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while the pitcher hanging by the other ruddy arm, full and flashing on the thirsty sight, reveals the no less happy result of last year's barley.

"And now comes fresh grouping; straggling wearily towards some shady corner, various parties of reapers and binders adjust themselves in a sort of 'hunt the slipper' ring on the arish, experiencing positive pleasure in mere cessation from toil." By the bye, Aunt Nelly could not have read Childe Harold;' but if ever that poetical fallacy, 'the rapture of repose,' meets with fulfilment, it must be on such an occasion as she is describing, when the harmless jest, and the more than ever harmless cup, (for I observe our present teetotal reapers quaff draughts of porter in place of beer,) circulate gaily round; and haply some hoverers near are called in to take a share in the gossip and good cheer. The superannuated reaper, invited to a seat, relates feats of harvest-ship performed in her day, when she "little thought she should come to pick heads;' or the little gleaner is summoned to share his mother's croust, and to have his tracery of ears, pranked off with red poppies and blue cornflowers, passed from hand to hand, and admiringly commented till, (continues the manuscript,)" their zealous leader, springing up, returns 'once more unto the breach,' and each of his trusty followers, resuming their place in the ranks, proceed in the work as stoutly, zealously, and cheerily, as if every creature there had a personal interest in its completion. And have they not a personal interest in its completion ?" the writer exultingly asks; but that was fifty years ago, and more, and now the question is, alas! answered by that group of dejected young faces which you see peering through the bars of a gate they formerly entered as of right. Can it be possible that disconsolate group represents Aunt Nelly's busy, merry gleaners,— coheritors of the mirth, good cheer, and, to their small power, the labours of the harvest field- -now churlishly shut out from its simple joys; even denied, as Aunt Nelly's favourite bard again says, to

on,

'hover round us like the fowls of heaven,
And ask their humble dole?'

Even in those days, it seems, he saw cause to upbraid the proprietor of the soil with the "hard and faint reluctance" of his bounty to the gleaner; and thus, it appears, there has been a gradual declension in liberality since the time of Boaz, up to this present harvest of 1851. Of this, indeed, you may have ample testimony by questioning the elder reapers.

66

Did they rake the arishes in your days, Un' Kattey?".

I inquired of a veteran whom I observed to direct an angry look towards the closed gate, behind which some of her own grandchildren were wishfully lingering. She seemed to regard the very question as an affront on her happier experience, repeating my words indignantly.

"Did they shut out them gleaners, poor lambs, 'in my day?' I should like to see the farmer who would have dared only to speak of sichee thing as putting that rake, with it's great grizzling teeth, ath'ert the arish in my day. Why, Missus, sichee one would have been hooted a'ter like an owl in the sunshine." I could not forbear hinting that the owl had the worst of the comparison; a cruel bird of prey, scaring poor little birds from their share of the glad sky, seemed to me a better one, and so thought Un' Kattey.

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"I'll tell ee what 'tis, Missus," pursued she, "and Mainster Skinfield, if he plase, may hear what I'm saying, the gleaner's ear will never fill the farmer's wain.' That saying was common before I was hardly so high as the wheat there, and never was there a truer one. Why, we know who it was that enlargened his barn, that he might have room enow to bestow all his fruits; but we don't hear tell that he lived to rake his arish." This was spoken with true sibyline emphasis, and I really wished farmer Skinfield had been by to hear. It certainly does strike me that a more grievous wrong than this exclusion of the gleaner is hardly perpetrated beneath the harvest moon. I had a mind to know what farmer Skinfield had to plead in defence of such a Nabal-ish practice, and I opened our colloquy by relating a circumstance which really occurred on its first introduction. A certain Vicar, I told him, had given strict orders that no rake should traverse his field till the ear-gatherers had gleaned it to their heart's content. The following harvest it was complained of by those farmers who had countenanced this sordid innovation that the corn which grew within several feet of the hedge was hardly worth thrashing out, by reason of the havoc the sparrows had made amongst it; while at the same time the Vicar's wheat-for I heard my brother's hind relate the fact with honest exultation-" wasn't diminished by so much as a gallon, and all without the help of drummers or scare

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Farmer Skinfield listened to my story civilly enough, but of course with becoming incredulity.

"Come, come, Missus, you musn't be too hard on us farmers neither. Better fit you should call to account them legislauters up there, who makes the laws, and foses us to sell our corn under the rate we can raise it at. If we war to lev'in them chaps as is squinying thro' the bars of the gate to make

our little less, you would soon have us, I'm thinking, looking thro' bars of another soart."

66

I suppose he meant the bars of a prison; and really there is much to be said for the grudging thrift of the present race of agriculturalists. I only wish they would cultivate a more trusting a more Heaven-confiding policy, and believe with Un' Kattey, that the gleaner's ear will never fill the farmer's wain." By the bye, I am surprised that some of those philanthropists whom we hear of on all sides of us, do not bestow a little of their bitterness on Arish-rakers. S. G. O. indeed-Heaven's blessing on him for it!--did speak a few words in vindication of the gleaner's rights, and I hope he will say a few more in his manly, fervent strain, and try to bring round these Arishrakers to the admission, drawn from the Fountain of wisdom, "There is that withholdeth and yet tendeth to penury."

The following parody adapted to Goss's beautiful glee "There is beauty on the mountain," was sung by Gertrude, Helen, and Samuel in the evening, to the great admiration of the assembled harvesters, epecially Un' Kattey, herself (as she frankly informed us,) "a fameous singer" in her youth.

As its versified details are minute and graphic, there will be no occasion to give a prose description of our own small neck-cutting, except to say that we were all of us, from my brother down to little Septy, unanimously called on to dissever some of the last surviving ears, and greeted by a hearty cheer at the conclusion.

THE CORN-FIELD. A Parody.

GLEE-Goss.

Air, "There is beauty on the Mountain."

There is beauty in the corn-field
While yet the wheat is green;
There is beauty in the flower
That gleams so bright between :
More beautiful the warbling
Of lark with speckled breast,
As, in her fondness ling'ring,
She hovers o'er her nest.

There is beauty as it ripens

In the tall unbending ear;
And beauty in its promise

Of plenty, and kind cheer:
More beautiful its waving,

Which never seems at rest.

Like foam the sea-beach laving,

Or plume on warrior's crest.

There is beauty in the Binder,

As, bending o'er the sheaves,
Around his golden treasure

The twisted band he weaves :
More beautiful the Reaper,

In her sweet, unbodiced ease,
When, pausing 'mid her labour,
She turns to catch the breeze.

There is beauty in yon Gleaners
Who pick the scattered ear,
Well pleased with their small guerdon
From the all-bounteous year:
More beautiful the gladness

Of the willing little flock,
To bear the trailing wheat-sheaf,
And aid the rising shock.

There is beauty in the circle,
Who, seated on the grass,
Enjoy a moment's respite,
And pass the cheering glass :
More beautiful the beaming

In some kind Reaper's eye,
Who shares her croust* and ale
Wi' the wishful Passer-by.

There is beauty-aye and glory,
In the cutting of the neck,
Which she, the veteran Reaper,
Will soon with flowers bedeck :
More beautiful the rapture

Of the merry little train,
Who follow in the track of
The homebound harvest-wain.

The Poet Wordsworth on Archbishop Luud." Before I conclude my notice of these sonnets, let me observe that the opinion I pronounced in favour of Laud, (long before the Oxford Tract movement,) and which has brought censure upon me from several quarters, is not in the least changed. Omitting here to examine into his conduct in respect to the persecuting spirit with which he has been charged, I am persuaded that most of his aims to restore spiritual practices which had been abandoned, were wise and good, whatever

error she might commit in the manner in which he sometimes attempted to enforce them. I firmly believe, that had not he, and others who shared his opinions and felt as he did, stood up in opposition to the reformers of that period, it is questionable whether the Church would ever have recovered its lost ground, and become the blessing it now is, and will, I trust, become in a still greater degree, both to those of its Communion, and those who unfortunately are sepa rated from it."

*Harvest-cake.

241

THOUGHTS FOR S. LUKE'S DAY.

a

WHEN it pleased GOD, in the early ages of the world, to build for Himself à tabernacle amongst men, He did not rear it of aught that was vile and refuse, but adorned it with everything that was rich, and rare, and beautiful. It was gold, silver, and brass, which the children of Israel were to offer. Costly woods and precious metals were lavished upon the table of the shew-bread, and the ark of the covenant. Before the sacred symbol of the Presence were suspended lamps of gold, and gorgeous hangings of blue, purple, and scarlet, screened the hallowed enclosure from the intrusion of the profane.

So when the time had come for the erection of a permanent habitation for the LORD GOD of Hosts, the same care was expended on its execution. "The glory of Lebanon " was shed around it, and "the fir tree, the pine tree, and the box together, beautified the place of His sanctuary, and made the place of His feet glorious." Silver, and gold, and precious stones, the sapphire, and the agate, the emerald, the diamond, and the perfumed cedar,-were crowded together in the place where the LORD GOD of Israel deigned to dwell. The richest vestments glittered on the Priests as they ascended to the holy altar, and offered thereon their daily sacrifice; while the people's prayer, mingled with the sweet cloud of incense, rose from below.

Now all this was not done in vain. The minute directions given to Moses, touching everything that related to the service of GOD, --the labour and toil of David, and Solomon his son, in collecting the rarest treasures of the earth for the temple of the LORD, the splendid ritual and elaborate ceremonial which, by GoD's appointment, accompanied the Jewish worship,-all have a meaning for us. "These things happened unto them for ensamples, and are written for our admonition."

Of course, the most natural and obvious reflection, when we read such passages of the Bible, is this, that if it was right then to expend great sums in the building of houses for the LORD, and to celebrate divine service with careful and strict observance of all ceremonies enjoined, it cannot be wrong now; and that any system of religion which discourages the erection of handsome churches, and sneers at ritual observances, and the employment of all the resources of art and genius in the service of the sanctuary, is a most unscriptural system, and founded only upon the selfish traditions of men.

But this is not the point of view in which we wish to regard it now. It is rather this; that whereas everything that is earthly typifies something that is heavenly, and the good things of this world the unseen glories of the next, so the material temple may

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