A day will come, if not too deep we drink
The cup which luxury on careless wealth,
Pernicious gift, bestows: a day will come
When through new channels sailing, we shall clothe
The Californian coast, and all the realms

That stretch from Anian's Straits to proud Japan.

HARVEST HOME.

UT there was joy in the village homes of England, not alone at the dawn of Spring, and the advent of

The flow'ry May, who from her green lap throws,
The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose;

but when Autumn had dyed the foliage of the forest trees with its many hues, and tinged the fields of waving grain with a golden tint; when "the appointed weeks of harvest" arrived, and the husbandman reaped where he had fown, then there went up again the merrie fhouts from the broad lands of Old England. Aye! when reaping-machines were unknown; when fteam-ploughs had not even been the subject of dreams; when tall factory-like chimneys were not seen rearing their graceless

forms above the homestead, in bold rivalry with the modest village fpire; when the peafant's flail had no tireless competitor in the iron threshing-machine,—they who reaped, and ploughed, and fowed, and mowed, were far merrier than in these days of model cottages, prize ploughmen, agricultural labourers, and aged paupers. "The harveft home" formed one of thofe occafions of rural feftivity of which Clare, the farm-labourer's fon, said :

O Rural Life! what charms thy meanness hide;
What sweet descriptions bards disdain to sing;
What loves, what graces on thy plains abide :
Oh, could I soar me on the Muse's wing,
What rifled charms should my researches bring!
Pleased would I wander where those charms reside;
Of rural sports and beauties would I sing;
Those beauties, Wealth, which you in vain deride,
Beauties of richest bloom, superior to your pride.

Stevenson, the famous writer on English Agriculture, tells how, in the good old times, the harveft was wont to be celebrated :

"The furmenty pot welcomes home the harvest cart, and the garland of flowers crowns the captaine of the reapers. The pipe and the tabor are now fet bufily a-work, and the lad and the lass will have no lead on their heels. O! 'tis the merrie time wherein honeft neighbours make good cheer; and God is glorified in his bleffings on the earth."

Herrick gives us a lively scene of Harvest Home :

Come, sons of summer, by whose toile
We are the lords of wine and oile;
By whose tough labour and rough hands,
We rip up first, then reap our lands;
Crown'd with the eares of corn, now come,

And to the pipe sing harvest home.
Come forth, my Lord, and see the cart

Drest up with all the country art.
See here a mankin, there a sheet,

As spotless pure as it is sweet ;
The horses, mares, and frisking fillies,
Clad all in linen, white as lilies;
The harvest swains and wenches bound
For joy to see the hock-cart crown'd.

When Tuffer wrote his "Five Hundred Points of Husbandry," he evidently confidered a good feast and merrie making at harvest homes as one most effential of his "points," for he tells us :

In harvest time, harvest folke,

servants and all,

Should make altogether,

good cheere in the hall:
And fill out the black bole,
of bleith to their song,
And let them be merry
all harvest time long.
Once ended thy harvest,
let none be beguilde,
Please such as did please thee,

man, woman, and child.
Thus doing, with alway

such help as they can, Thou winnest the praise of the labouring man.