward with a keen and steady view to its ordinary objects, exists in the abundant displays made at the windows of every shopkeeper, in every village along the road. Vehicles of all kinds are in motion; stage-coach, post-chaise, and private carriage are alike filled with travellers passing in all directions to their several places of assembling, and give glimpses of faces bright with the re-awakened affections that are radiating on all sides to common centres. Everywhere hearts are stirred and pulses quickened by pleasant anticipations; and many a current of feelings which for the rest of the year has wandered only in the direction of the world's miry ways and been darkened by its pollutions, met by the memories of the season and turned back from its unpleasing course, is flowing joyously back by every highway into the sweet regions of its pure and untainted spring.

Coming Home from School.—Page 163.

But of all wayfarers who are journeying towards the haunts of Christmas, who so happy as the emancipated school-boy? And of all vehicles that are carrying contributions of mirth to that general festival, what vehicle is so richly stored therewith as the post-chaise that holds a group of these young travellers? The glad day which has been the subject of speculation so long before, and has been preceded by days which, in their imaginary calendar, are beyond any question the very longest days of all the year, has at length arrived, after seeming as if it never would arrive, and the long restrained and hourly increasing tide of expectation has at length burst its barriers, and is rushing forward with no little noise, into the sea of fruition. "Eja! quid silemus?" says the well-known breaking-up song of the Winchester boys; and the sentiment therein expressed is wide awake (as everything must be, on this morning, that lies within any reasonable distance of their voices) in the breast of every school-boy, at all schools.

"Appropinquat ecce! felix
Hora gaudiorum,
Post grave tedium,
Advenit omnium
Meta petita laborum.
Domum, domum, dulce domum!
Domum, domum, dulce domum!
Dulce, dulce, dulce domum!
Dulce domum resonemus.
"Musa! libros mitte, fessa;
Mitte pensa dura,
Mitte negotium,
Jam datur otium,
Mea mittito cura!
Domum, domum, etc.
. . . .
"Heus, Rogere, fer caballos;
Eja nunc eamus,
Limen amabile,
Matris et oscula,
Suaviter et repetamus
Domum, domum, etc.
"Concinamus ad Penates,
Vox et audiatur;
Phosphore! quid jubar,
Segnius emicans,
Gaudia nostra moratur.
Domum, domum, etc."

And away they go well inclined to act up to the injunctions of the ancient song. "Concinamus, O Sodales!" Our readers will do well on the present occasion to translate the verb by its English equivalent,—to shout. "Vox et audiatur!"—small doubt of that! That deaf-looking old woman by the way-side must be "very deaf indeed" if the sounds of that merriment have failed at least to reach her ears,—though they may get no further; for she looks like one of those in whom all the avenues by which mirth reaches the heart, where they have not been closed at their external outlets by the infirmities of age, are choked up within by the ruins of that heart itself. But the entire progress of these glad hearts to-day is in the nature of a triumph, and all objects in its course are ministers to their unreflecting mirth. Theirs is the blessed age, and this its most privileged day, when the spirit can extract from all things the chyle of cheerfulness. That urchin who is flinging alms (a most gracious act in childhood!) is doing so to the sound of his merry neighbor's trumpet; and yet the act performed and the duty remembered, amid all the heydey and effervescence of the spirits, has not lost its gracefulness for the frolicsome mood by which it is attended. There are men in this world who dispense their charities to the flourish of their own trumpets; and though they are practised performers on that instrument, and play with considerable skill, the effect is unpleasing and the act a mockery. Away go the light-hearted boys! away past the aged and the poor,—as happiness has long since done, and the happy have long continued to do!—awaking the shrill echoes of the road and all its adjacent fields with the sound of their revelry. Every school-boy knows the programme. Flags flying, horns blowing, racing against rival chaises, taunts from the foremost, cheers from the hindmost, all sorts of practical jokes upon each other and upon all they meet and all they pass, and above all, the loud, ringing laugh,—the laugh of boyhood, so unlike all other laughter, that comes out clear and distinct, direct from the heart, stopping nowhere on its way, not pausing to be questioned by the judgment nor restrained by the memory, presenting no hollowness nor flatness to the nicest attention, betraying no under-tone to the finest ear, giving true and unbroken "echoes to the seat where mirth is throned," born spontaneously of that spirit, and excited so often by causes too minute for older eyes to see. And it is in this very causelessness that consists the spell of childhood's laughter, and the secret of youth's unmingled joy. We seldom begin to seek reasons for being gay till we have had some for being grave; and the search after the former is very apt to bring us upon more of the latter. There are tares among that wheat. The moment we commence to distrust our light-heartedness, it begins to evade us. From the day when we think it necessary to reason upon our enjoyments, to philosophize upon our mirth, to analyze our gladness, their free and unmingled character is gone. The toy is taken to pieces to see of what it was composed, and can no more be put together in the same perfect form. They who have entered upon the paths of knowledge, or gone far into the recesses of experience, like the men of yore who ventured to explore the cave of Trophonius, may perhaps find something higher and better than the light-heartedness they lose, but they smile never more as they smiled of old. The fine, clear instrument of the spirit that we bring with us from heaven is liable to injury from all that acts upon it here; and the string that has once been broken or disordered, repair it as we may, never again gives out the precise tone which it did before. The old man,—nay, even the young man,—let him be as merry as he may, and laugh as long and loudly as he will, never laughs as the school-boy laughs.

But of all this, and all the slumbering passions yet to be awakened in those young breasts, and of many a grief to come, there is no token to darken the joy of to-day. The mighty pleasures towards which they are hastening have as yet never "broken the word of promise to their hope." The postilions are of their party, and even he with the bottle-nose, who seems to be none of the youngest, is a boy for the nonce. The very horses appear to have caught the spirit of the occasion, and toss their heads and lay their haunches to the ground and fling out their forelegs as if they drew the car of Momus. The village boys return them shout for shout, fling up their hats as the triumph approaches, and follow it till their breath fails. The older passer-by returns their uproarious salute, taking no umbrage at their mischievous jokes and impish tricks, and turning, as the sounds of the merry voices die in the distance, to a vision of the days when he too was a boy, and an unconscious rehearsal of the half-forgotten song of "Dulce, dulce domum!"

And then the "limen amabile," and the "matris oscula," and the "Penates," towards which they are advancing; the yearning hearts that wait within those homes to clasp them; the bright eyes that are even now looking out from windows to catch the first token of "their coming, and look brighter when they come;" the quiet halls that shall ring to-night to their young voices; and the lanes and alleys whose echoes they shall awaken to-morrow, and still more loudly when the ice comes; and, above all, the Christmas revelries themselves! The whole is one crowded scene of enjoyment, across whose long extent the happy school-boy has as yet caught no glimpse of that black Monday which forms the opposite and distant portal of this haunted time.