Again on the heatny nius to stand Where waves the yellow broom. MARY HOWIT. Towards the close of the month, the mind, which has been continually led onwards by the expansion of days, leaves, and flowers, seems to repose on the ful ness of nature. Every thing is clothed. The Spring actually seems past. We are surrounded by all that beauty, sunshine, and melody, which mingle in our ideas of summer. The hawthorn is in full flower; the leafy hedges appear half buried in the lofty grass. Butterflies take their wavering flight from flower to flower, and dragonflies on the banks of rivers. Cattle, fed to satiety, repose in meadows golden with crowfoot; and sheep-washing is begun in many places. The mowing-grass presents a mosaic of the most gorgeous and inimitable hues, or is white with waving umbels. A pass ing gale awakens a scene of lively animation. The massy foliage of trees swings heavily; the boughs of the hawthorn wave with all their loads of fragrant bloom, and the snowy, umbelliferous plants toss on the lea like foam on a stormy ocean. Cottage gardens are now perfect paradises; and, after gazing on their sunny quietude, their lilacs, peonies, wall-flowers, tulips, and corcoruses, with their yellow tufts of flowers, now becoming as common at the doors of village cots as the rosemary and rue once were, one cannot help regretting that more of our labouring classes do not enjoy the freshness of earth, and the pure breeze of heaven, in these little rural retreats, instead of being buried in close sombre alleys. A man who can, in addition to tolerable remuneration for the labour of his hands, enjoy a clean cottage and a garden amidst the common but precious offerings of Nature, the grateful shade of trees and flow of waters, a pure atmosphere and a riant sky, can scarcely be called poor. If Burns had been asked what was the greatest luxury of May, we suppose le would have quoted from his "Cotter's Saturday Night." "If heaven a draught of heavenly pleasure spare, One cordial in this melancholy vale, 'Tis when a youthful, loving, modest pair In others' arms breathe out the tender tale Beneath the milk-white thorn that scents the evening gale," at which Gilpin would quote, from his "Forest Scenery," a passage, proving the poets to be very foolish for their admiration of so insignificant and inelegant a bush. We, however, shall take part with Burns, only we would conjure a nightingale into his hawthorn, and the hawthorn into a forest; for of all May delights, listening to the nightingale is the greatest. "The leader of the vernal chorus," says the Histoire des Oiseaux," begins with a low and timid voice; and he prepares for the hymn to nature, by essaying his powers and attuning his organs. By degrees, the sound opens and swells; it bursts with loud and vivid flashes; it flows with smooth volubility; it faints and murmurs; it shakes with rapid and violent articulations; the soft breathings of love and joy are poured from his inmost soul; and every heart beats in unison, and melts with delicious languor. But this continued richness might satiate the The strains are, at times, relieved by pauses, which bestow dignity and elevation. The mild silence of evening heightens the general effect, and not a rival interrupts the scene." And when this, instead of evening, is heard at still midnight, the moon and stars above you filling with lustre the clear, blue sky, the trees lifting up their young and varied foliage to the silvery show, the deer quietly resting in their thickest shadow, and the night-breeze, ever and anon, wafting through the air "Sabean odours;" then, if you feel neither love nor poetry, depend upon it, you are neither lover nor poet. ear. Nature has her seasons of solemnity, for which she assembles musicians from all the regions of the globe. Skiltul performers with their wondrous sonatas, itinerant minstrels who can only sing short ballads, pilgrims who repeat a thousand and a thousand times the couplets of their long solemn songs, are beheld flocking together from all quarters. The thrush whistles, the turtle moans, the swallow twitters: the first, perched on the topmost branch of an elm, defies our solitary blackbird, who is in no respect inferior to the stranger; the second, concealed amid the foliage of an oak, prolongs her soft cooings like the undulating sounds of a horn in the forests; the third utters her confused cries, as at the time of the good Evander. The red-breast, meanwhile, repeats her simple strain on the door of the barn, where she has built her large mossy nest: but the nightingale disdains to waste her lays amidst this symphony; she waits till night has imposed silence, and takes upon herself that portion of the festival which is celebrated in its shades. It is a mysterious hour, when the first silence of night and the last murmurs of day struggle for the mastery on the hills, on the banks of the rivers, in the woods and in the valleys; the horizon is still slightly tinged, but darkness already re. poses on the earth. At this moment, Nature, with the obscure colonnades of her forests, her dome lighted by the last splendours of eve, resembles an ancient temple whose sanctuary is shrouded in sacred night, while the rounded cupola, towering above the clouds, sparkles with the fires of declining day. It is at this hour that Philomela begins her preludes. When the forests have silenced their thousands of voices, when not a blade of grass, not a single moss yet breathes, when the moon is in the heavens, and the ear of man is attentive; then the first songstress of creation chants her hymns to the Eternal. She first strikes the echoes with lively bursts of pleasure; disorder pervades her strains; she passes abruptly from flat to sharp, from piano to forte; she pauses: now she is slow and now quick; now it is the expression of a heart intoxicated with joy, now a heart palpitating under the weight of love. But her voice suddenly fails; the bird is silent. She begins again-how her notes are changed! What tender melody! Sometimes you hear modulations languishing, yet varied; sometimes a tune more monotonous, like the chorus of our ancient ballads, those masterpieces of melancholy and simplicity. Singing is as often the sign of sadness as of joy: the bird that has lost her young still sings; it is still the notes of her happy days that she repeats, for she knows no other; but by a stroke of her art the musician has merely changed her key, and the song of pleasure is converted into the lamentation of grief. We cannot take leave of the nightingale, without adding a tribute to this sweet songstress : Daylight on its last purple cloud Was lingering grey, and soon her train SPIRIT OF THE Public Journals. TO THE FIRST OF MAY. "Hard his herte that loveth nought In May, when all this mirth is wrought CHAUCER. HAIL, thou rosy May! with thy merry dancing hours, Thy eyes of "dewy light," and the fragrance of thy flowers; Hail, thou rosy May! for the wintry winds are past, And thy primroses and cowslips have shown their hues at last. Thou kindliest month of all the year, pass not too fast away, As hours enjoy'd are prone to do, for man is miserly Of thy sweet presence, since to him thou art a boon indeed, Slave as he ever is to gloom, in friendship, love, and creed. Thou'rt come, bright May! with passion's glance to flush the virgin's cheek, From feelings indefinable her tongue must never speak, The sadness of affection's dawn is over her soft heart, She sighs amid her solitude, and tears unbidden start She hears the mated bird's first soug when love is all the theme, Of thee, thou month of love, inquires, why she is not the same! No songster comes to sing to her, and wile her hours away, Cheering her wishing solitude with his congenial lay. Welcome, thou rosy May! with thy merry. dancing hours, Thy eyes of dewy light," and the fragrance of thy flowers, Welcome, thou rosy May! for the wintry winds are past, And thy primroses and cowslips have shown their hues at last! New Monthly Magazine. COUNTRY RAMBLES. WHEAT-HOEING. MAY the 3rd.-Cold brignt weather. All within doors, sunny and chilly; all without, windy and dusty. It is quite tantalizing to see that brilliant sun careering through so beautiful a sky, and to feel little more warmth from his presence than one does from that of his fair but cold sister, the moon. Even the sky, beautiful as it is, has the look of that one sometimes sees in a very bright moonlight night-deeply, intensely blue, with white fleecy clouds driven vigorously along by a strong breeze-now veiling and now exposing the dazzling luminary around whom they sail. A beautiful sky! and, in spite of its coldness, a beautiful world! The effect of this backward spring has been to arrest the early flowers, to which heat is the great enemy; whilst the leaves and the later flowers have, nevertheless, ventured to peep out slowly and cautiously in sunny places-exhibiting, in the copses and hedge-rows, a pleasant mixture of March and May. And we, poor chilly mortals, must follow, as nearly as we can, the wise example of the May-blossoms, by avoiding bleak paths and open commons, and creeping up the sheltered road to the vicarage the pleasant sheltered road, where the western sun steals in between two rows of bright green elms, and the east wind is fenced off by the range of woody hills which rise abruptly before us, forming so striking a boundary to the pic ture. How pretty this lane is, with its tall elms, just drest in their young leaves, bordering the sunny path, or sweeping in asemi-circle behind the clear pools, and the white cottages that are scattered along the way. You shall seldom see a cottage hereabout without an accompanying pond, all alive with geese and ducks, at the end of he little garden. Ah! here is Dame Sir mons making a most original use of her piece of water, standing on the bank that divides it from her garden, and most ingeniously watering her onion-bed with a new mop-now a dip, and now a twist! Really, I give her credit for the invention. It is as good an imitation of a shower, as one should wish to see on a summer-day. A squirt is nothing to it! And here is another break to the tall line of elms the gate that leads into Farmer Thorpe's great enclosures. Eight, ten, fourteen people in this large field, wheat-hoeing. The couple nearest the gate, who keep aloof from all the rest, and are hoeing this furrow so completely in concert, step by step, and stroke for stroke, are Jem Tanner and Susan Green. There is not a handsomer pair in the field or in the village. Jem, with his bright complexion, his curling hair, his clear blue eye, and his trim figure, set off to great advantage by his short jacket and trousers and new straw hat; Susan, with her little stuff gown, and her white handkerchief and apron-defining so exactly her light and flexible shape and her black eyes flashing from under a deep bonnet lined with pink, whose reflection gives to her bright dark countenance and dimpled cheeks a glow innocently artificial, which was the only charm that they wanted. Jem and Susan are, beyond all doubt, the handsomest couple in the field, and Í am much mistaken if each have not a vivid sense of the charms of the other. Their mutual admiration was clear enough in their work; but it speaks still more plainly in their idleness. Not a stroke have they done for these five minutes; Jem, propped on his hoe, and leaning across the furrow, whispering soft nonsense; Susan, blushing and smiling— now making believe to turn away-now listening, and looking up with a sweeter smile than ever, and a blush that makes her bonnet-lining pale. Ah, Susan! Susan! Now they are going to work again-no!-after three or four strokes, the hoes have somehow become entangled, and, without either advancing a step nearer the other, they are playing with these rustic implements as pretty a game at romps-shewing off as nice a piece of rural firtation-as ever was exhibited since wheat was hoed. Ah, Susan! Susan! beware of Farmer Thorpe ! He'll see, at a glance, that little will his corn profit by such labours. Beware, too, Jem Tanner !—for Susan is, in some sort, an heiress, being the real niece and adopted daughter of our little lame clerk, who, although he looks such a tattered raggamuffin that the very gravediggers are ashamed of him, is well to pass in the world-keeps a scrub ponyindeed he can hardly walk up the aislehath a share in the County Fire-office_ and money in the funds. Susan will be an heiress, despite the tatterdemallion costume of her honoured uncle, which I think he wears out of coquetry, that the remarks which might otherwise fall on his miserable person-full as misshapen as that of any Hunch-back recorded in the Arabian Tales-may find a less offensive vent on his raiment. Certain such a figure hath seldom been beheld out of church or in. Yet will Susan, nevertheless, be a fortune; and, therefore, she must intermarry with another fortune, according to the rule made and provided In such cases; and the little clerk hath already looked her out a spouse, about his own standing-a widower in the next parish, with four children and a squint. Poor Jem Tanner! Nothing will that smart person or that pleasant speech avail with the little clerk-never will he officiate at your marriage to his nicce"amen" would "stick in his throat." Poor things! in what a happy oblivion of the world and its cares, Farmer Thorpe and the wheat-hoeing, the squinting shopkeeper and the little clerk, are they laughing and talking at this moment! Poor things! poor things! Well, I must pursue my walk. How beautiful a mixture of flowers and leaves is in the high bank under this north hedge-quite an illustration of the blended seasons of which I spoke. An old irregular hedge-row is always beautiful, especially in the spring time, when the grass, and mosses, and flowering weeds mingle best with the bushes and creeping plants that overhang them. But this bank is, most especially, various and lovely. Shall we try to analyze it? First, the clinging white-veined ivy, which crawls up the slope in every direction, the master-piece of that rich mosaic ; then the brown leaves and the lilac blossoms of its fragrant namesake, the ground-ivy, which grows here so profusely; then the late lingering primrose; then the delicate wood-sorrel; then the regular pink stars of the cranesbill, with its beautiful leaves; -the golden oxslip and the cowslip, cinque-spotted;" then the blue pansy, and the enamelled wild hyacinth; then the bright foliage of the briar-rose, which comes trailing its green wreaths amongst the flowers; then the bramble and the wood-bine, creeping round the foot of a pollard oak, with its brown folded leaves; then a verdant mass-the blackthorn, with its lingering blossoms-the hawthorn, with its swelling buds-the bushy maple -the long stems of the hazel-and between them, hanging like a golden plume over the bank, a splendid tuft of the blossomed broom; then, towering high above all, the tall and leafy elms. And this is but a faint picture of this hedge, on the meadowy side of which sheep are bleating, and where, every here and there, a young lamb is thrusting its pretty head 66 between the trees. Who is this approaching? Farmer Thorpe? Yes, of a certainty, it is that substantial yeoman, sallying forth from his substantial farm-house, which peeps out from between two huge walnut-trees on the other side of the road, with intent to survey his labourers in the wheat-field. Farmer Thorpe is a stout, square, sturdy personage of fifty, or thereabouts, with a "A fine day, Mr. Thorpe !" And on, with great civility, but with- Gipsies and beggars do not in general much inhabit our neighbourhood; but, about half a mile off, there is a den so convenient for strollers and vagabonds, that it sometimes tempts the rogues to a few days' sojourn. It is, in truth, nothing more than a deserted brick-kiln, by the side of a lonely lane. But there is something so snug and comfortable in the old building, (always keeping in view gipsy notions of comfort,) the blackened walls are so backed by the steep hill on whose side they are built; so fenced from the bleak north-east, and letting in so gaily the pleasant western sun; and the wide, rugged, impassable lane (used only as a road to the kiln, and with that abandoned) is at once so solitary and deserted, and so close to the inhabited and populous world, that it seems made for a tribe whose prime requisites in a habitation are shelter, privacy, and a vicinity to farm-yards. Accordingly, about a month ago, a pretty strong encampment, evidently gipsies, took up their abode in the kiln. The party consisted of two or three tall, lean, sinister-looking men, who went about the country mending pots and kettles, and driving a small trade in old iron; one or two children, unnaturally quiet, the spies of the crew; an old woman, who sold matches and told fortunes; a young woman, with an infant strapped to her back, who begged; several hungry-looking dogs, and three ragged donkeys. The arrival of these vagabonds spread a general consternation through the village. Gamekeepers and housewives were in equal dismay. Snares were found in the preserves-poultry vanished from the farm-yards a lamb was lost from the lea-and a damask table-cloth, belonging to the worshipful the mayor of W was abstracted from the drying-ground of Mrs. Welles, the most celebrated laundress in these parts, to whom it had been sent for the benefit of country washing. No end to the pilfering, and the stories of pilfering! The inhabitants of the kiln were not only thieves in themselves, but the cause of thievery in others. "The gipsies!" was the answer general to every inquiry for things missing. Farmer Thorpe-whose dwelling, with its variety of outbuildings-barns, ricks, and stables-is only separated by a meadow and a small coppice from the lane that leads to the gipsy retreat was particularly annoyed by this visitation. Two couple of full-grown ducks, and a whole brood of early chickens, disappeared in one night; and Mrs. Thorpe fretted over the loss, and the farmer was indignant at the villains. He set traps, let loose mastiffs, and put in action all the resources of village police-but in vain. Every night property went; and the culprits, however strongly suspected, still continued unamenable to the law. At last, one morning, the great Chanticleer of the farm-yard-a cock of a million, with an unrivalled crow-a matchless strut, and plumage all gold and green, and orange and purple-gorgeous as a peacock, and fierce as a he-turkey-Chanticleer, the pride and glory of the yard, was missing! and Mrs. Thorpe's lamentations and her husband's anger redoubled. Vowing vengeance against the gipsies, he went to the door to survey a young blood mare of his own breeding; and as he stood at the gate-now bemoaning Chanticleer-now cursing the gipsies -now admiring the bay filly-his neigh bour, Dame Simmons-the identical lady of the mop, who occasionally chared at the house came to give him the comfortable information that she had certainly heard Chanticleer-she was quite ready to swear to Chanticleer's voice-crowing in the brick-kiln. No time, she added, should be lost, if Farmer Thorpe wished to rescue that illustrious cock, and to punish the culprits, since the gipsies, when she passed the place, were preparing to decamp. No time was lost. In one moment Farmer Thorpe was on the bay filly's unsaddled back, with the halter for a bridle; and, in the next, they were in full gallop towards the kiln. But, alas! alas! "the more haste the worse speed," says the wisdom of nations. Just as they arrived at the spot from which the procession-gipsies, dogs, and donkies, and Chanticleer in a sack, shrieking most vigorously-were proceeding on their travels, the young blood mare- whether startled at the unusual cortège, or the rough ways, or the hideous noise of her old friend, the cock-suddenly reared and threw her master, who lay in all the agony of a sprained ankle, unable to rise from the ground; whilst the whole tribe, with poor Chanticleer their prisoner, marched triumphantly past him, utterly regardless of his threats and imprecations. In this plight was the unlucky farmer discovered, about half an hour afterwards, by his wife, the constable, and a party of his own labourers, who came to give him assistance in securing the culprits, of whom, notwithstanding an instant and active search through the neighbourhood, nothing has yet transpired. We shall hardly see them again in these parts, and have almost done talking of them. The village is returned to its old state of order and honesty; the mayor of Wreplaced his table-cloth, and Mrs. Thorpe her cock; and the poor farmer's lame ankle is all that remains to give token of the gipsies. has Here we are at the turning, which, edging round by the coppice, branches off to their some-time den: the other bend to the right leads up a gentle ascent to the vicarage, and that is our way. How fine a view of the little parsonage we have from hence, between those arching elms, which enclose it like a picture in a frame! and how pretty a picture it forms, with its three-pointed roofs, its snug porch, and its casement-windows glittering from amid the china-roses! What a nest of peace and comfort! Farther on, almost at the summit of the hill, stands the old church with the massy tower-a row of superb lime-trees running along one side of the church-yard, and a cluster of dark yews shading the other. Few country churches have so much to boast in archi. tectural beauty, or in grandeur of situa tion. We lose sight of it as we mount the hill, the lane narrowing and winding be |