THEY are all bare, the corn-fields, that for so many months have been full of beauty and promise; first, with the silky verdure that, rising above the ground, whispered and moved in the genial breeze, like a summer sea; next, with the greenish silver of the filling ears, looking "white unto harvest; and last, crowned with the highly-burnished gold of their matured honours. They are all bare now. Even the trophy-like piles of sheaves are carried away; trophy-like we may well call them, for they seemed as though built up to signalise the glory of the noble corn that had survived the assaults of its enemies, bird and insect, blast, blight, and mildew. But the trophies are gone-gone like many far more solid and durable (but not more valuable) of earth's monuments. And the wild flowers that relieved the some. what monotonous majesty of the teeming fields, blossoming on the headlands, peeping between the ridges, or garlanding the hedges, they have nearly all withered. And the busy, merry groups of reapers, gleaners, and harvesters, they have all departed: the scenes lately so cheerful, so animated, so abundant, so lovely, now stripped of their wealth and their beauty, are left silent and deserted-it is a picture of human life.

Still all is not utter desolation; something yet remains, however little. The wild birds still find scattered grains and seeds; and the sedulous searcher may still gather a few chance gleanings -a neglected ear or two; and here or there a late-lingering flower; or at least the leaves, and

stalks, and seed-swoln heads of those that have faded. And to supply, in some degree, the loss of the harvesters' cheerful voices, the solitary gleaner may repeat some trait, some anecdote to Memory, the constant associate of the lonely; and sometimes murmur (half sung, half said) a scrap of desultory song.

WHEAT may be truly termed an universal blessing. It has been widely diffused in all places, and in all ages: we read of it as a staple article of human food in the earliest records. The ancient Romans were so convinced of its inestimable value, that they fancied a great number of divinities must be necessary to bless the labour of its cultivators, and to watch over and protect it in all its stages. And the priests (and of course the poets assisting) invented a crowd of Arval deities as the special guardians of the corn crops. The names and occupations of these dii minores furnish a curious list. Sterquilinus presided over the manuring of the land for the reception of the seed; Occator over the harrowing; Sator over the sowing; Runcina over the weeding; Spinosus over the plucking up of thorns; Seit protected the seed in the ground; Segetia preserved the blade when it appeared; Volusia (or Volutina) folded the blade round the young ear; Proserpine guarded the stalk when forming, Flora presided over the blossoms; Putelinu over the green ear; and Lacturtia over the ear when it was milky; while Matura was the goddess of the ripened ear; Hostilina was invoked when the beard and ear were of equal length. The god

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Robigus, and the goddess Niella, preserved the corn from mildew; Fuc tuoseia was the goddess invoked for a good harvest; Ruana was honoured by the reapers; Deverra was venerated when the corn was threshed; Tutelina watched over the corn in the granary; Pilumnus was the god of bakers; and Fornax the goddess of ovens. The names and offices of these frumental deities are recorded in St. Augustine's work, "De Civitate Dei." The supreme divinity over them all was Ceres, the patroness of agriculture.

Of course there were various festivals in honour of these rural deities. The principal were the Cerealia, dedicated to Ceres, and introduced into Rome from Greece. These solemnities were held during eight days in April; all the persons present, males and females, wore white; but the women only were the celebrants, the men were merely spectators. No one in mourning was admissible; for which reason the feast was not held the year after the bloody battle of Canna (about 216 years before Christ), when Hannibal defeated the Romans with such slaugh. ter that he sent to Carthage three bushels full of the gold rings worn by the Roman knights, so great was the number that perished there. In the Cerealia a hog was sacrificed, as an animal wasting and uprooting the produce of the earth. The hog is said to have been the first animal sacrificed to the gods, and eaten by men,

The Roman farmers likewise celebrated two festivals of Ambarvalia, in worship of Ceres. The first was to render her propitious; when a victim crowned with oak was led round the lands, that were lustrated with wine and milk, and the family followed singing hymns to Ceres. The second Ambarvalia came after harvest, when the first-fruits were presented to Ceres, and the farmer made an entertainment for his kinsmen and neighbours, like the harvest-home supper of the English farmers.

There were also the Sementiva* at the conclusion of the sowing seasonthey had no stated days, but were held at the discretion of the authorities; the Robigalia in April, to prevent the mildew; and the festival of Vacuna, or the goddess of vacation, at the end

of harvest, &c. &c. The observances of the English farmers in days of yore were evidently relics of Roman harvest homes. The first handful reaped was carried by the maidens home with great state in the last wagon; when leaving the denuded field the tops of the last reaped ears were knotted together, and the reapers flung their sickles at the knot, and he who cut it gained the prize of a goose; and a curious figure called a knack (a rude Ceres) was made, and hung up in the barn, to be kept till the next year.

Alma was a name of Ceres among the Romans, from her nourishing the seed corn.

Faunus, son of Picus, King of the Latins, introduced husbandry among his subjects, and was made a rural deity.

Annona, a rustic goddess of plenty, was figured with ears of wheat in her hand, and the beak of a ship by her side, to typify a supply by sea.

Abundantia, or abundance, was figured with a cornucopia, filled with corn ears and fruit. She held it upright to show that she did not mean to scatter, but to give to Equity (who stood beside her) to distribute.

July was personified as a youth crowned with wheat ears, and holding a basket of mulberries, and beside him was a cornucopia full of money, because payments were usually made by the ancients in that month.

Wheat-ears crowned the Arval Brothers, or Priests of Ceres; and filled the hand of Fidelity, who was deified by Numa.

The Greeks had not as many corn deities as the Romans; but they, too, honoured their mythological guardians, and had their observances. They represented Ceres clad in a garment the colour of ripe corn, and having her head crowned with wheat-ears and poppies, and they celebrated the festival of Aloa (i.e., threshing-floors), a kind of harvest-home; in which they presented first fruits, called Charisteria, and in which bachelors were dragged round the altar by the celebrants, and well beaten, for their disregard of Juno, the Goddess of Marriage.

In Greek weddings a boy used to come forward, crowned with ears of corn, holding acorns in one hand, and

a basket of bread in the other; and singing a song, the burden of which was- "I have left the worse and found the better;" commemorating the change of diet, when men left off eating acorns, and made bread of

corn.

It was customary with the ancient Gauls to parade an image of their goddess, Berecynthia (the Gaulish Ceres), over their arable fields, in a car drawn by oxen, and followed by the people singing her praises. St. Gregory of Tours* met one of these processions at the moment when, the oxen having stumbled, the image fell to the ground. He represented to the people about to raise it, that if she were truly a deity, she would be able to rise of herself. This not, of course, occurring, he preached to the crowd on the worthlessness of their idol with so much unction, that they at once embraced Christianity.

Isis, the goddess of Egypt, who was considered by Herodotus as identical with Ceres, was believed by the Egyptians to have first taught the use of corn. She was represented with a sickle in one hand, and a cornucopia in the other. At her festival (the Isia) her votaries carried vessels fall of wheat and barley. The feast was observed by the Romans (who borrowed it from Egypt); it lasted nine days; and was so full of impurities, that the initiated were obliged to take an oath of secresy. On this account the Roman Senate at last abolished the rites, in the consulate of Piso and Gabinius. But in two centuries afterwards (i. e., about 181 A.D.), the detestable Emperor Commodus revived the festival, and assisted at it in per

son.

In the Hebrides there was (perhaps still is) an old superstition on July 23rd. The people dressed up a sheaf of corn in feinale attire, and called it St. Bridget; laid it in a bed with a club by its side, and scattered ashes over the hearth-stone. If they saw next morning the mark of Bridget's

club in the ashes, they esteemed it a prognostic of good crops. St. Bridget was an Irish saint, born at Faughart, near Dundalk, about 433. Her connexion with agricultural affairs we can only suppose to have been founded on a dream or vision, in which the future state of religion in Ireland was said to have been foreshown to her under several types. She dreamed she saw white oxen amid fields of dark grain. These were succeeded by speckled oxen and spotted crops; then came black oxen and dark-coloured grain; lastly, she saw sheep and swine, dogs and wolves, fighting with each other in the fields. It was formerly usual, even in some parts of England, to make a cake in her honour on St. Bridget'sday. This custom is thought to be a relic of worship of Ceres, transferred from pagan mythology to Christian hagiology, as was frequently the case in early times. Christian missionaries, finding they could not divert the people from some favourite custom, thought to render it innocuous by changing its application.

Among all nations there have ever been some observances connected with bread or cakes. The women of Delos made large loaves mixed with fat, and called Achænas, for the festivals of Ceres and Proserpine. Flat cakes were offered by the Greeks to Diana, as Queen of Heaven. In Laconia there was a festival of Juno, when cakes were thrown into a lake; if they sank it was a good omen, but the reverse if they swam. The eating of pancakes on Shrove Tuesday, occurring in February, is a relic of the Fornacalia, a Roman festival in honour of Fornax, the Goddess of Ovens.† At that feast pancakes were fried in memory of the mode in which people dressed cakes before Fornax had invented ovens. She was doubtless a clever housewife, deified for her useful invention. At the festival of Samhuin (a name of the sun), in the beginning of November, the Druids had their sacred cake, made of fine flour, sprin

OVID: Fast. 2.

kled with poppy-seeds (possibly as figurative of the stars), and stained with saffron to represent the colour of the sunshine. This festival has been su perseded by All Hallows; and the speckled cake (still so called in Munster, bairin breac), now spotted with currants instead of poppy seeds, has still its votaries. In the midland counties of England, the simnel, stained with saffron, and rich with currants and raisins, made its appearance with Christmas. There were also the plumcakes, provided by the relatives of apprentices, and school-boys and girls who obtain leave to go home on midLent Sunday thence popularly called in England, "mothering Sunday;" a celebration certainly like a memory of the Hilaria, or "joyous festival," solemnised by the Romans in honour of Cybele, Mother of the Gods, about the 25th of March, a period synchronising with our Lent. The Egyptians made cakes in honour of the moon, shaping them like horns to denote the crescent. The Greeks imitated them, and called this kind of cake bous or bull— the accusative case is boun, hence the

English word, "bun." Hot cross buns on Good Friday morning are not yet obsolete at English breakfast tables. Among the Saxons, in August, was the "Loaf-mass" (Hlaf-mass), the oblation of bread made of new wheat; hence "Lammas Day." Formerly, at Twickenham and Paddington, on some particular day in summer, loaves used to be thrown from the church steeple, to be scrambled for by the populace below, in omen of a plentiful harvest. Pennant describes the Beltane cake of the Highland peasant as made of oatmeal, and having nine raised knobs, each dedicated to some power, propitious or noxious to rural possessions. The peasant at the Beltane feast (1st of May), before he ate his cake, broke off some bits and flung them over his shoulder, saying "This to thee, O Fire! spare my house; this to thee, O Fox! spare my lambs," &c., &c. Beltane, the Druid's vernal equinox, was, after the introduction of Christianity, moved further into the year, to avoid interfering with Lent.

Wheat was anciently accounted a good omen in dreams, divinations, &c. In the boyhood of Midas (afterwards King of Phrygia), when he was lying asleep one day, ants were observed to come and drop grains of wheat into

his mouth; and the soothsayers declared it a prognostic that he would be a very rich man.

After the death of Alexander the Great, Eumenes, his chief-secretary, was made Governor of Cappadocia ; but Neoptolemus and Craterus (Macedonians) marched against him to deprive him of that province. The night before Eumenes gave them battle he dreamed that he saw two Alexanders, each commanding a phalanx, about to engage- -one was aided by Minerva, the other by Ceres that, after a fierce conflict, Minerva's party was beaten; and Ceres gathered ears of wheat, and made them into wreaths for the victors. Eumenes thought the omen propitious to him, as he was to fight for a fertile corn country; and having learned that his antagonists bore Minerva and Alexander on their banners, he assumed Ceres and Alexander on his; and ordered his soldiers to entwine their helmets and weapons with stalks of corn. He gained a complete victory over the invaders, and both Neoptolemus and Craterus were slain.

Corn-ears on coins, or in the hands of imperial statues, often denote the interest taken by the sovereign in provisioning a country or city. They are also sometimes emblematic of the fertility of the place to which the corn belongs. The corn figured on ancient coins is generally the bearded wheat.

In heraldry, wheat sheaves (technically termed garbes) are emblematic of wealth.

The city of Pirene, in Caria, being closely besieged by Alyattes, King of Lydia, was in danger of famine. Bias (the famous sage, and a native of Pirene) conceived a stratagem to mislead the enemy. He ordered two mules to be carefully fattened, and then turned out of the gates. They strayed to the Lydian camp. The king, astonished

to see animals come out of the besieged city in such good condition, sent thither officers, under the pretence of treating for peace, but in reality to observe the state of affairs. Bias, who had expected this, had caused the granaries to be filled with heaps of sand, covered over with the remains of the corn. These the Lydian deputies were allowed to see; and on their return to their king they reported to him that the city was fully provisioned, and able to hold out for a long

time. Alyattes, therefore, at once concluded a peace with the inhabitants, and raised the siege.

When the capitol in Rome was besieged by the Gauls, under Brennus, Manlius the Patrician threw down loaves into the Gaulish camp, to deceive the enemy into the belief that the fortress was well provisioned. Brennus accordingly offered terms of peace; but while the Gauls and the Romans were disputing about the sum to be paid by the latter to the insolent invaders, the veteran General Camillus arrived, and routed and expelled the Gauls, on which account the Capitoline games were instituted.

At the period when Tarquin the Proud, last king of Rome, was hurled from his throne, he had reaped the wheat in a field which he had seized from the Priest of Mars. The Roman people would not appropriate the crop on account of its former consecration to the god, and therefore threw the sheaves into the Tiber, whose waters were then low. The sheaves stopped mid-channel, and in turn arrested the progress of floating rubbish. Alluvial deposits collected about them, and in time an island was formed, which was called the Sacred Isle, and on which temples and porticos were erected a great increase from a small beginning.

Corn has been highly honoured by the frequent mention made of it in the Scriptures. It has been used for many beautiful similes. Our Lord has adopted it in his teaching, to illustrate the progress of the Gospel, and the separation of the evil from the just in the spiritual harvest, at the end of the world, when the tares are (allegorically) gagathered out from the wheat, and when angels are the reapers. It has been also taken as a beautiful type of burial and resurrection, and a close type it is. How wholly is the seedwheat divested of all its integuments before it is committed to the earth, as man is utterly stripped of all he possessed when he is laid in the grave. The earth is pressed down over both, in hope, and they are left buried till they shall quicken, and rise again in a future spring; and the corn is not as a vain flower-it is full of the riches of great mercy.

With these thoughts of burial and resurrection, we shall strive to associate some not unfitting strain:

ON AN OLD TOMB

Sculptured with Armorial Bearings, Emblems of Death and Religious Symbols.

M. E. M.

Rub off the moss from this old tomb,
Lone in the ruin'd abbey's gloom;
Trace out its time-worn sculpture-see
The blazons proud of heraldry!
Here is the crest-surmounted shield,
With bearings won in foughten field;
Here is the lordly coronet,

The sheathless swords in saltier set.
Ay, here are emblems that proclaim
The pride of conquest, birth, and name.

But with this scutcheon, half effac'd,
The sculptor's hand a skull hath traced,
And carv'd the legend quaint beneath,
That sternly bids "Remember Death!"
Death!-meetly here his sign survey,
Who makes the Great, the Brave, his prey,
And levels even with the earth
Trophies of honour, fame and birth.

The tomb, Death's throne! where all must bow,

The haughtiest as the humblest brow,
And, grovelling in the dust, lie mute
Beneath the tyrant's crushing foot.

But look!-the sadden'd eye to cheer
Religion shows her symbols here;
The Book, the Cup, and chief the Cross,
Retrieving Life, man's primal loss;
Yea, here on Death's own regal seat
We see prefigur'd his defeat.

In vain Death makes the tomb his throne--
A broken and a tottering one-
He holds not undisputed sway,
L'en mid dry bones and senseless clay;
For Life is here--the living trees
Speak softly to the living breeze;
Here quivers grass instinct with life,
And wild flowers live with freshness rife ;
And e'en upon the cold hard stone
Have mosses ever verdant grown.

Thus Nature (handmaid blest of heaven),
To glad us emblems sweet hath given-
Fall leaf and bud in wintry hour?
Spring-time restores each spray and flower;
Life faileth not-but Death shall be
O'ercome by Immortality.

Before the Athenians were able to cultivate the vine, they extracted from BARLEY a drink called cicyeon, like the Egyptian beer. It was only used in the mysteries of Ceres, when a small quantity of it was given to the initiated, to remind them that the [then] present times were better than the