bordered with snug box, the woodbine trained up against the wall, and hanging its blossoms about the lattice; the pot of flowers in the window; the holly providentially planted about the house, to cheat winter of its dreariness, and throw in a look of green summer to cheer the fireside all these bespeak the influence of taste, flowing down from high sources, and pervading the lowest levels of the public mind. If ever love, as poets sing, delights to visit a cottage, it must be the cottage of an English peasant.

LESSON XLII.

Rural Occupation.

IN rural occupation there is nothing mean and debasing. It leads a man forth among scenes of natural grandeur and beauty; it leaves him to the workings of his own mind, operated upon by the purest and most elevating of external influences. Such a man may be simple and rough, but he cannot be vulgar. The man of refinement, therefore, finds nothing revolting in an intercourse with the lower orders in rural life, as he does when casually mingling with the lower orders of cities. He lays aside his distance and reserve, and is glad to doff the badges and wave the privileges of rank, and enter into the honest heartfelt enjoyments of common life. Indeed, the very amusements of the country bring men more and more together; and the sound of hound and horn blend all feelings into harmony. I believe this is one great reason why the nobility and gentry are more popular among the inferiour orders in England than they are in any other country; and why the latter

have endured so many excessive pressures and extremities, without repining more generally at the unequal distribution of fortune and privilege.

To this mingling of cultivated and rustic society, also, may be attributed the rural feeling that runs through British literature; the frequent use of illustrations from rural life; those incomparable descriptions of nature, that abound in the British poets-that have continued down from "the flower and the leaf" of Chaucer, and have brought into our closets all the freshness and fragrance of the dewy landscape. The pastoral writers of other countries appear as if they had paid nature an occasional visit, and become acquainted with her general charms; but the British poets have lived and revelled with her-they have wooed her in her most secret haunts— they have watched her minutest caprices. A spray could not tremble in the breeze-a leaf could not rustle to the ground-a diamond drop could not patter in the stream-a fragrance could not exhale from the humble violet, nor a daisy unfold its crimson tints to the morning, but it has been noticed by these impassioned and delicate observers, and wrought up into some beautiful morality.

The effect of this devotion of elegant minds to rural occupations has been wonderful on the face of the country. A great part of the island is level, and would be monotonous, were it not for the charms of culture; but it is studded and gemmed, as it were, with castles and palaces, and embroidered with parks and gardens. It does not abound in grand and sublime prospects, but rather in little home scenes of rural repose and sheltered quiet. Every antique farm house and moss-grown cottage is a picture and as the roads are continually winding, and the view shut in by groves and hedges, the eye is delighted by a continual succession of small landscapes of captivating loveliness.

LESSON XLIII.

English Scenery.

THE great charm, however, of English scenery is the moral feeling that seems to pervade it. It is associated in the mind with ideas of order, of quiet, of sound and steady principles, of hoary usage and reverend custom. Every thing seems to be the growth of ages of regular and peaceful existence. The old church of remote architecture, with its low massive portal; its gothic tower; its windows rich with tracery and painted glass in scrupulous preservation; its stately monuments of warriours and worthies of the olden time, ancestors of the present lords of the soil; its tombstones, recording successive generations of sturdy yeomanry, whose progeny still plough the same fields, and kneel at the same altar. The parsonage, a quaint irregular pile, partly antiquated, but repaired and altered in the tastes of various ages and occupants. The stile and footpath leading from the churchyard, across pleasant fields, and along shady hedge-rows, according to an immemorial right of way. The neighbouring village, with its venerable cottages, its public green, sheltered by trees, under which the forefathers of the present race- have sported. The antique family mansion, standing apart in some little rural domain, but looking down with a protecting air on the surrounding scene.-All these common features of English landscape, evince a calm and settled security, an hereditary transmission of home-bred virtues, and local attachments, that speak deeply and touchingly for the moral character of the nation.

It is a pleasing sight of a Sunday morning, when the bell is sending its sober melody across the quiet fields,

to behold the peasantry in their best finery, with ruddy faces, and modest cheerfulness, thronging tranquilly along the green lanes to church; but it is still more pleasing to see them in the evenings, gathering about their cottage doors, and appearing to exult in the humble comforts and embellishments which their own hands have spread around them.

It is this sweet home feeling, this settled repose of affection in the domestic scene, which is, after all, the parent of the steadiest virtues and purest enjoyments; and I cannot close these desultory remarks better, than by quoting the words of a modern English poet, who has depicted it with remarkable felicity :

Through each gradation, from the castled hall,
The city dome, the villa crown'd with shade,
But chief from modest mansions numberless,
In town or hamlet, shelt'ring middle life,

Down to the cottag'd vale and straw-roof'd shed,
. This western isle hath long been famed for scenes
Where bliss domestic finds a dwelling place:
Domestic bliss, that, like a harmless dove,
(Honour and sweet endearment keeping guard,)
Can centre in a little quiet nest

All that desire would fly for through the earth;
the world eluding, be itself

That can,

A world enjoy'd; that wants no witnesses
But its own sharers, and approving heaven.
That, like a flower deep hid in rocky cleft,
Smiles, though 'tis only looking at the sky.

LESSON XLIV.

The Broken-Hearted Woman.

HOW many bright eyes grow dim-how many soft cheeks grow pale-how many lovely forms fade away into the tomb, and none can tell the cause that blighted

Even when fortunate,

their loveliness. As the dove will clasp its wings to its side, and cover and conceal the arrow that is preying on its vitals, so it is the nature of woman, to hide from the world the pangs of wounded affection. The love of a delicate female is always shy and silent. she scarcely breathes it to herself; but when otherwise, she buries it in the recesses of her bosom, and there lets it cower and brood among the ruins of her peace. With her the desire of the heart has failed. The great charm of existence is at an end. She neglects all the cheerful exercises that gladden the spirits, quicken the pulses, and send the tide of life in healthful currents through the veins. Her rest is broken-the sweet refreshment of sleep is poisoned by melancholy dreams-" dry sorrow drinks her blood," until her enfeebled frame sinks under the least external assailment. Look for her, after a little while, and you find friendship weeping over her untimely grave, and wondering that one, who but lately glowed with all the radiance of health and beauty, should now be brought down to "darkness and the worm." You will be told of some wintry chill, some slight indisposition, that laid her low-but no one knows the mental malady that previously sapped her strength, and made her so easy a prey to the spoiler.

She is like some tender tree, the pride and beauty of the grove; graceful in its form, bright in its foliage, but with the worm preying at its core. We find it suddenly withering, when it should be most fresh and luxuriant. We see it drooping its branches to the earth, and shedding leaf by leaf; until, wasted and perished away, it falls even in the stillness of the forest; and as we muse over the beautiful ruin, we strive in vain to recollect the blast or thunderbolt that could have smitten it with decay.

I have seen many instances of women running to waste and self neglect, and disappearing gradually from the