98 THE WORLD. 



noisy streets and smoky cities, seek the country fields, and lanes. 

 We have been much struck with a remark of Howitt, in his 

 " Book of the Seasons," in which he thus deprecates the necessity 

 that deprives our childhood of a contemplation of those beautiful 

 changes which mark the year. *' Oh that I could but touch a 

 thousand bosoms with that melancholy which often visits mine, 

 when I behold little children endeavoring to extract amusement 

 from the very dust, and straws, and pebbles of squalid alleys, 

 shut out from the free and glorious countenance of Nature, and 

 think how differently the children of the peasantry are passing the 

 golden hours of childhood ; wandering with bare heads, and un- 

 shod feet, perhaps, but singing a 'childish, wordless melody,' 

 through vernal lanes, or prying into a thousand sylvan, leafy 

 nooks, by the liquid music of running waters, amidst the fragrant 

 heath, or oh ibe flowery lap of the meadow, occupied with winged 

 wonders without end. Oh ! that I could but baptize every heart 

 with the sympathetic feeling of what the city pent child is con- 

 demned to lose ; how blank, and poor, and joyless must be the 

 images which fill its infant bosom* to that of the country one, 

 whose mind 



Will be a mansion for all iovely forms, 



His memory be a dwelling-place 



For all sweet sounds and harmonies! " 



In the absence of a system of chronology to mark the returning 

 periods of nature, the ancients were obliged to note the aspects of 

 the stars. We have several times, in the preceding pages, referred 

 to this, and we may now remark, that some of the most beautiful 

 passages of the ancient poets, contain allusions to - the stars as 

 connected with agriculture. Hesiod, the oldest poet of the 

 Greeks, has given a minute detail of the heliacal rising of the 

 stars, accompanied with the most pleasing descriptions of the 

 successive occupations of rural life. The name of the poem is, 

 "Opera et Dies,' 1 the Works and Days. This poem Virgil has imi- 

 tated, in the first and second "Georgics;" a word compounded 

 of two Greek words, and meaning, works or labors of the earth, 

 and corresponding almost exactly with our word agriculture. We 

 shall give occasional quotations from both these poems, in our 

 present chapter. 



