Under the Protection of Juno.

Annue, purpureâque veni perlucida palla :

Ter tibi fit libo, ter, dea casta, mero.—Tibullus.

Hail, wedded love! mysterious law, true source
Of human offspring, sole propriety
In Paradise of all thi

common else.
By thee adulterous lust was driven from men
Among the bestial herds to range ; by thee,
Founded in reason, loyal, just, and pure,
Relations dear, and all the charities
Of father, son, and brother, first were known.
Perpetual fountain of domestic sweets,
Whose bed is undefiled, and chaste pronounced,
Present, or past, as saints and patriarchs used.
Here love his golden shafts employs, here lights
His constant lamp, and waves his purple wings,
Reigns here and revels; not in the bought smile
Of harlots, loveless, joyless, unendeared,
Casual fruition ; nor in court-amours,
Mixed dance, or wanton mask, or midnight ball,
Or serenade, which the starved lover sings
To his proud fair, best quitted with disdain.— Milton.

Mine eye yet fixed on Heaven's unchanging clime,
Long had I listened, free from mortal fear,

With inward stillness, and submitted mind;

When lo! its folds far waving on the wind, I saw the train of the DEPARTING YEAR!

Starting from my silent sadness

Then, with no unholy madness, Ere yet the entered cloud foreclosed my sight, I raised the impetuous song, and solemnized his fight.

Coleridge.

Upon an huge great earth-pot steane he stood.-Spenser.

If then, Young Year! thou need’st must come,
Choose thy attendants well ; for 'tis not thee

We fear, but 'tis thy company :
Let neither Loss of Friends, or Fame, or Liberty,
Nor pining Sickness, nor tormenting Pain,
Nor Sadness, nor uncleanly Poverty,

Be seen among thy train :

Nor let thy livery be
Either black Sin, or gaudy Vanity.—Cowley.

Ask me why I send you here
This sweet Infanta of the year ?

Ask me why I send to you
This primrose, thus bepearled with dew?

I will whisper to your ears,
The sweets of love are mixed with tears.

Ask me why this flower doth shew
So yellow-green, and sickly too?

Ask me why the stalk is weak
And bending, yet it doth not break ?

I will answer, these discover
What fainting hopes are in a lover.

The Primrose.—Hesperides.

1

The shepherds on the lawn,

Or e'er the point of dawn,
Sat simply chatting in a rustic row ;
Full little thought they then,

That the mighty Pan
Was kindly come to live with them below ;

Perhaps their loves, or else their sheep,
Was all that did their silly thoughts so busy keep.

Christmas Ode.

The Temple shakes, the sounding gates unfold,
Wide vaults appear, and roofs of fretted gold :
Rais'd on a thousand pillars, wreath'd around
With laurel-foliage, and with eagles crown’d.
Full in the passage of each spacious gate
The sage Historians in white garments wait;
Graved o'er their seats the form of Time was found,
His scythe revers’d, and both his pinions bound.
Millions of suppliant crowds the shrine attend,
And all degrees before the Goddess bend ;
The poor, the rich, the valiant, and the sage,
And boasting youth, and narrative old age,
Thick as the bees, that with the spring renew
Their flowery toils, and sip the fragrant dew.

Temple of Fame.

Here Patriots live, who for their country's good
In fighting fields were prodigal of blood ;
Priests of unblemished lives here make abode,
And Poets worthy their inspiring god;
And searching Wits, of more mechanic parts,
Who graced their age with new-invented arts ;
Those, who to worth, their bounty did extend,
And those, who knew that bounty to commend.

Virgil.

Teach us so to number our Days, that we may apply our hearts unto Wisdom.

Pentateuch.

Day.
Births.

Deaths. Cal. 1. Stephen Morin, 1625, Caen. St. Basil, Abp. of Cæsarea, 379.

Bp. W. Fleetwood, 1656, Tower. Charles the Bad, 1387. d. Pam-
William Elstob, 1673, Newcastle. peluna.
John Hopkins, 1675, Ireland. Charles (of Orleans), 1466. d.
Ar. Drakenborch, 1684, Utrecht. Amboise.
Soame Jenyns, 1704, London. Louis XII. (the Just) 1515.
Edmund Burke, 1730, Dublin. J. L. Fiescho, 1547. dr. Genoa.
G. Bürger, 1748, Wolmerswende. Christian III. (of Denm.) 1559.

Jo.du Bellay, 1560. Notre Dame.
Henry E. of Kent, 1615. Flitton.
Thos. Hobson, 1631. Cambridge.

Sir John Hotham, behead. 1645.
Obits of the Latin Church.

W.Wycherley, 1716. Cov.Gard. St. Almachus (or Telemachus), Lou.de Dangeau, 1723. d. Paris.

Martyr at Rome, A. D. 404. Mel. Duringer, 1723. d. Berne. St. Eugendus (or Oyend), Ab- Daniel E. of Winchelsea, 1730.

bot of St. Claude, d. 510. Henry Lord Montfort, 1755. St. Fulgentius, Bv. of Ruspa, in C. A. Helvetius, 1772. d. Paris. Tunis, d. 533.

Thoş. Hollis, 1774. d.Corscombe. St. Fanchea (or Faine), Virgin John Bourget, 1776.Caen-Abbey.

of Ireland, 6th Century. Sir Fletcher Norton, 1789. St. Mochua (or Moncain, alias N. Vandermonde, 1796. Paris.

Cluanus), Virgin of Ireland, L. J. M. Daubenton, 1800. 6th Century

J. C. G. Voigt, 1821. Ilmenau.
St. Mochua (or Cronan), Abbot

of Balla in Ireland, 637.
St. Odilo (or Olon), Abbot of

Cluni, d. 1049.

As no man can, rightly, be said to be born, until he has arrived at some station worthy of his life; so, in a religious view, death is the great birth-day of the departed.

Anon.

'Tis man alone that joy descries
With forward and reverted eyes.-Gray.

Acts.

THE CIRCUMCISION. By the primitive Christians the 1st day of January was observed as a fast, to distinguish it from the abuses of paganism. It was not until the year 487, that the festival, called in the Latin ritual, the Octave of Christmas, became known to the Church ; nor,

under its present title of “ Circumcision,” as introduced into our English Liturgy in 1550, is it to be traced higher than about the close of the 11th Century. The ceremony itself to which Christ submitted, is remembered, with reverence, by every Christian.

New YEAR's Day. That wholesome custom of making presents on the opening of the year, is as ancient as humanity; for it was “ in the end of the days," at the Autumnal Equinox, that Abel offered up to God a lamb of nine months old, and Cain (when every branch yielded him the means of happiness) the first fruits of his husbandry. It became traditionary with all the Celtic tribes, the Jews, Sarmatæ, and Romans, and was peculiarly a British observance; and, in a later age, we find it still blended with feelings of piety, as well as friendship. Even now the usage is reserved amongst us, in common with the Jews, of exchanging, on this day, visitings and congratulations. The Laureate's Lyric note, which chimed in the year, was silenced 1790 ; but from no dishonour in the institution, that had enrolled the proudest names in the annals of English poesy.

THE MONTH OF JANUARY, and its successor, were adapted for their present station, as leaders of the year, by the wisdom of Numa Pompilius, B.C. 672. The Roman Consuls from B.C. 154, inclusive, were regularly inaugurated on the 1st of January; and the Senate afterwards, in the times of the Emperors, annually renewed on the same day their oath of allegiance. Then also began, B.C. 45, the famous Julian Period, after the Roman Calendar had first been reformed by Sosigenes,

I am sent to the ant, to learn industry; to the dove, to learn innocency; to the serpent, to learn wisdom; and why not to the Robin redbreast, who chants it as cheerfully in winter as in summer, to learn equanimity and patience.-Warwick.