236 AUGUST. 



now is the time to stroll abroad. They will find 

 beauty and enjoyment spread abundantly before 

 them. They will find the mowers sweeping down 

 the crops of pale barley, every spiked ear of which, 

 so lately looking up bravely at the sun, is now bent 

 downward in a modest and graceful curve, as if 

 abashed at his ardent and incessant gaze. They 

 will find them cutting down the rustling oats, each 

 followed by an attendant rustic who gathers the 

 swath into sheaves from the tender green of the 

 young clover, which, commonly sown with oats to 

 constitute the future crop, is now showing itself 

 luxuriantly. But it is in the wheat-field that all 

 the jollity, and gladness, and picturesqueness of 

 harvest are concentrated. Wheat is more parti- 

 cularly the food of man. Barley affords him a 

 wholesome but much abused potation ; the oat is 

 welcome to the homely board of the hardy moun- 

 taineers, but wheat is especially and every where 

 the " staff of life." To reap and gather it in, every 

 creature of the hamlet is assembled. The farmer 

 is in the field, like a rural king amid his people 

 the labourer, old or young, is there to collect what 

 he has sown with toil, and watched in its growth 

 with pride ; the dame has left her wheel and her 

 shady cottage, and, -with sleeve-defended arms, 

 scorns to do less thari the best of them : the 

 blooming damsel is there, adding her sunny beauty 

 to that of universal nature ; the boy cuts down the 

 stalks which overtop his head ; children glean 

 amongst the shocks; and even the un walk able 



