No. 297. Gazette of the Fashionable World. SATURDAY, JANUARY 3, 1835. THIS JOURNAL, BEING STAMPED, CIRCULATES POSTAGE FREE TO ALL PARTS OF THE UNITED KINGDOM. ORIGINAL PAPERS. NEW YEAR'S GIFTS. GREAT institutions have perished, while others, the most frivolous, have survived the wreck of time, and have, through the lapse of ages, been transmitted down to us. Of this number, is the custom of making presents, on the first day of the new year; for the original type of which we must go back to the time of the Romans. Impressed with the belief that auguries of the future might be drawn from the first things which they did, saw, or heard, that superstitious people equally imagined that, one first day of the new year, no prayer was addressed in vain to the ears of the gods. Two very curious monu pomp, and a cake was offered up to him, in which we may trace the origin of the modern Twelfth Cake. So persuaded were the Romans that the employment of the first day of the new year had a decided influence on that of all the others, that the artists and workmen generally devoted a part of that day to labour to avert the omen of inactivity. On that day, too, the Consuls elect took office and repaired to the Capitol, where they sacrificed to Jupiter Capitolinus; while the Flamens addressed their prayers to heaven for the prosperity of the empire and the health of the Emperor. Under the reign of Augustus, the people, the Knights, and the Senate, waited on the Emperor to present him with their New Year's Gifts; PRICE 18. AMERICAN POETS AND POETRY. OUR attention has been called to this subjectsubject which ought to prove interesting to the taste and feelings of every Briton-by the appearance of an unpretending volume of transatlantic poetry, published in the sister isle. When we opened this volume, we endeavoured to divest our mind of home-prejudice; in other words, to curb that national feeling, which is a virtue when not carried to excess, but which becomes a vice when it renders us blind to all talent save that which is of English growth. Genius is not confined to this or to that spot: it is a denizen of the wide and populous earth; it should therefore be warmly and honestly greeted, whether we behold it in the ripened summer of classic cultivation, or in the germ,-even as the ments have been preserved of the votive offerings and, in his absence, they were deposited in the rose, ere its leaves have opened to receive the Capitol. The money given on these occasions was never employed in the personal expenditure of the Prince, but was devoted to the purchase of the statues of the gods. Tiberius, finding that of the Romans on this occasion. They are two little vases of baked clay, upon the first of which are the words "Annum novum faustum, felicem tibi"-"Opto" being understood; and, upon the second, the same phrase, but in which the this ceremony occupied too much of the people's And we do not hesitate to assert, that in many words "Mihi et filio" are substituted for the "tibi" of the first. To these votive offerings visits and presents were added, the latter consisting of dates and figs, which were frequently enveloped in leaves of gold: these presents were emblematic of the sweets of happiness which they wished their relations or friends during the forthcoming year. The clients offered their patrons a piece of money in token of submission and tribute; and, at a later period, this became to the haughty patrician a source of considerable revenue. These annual offerings received the name of Strenno; from which the modern French term, Etrennes, is probably de rived. We are indebted to Nonius Marcellus for the etymology of the word. On the first day of the new year, which, at that period, fell on the first of March, Tatius, King of the Sabines, and the associate of Romulus, received a present, which he looked upon as a happy augury: it consisted of some branches, cut in a wood con secrated to Strenna, the Goddess of Strength. Flattered with this gift, so complimentary to his courage, Tatius observed that it might be renewed every year; and he named those presents Strennce, after the divinity to whom he consecrated them. But the dedication of the Strenna was soon changed. When Numa introduced the two new months into the Kalendar, they were consecrated to Janus. At the Kalends of January, his festival was celebrated with considerable 297.-1835. time-for it sometimes lasted more than a week -restricted its exercise to the first day of January. But his successors, Caligula and Claudian, were not of the same opinion: the former gave out, that he would condescend at any time to receive presents; while the latter proscribed the custom altogether; which, notwithstanding the imperial anathema, was still perpetuated in private life. Christianity, which dissipated so many profane traditions, in no respect affected those connected with the first day of the new year. But the church consecrated this day to fasting and prayer, as an expiation of the licentiousness to which the kisses of the sun,-even as the untaught bird, which pours forth a gush of melody in the green savanna, or on those untrodden hills where the eagle broods and the storm musters its artillery. poems of the present collection, more especially those which bear the names of Bryant, Percival, Brainard, Willis, and Lydia Sigourney, we trace the presence of that power which places man BUT a little below-the angels." The first named poet we shall, of course, notice first. There is a greatness of conception, and a prodigality of fancy about Bryant, which are well fitted to describe the scenes of his fatherland that land where nature presents to us the features and bearing of a giant-that land, where all things wear the impress of an antediluvian world, save the dewy morn when it breaks above some cot nestled on the green but sunny side of a ment, its martin's nest, and its familiar sparrow chirping on the house-top, as chirped an English sparrow in the home of our childhood. people gave themselves up. In the early ages of grassy valley, with its woodbine-shadowed caseChristianity, the custom of presenting the Emperor and magistrates with New Year's Gifts was still preserved; but the fathers of the church, and the councils, exclaimed against the abuse, and it was abolished; but from the moment that New Year's Gifts became the emblems of friendship and goodwill, and were purged of all the heathenish ceremonies, the church revoked its sentence. In modern times, the French, above all other nations, have preserved this custom in its greatest integrity. The appearance of the magazins, devoted to the sale of Etrennes, is, at this period, brilliant in the extreme; while the tax imposed upon the purse, by this ancient custom, must have been felt by all those who have been in the gay capital of France" Au Jour de l'An." Yes! Bryant has the true material of poetry about him; raw material, it may, by some, perhaps, be deemed,-still, it is such material as, did favouring circumstance permit, which it does not-for America is at present a mercantile rather than a literary land-might be wrought into a fabric that would outlive our day. Shall we be deemed irreverent if we venture to suggest, that had Bryant's muse been duly nur tured, he might have become the American • Selections from the American Poets, with some Introductory Remarks: published by Wakeman, Dublin; Simpkin and Marshall, London. The volume is inscribed to Mrs Hemans; and, with the exception of a crude, pert, flippant Preface, by the Editor, is alto gether a very creditable publication. |
