AUGUST. 237 



infant sits propt with sheaves, and plays with the 

 stubble, and 



With all its twined flowers. 



Such groups are often seen in the wheat-field as 

 deserve the immortality of the pencil. There is 

 something too about wheat-harvest which carries 

 back the mind and feasts it with the pleasures of 

 antiquity. The sickle is almost the only implement 

 which has descended from the olden times in its 

 pristine simplicity to the present hour neither 

 altering its form nor becoming obsolete amid all 

 the fashions and improvements of the world. It is 

 the same now as it was in those scenes of rural 

 beauty which the scripture history, without any 

 laboured description, often by a single stroke, pre- 

 sents so livingly to the imagination ; as it was when 

 tender thoughts passed 



Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, 

 She stood in tears amid the alien corn ; 



when the minstrel-king wandered through the soli- 

 tudes of Paran, or fields reposing at the feet of 

 Carmel ; or " as it fell on a day, that the child of 

 the good Shunamite went out to his father to the 

 reapers. And he said unto his father, My head, 

 my head ! And he said to a lad, Carry him to his 

 mother. And when he had taken him, and brought 



