Page:The Galaxy, Volume 5.djvu/67

Rh came to the English throne under fairer auspices than ever. The whole as we look at it is the tale of ruin. Those are the only two Christmas celebrations of that year that I have found anywhere written down!

You will not misunderstand the moral, dear reader, if, indeed, you exist; if at this point there be any reader beside him who corrects the proof! Sublime thought of the solemn silence in which these words may be spoken ! You will not misunderstand the moral. It is not that it is better to work on Christmas than to play. It is not that masques turn out ill, and that those who will not celebrate the great anniversaries turn out well. God forbid!

It is that these men builded better than they knew, because they did with all their heart and all their soul the best thing that they knew. They loved Christ and feared God, and on Christmas day did their best to express the love and the fear. And King James and Cadenet,—did they love Christ and fear God? I do not know. But I do not believe, nor do you, that the masque of the one, or the embassy of the other, expressed the love, or the hope, or the faith of either!

So it was that John Carver and his men, trying to avoid the celebration of the day, built better than they knew indeed, and, in their faith, laid a corner-stone for an empire.

And James and Cadenet trying to serve themselves—forgetful of the spirit of the day, as they pretended to honor it—were so successful that they destroyed a dynasty.

There is moral enough for our truer Christmas holidays as 1867 leads in the new-born sister.