As emblematical of hospitality's festive month. "The cluster'd berries claim the eye O'er the bright holly's gay green leaves:" We therefore weave our garland with this glossy foliage intermixed with its vermilion berries, from the centre of which we suspend a branch of mirth-inspiring misletoe. Peacham says "December must be expressed with a horrid and fearful aspect, clad in Irish rugge, or coarse freeze girt upon him, instead of a garland upon his head, three or four night-caps, with a Turkish turban over them. His nose red, his mouth and beard clogged with icicles, at his back a bundle of holly, ivy, or misletoe, holding in furred mittens the sign of Capricornus. We shall conclude our emblems of the months by Peacham's instructions to the painters of the seventeenth century. "Moreover you must be sure to give every moneth his proper and naturall landtskip, not making (as a painter of my acquaintance did in severall tables of the moneths for a nobleman of this land) blossomes upon the trees in December, and schoole-boyes, playing at nine the yce in July." pinnes upon We derive the names of the months from classical languages, and those of the days from the Gothic tongue. FLORAL EMBLEMS. DICTIONARY OF EMBLEMS. ABSENCE. WORMWOOD.-Artemisia Absinthium. She was wean'd; I had then laid Wormwood to my breast." Romeo and Juliet. 66 WE read in Watts's Logic, that Bitter is an equivocal word; there is bitter wormwood, there are bitter words, there are bitter enemies, and a bitter cold morning." And we will ask, who has not felt the bitterness of absence? "In spring the fields, in autumn hills I love; Pope's Past. ACCOMMODATING DISPOSITION. VALERIAN.Valeriana Rubra. "Gay loosetrife there and pale Valerian spring." Scott. This plant propagates itself with equal facility in the rich borders of the parterre, or in the dry crevices of old walls, hence the emblem. It was formerly called Setewale. Chaucer says, "Ther springen herbes grete and smale, |