I have been looking on, this evening, at a merry company of children assembled round
that pretty German toy, a Christmas Tree. The tree was planted in the middle of a great
round table, and towered high above their heads. It was brilliantly lighted by a multitude
of little tapers; and everywhere sparkled and glittered with bright objects. There were
rosy-cheeked dolls, hiding behind the green leaves; and there were real watches (with
movable hands, at least, and an endless capacity of being wound up) dangling from
innumerable twigs; there were French-polished tables, chairs, bedsteads, wardrobes,
eight-day clocks, and various other articles of domestic furniture (wonderfully made, in
tin, at Wolverhampton), perched among the boughs, as if in preparation for some fairy
housekeeping; there were jolly, broad-faced little men, much more agreeable in
appearance than many real men--and no wonder, for their heads took off, and showed
them to be full of sugar-plums; there were fiddles and drums; there were tambourines,
books, work-boxes, paint-boxes, sweetmeat-boxes, peep-show boxes, and all kinds of
boxes; there were trinkets for the elder girls, far brighter than any grown-up gold and
jewels; there were baskets and pincushions in all devices; there were guns, swords, and
banners; there were witches standing in enchanted rings of pasteboard, to tell fortunes;
there were teetotums, humming-tops, needle-cases, pen-wipers, smelling-bottles,
conversation-cards, bouquet-holders; real fruit, made artificially dazzling with gold leaf;
imitation apples, pears, and walnuts, crammed with surprises; in short, as a pretty child,
before me, delightedly whispered to another pretty child, her bosom friend, "There was
everything, and more." This motley collection of odd objects, clustering on the tree like
magic fruit, and flashing back the bright looks directed towards it from every side--some
of the diamond-eyes admiring it were hardly on a level with the table, and a few were
languishing in timid wonder on the bosoms of pretty mothers, aunts, and nurses--made a
lively realisation of the fancies of childhood; and set me thinking how all the trees that
grow and all the things that come into existence on the earth, have their wild adornments
at that well-remembered time.
Being now at home again, and alone, the only person in the house awake, my thoughts
are drawn back, by a fascination which I do not care to resist, to my own childhood. I
begin to consider, what do we all remember best upon the branches of the Christmas Tree
of our own young Christmas days, by which we climbed to real life.
Straight, in the middle of the room, cramped in the freedom of its growth by no encircling
walls or soon-reached ceiling, a shadowy tree arises; and, looking up into the dreamy
brightness of its top-- for I observe in this tree the singular property that it appears to
grow downward towards the earth--I look into my youngest Christmas recollections!
All toys at first, I find. Up yonder, among the green holly and red berries, is the Tumbler
with his hands in his pockets, who wouldn't lie down, but whenever he was put upon the
floor, persisted in rolling his fat body about, until he rolled himself still, and brought
those lobster eyes of his to bear upon me--when I affected to laugh very much, but in my
