Paradoxes.

the old Latin adage " Tempora mutantnr nos et mutamur in illis . " What is the use of harping over the " inevitable and unavoidable past , " or " crying over spilt milk ? " If Christmas does entail trouble with preparations and the like , they are happy preparations , and do a great deal of good for some , and give a great deal of pleasure to many . The writer now dilates upon the special reasons which makes Christmas , 1879 , a very troublesome and

difficult season I fear . We think his descrip tions are sensational and exaggerated , his views coloured by morbidity and politics , utterly out of place in such an essay on Christmas , which ought to aim at being both realistic and cosmopolitan in the hi ghest degree . But let this gloomy hierophant of the mysteries of 1879 , this g loomier Vates of what will be in 1880 , speak in weird tones for himself :

" This year the depressing associations are more numerous than usual . During the last twelvemonth we have not been standing still , but have been going backwards rather than forwards , deeper in social difficulties , mercantile failures , agricultural depression , arrears , war , and debt . We have suffered great disasters ; we fancy that greater may be imminent . None can venture to predict how this year will end and another begin . An almost unprecedented season has tried our whole industrial system , and fortunate indeed is the household that is not suffering its share in the widespread calamity ; though , on the other hand , we now know how much the nation can bear without excessive strain on its resources or

paralysis of its energies . So changed are matters even within a generation that though employers may suffer , the working classes hardly feel what thirty-five years ago would have produced a famine . True , we are also made to feel that England is now riding on those "high places" which seem to tempt fate and provoke the envy of all on a lower level . To the traditional rule of the sea is now added a virtual command of all the fruits of tho earth and all the labour of man . But we depend ou them and cannot say we are secure of them ; we have entered on a larger sphere with grander hopes , and corresponding uncertainties . Trembling and recoilingwe have stepped on to the throne of empireand it cannot be said

, , that nothing has occurred to justify the misgiving . Every advance in the direction of universal empire , or , as some would more modestly put it , the predominance of the Anglo-Saxon language , makes Christmas less and less what it was before . To the rich ancl populous colonies under our feet , it is celebrated in the midsummer heat of an almost tropical sun . What is more , the message of peaco and goodwill they return has to receive a new political interpretation . "

Can anything be less suitable to Christmas thoughts , and aspirations , and sympathies , and associations than this exaggerated dealing with the troubles of 1879 ? The year , like other years in the long ages of time , has been a very sad and trying year , no doubt , but is that any reason wh y we should allow a gloomy pall of fear , and doubt , and anger , and dissatisfaction combined to be cast over our refined and beautiful Christmas Saturnalia ? We trow not

, and therefore we reprobate , especiall y on the " cui bono " princi ple , such a morbid retrospect , and such gloomy anticipations . Christmas is meant to lighten up , as it surel y does , despite the stoical unconcern of the writer , the labours and cares , the joys and sorrows , the hopes and fears of each departing year .

" So Christmas , old as we fashion it , is ever new . It tells us of the new start that families , nations , and even individuals are always making . Nothing is certain about the coming year , except that it will not be like the last . Whatever we may have learnt in the past year , we shall have to improve on the lesson and make it applicable to new circumstances . Events are like the impostors presenting themselves again and again in fresh disguises to the same dupes , who are always sure to be taken in , and never carry the warning further than to beware of the same exterior . History may almost be reduced to the certainty of a mathematical science iu the uniformity with which follies , madnesses , and crimes return essentiallthe

y same , and find the same ready perpetrators , silly victims , and complaisant spectators . What the world has done it will do again , and so on to the end . This is the true moral of the increasing distaste with which the majority of the social world regard the season . There is no note in nature or iu human life so mournful , so heartrending as the lamentation sure to be heard in many quarters at the approach of Christmas . What the poor afflicted ' creatures ever expected from it , and why they should reckon on being always young , always happily mated and surrounded , always well to do , always able to enjoy mirth and good fare , and never have reason to be out of humour with their old friends , they do not