212 AUGUST. 



and to participate in the happiness of the simple 

 and the lowly, 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 fol- 

 lowed 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 picturesque- 

 ness of harvest are concentrated. Wheat is more 

 particularly the food of man. Barley affords 

 him a wholesome but much abused potation ; — 

 the oat is welcome to the homely board of the 

 hardy mountaineers, 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 cot- 

 tage, and, with sleeve-defended arms, scorns to 



