8 TREE AND GRASSHOPPERS ALIKE WELCOME. 



deep the damage they effected, direful was the penalty they 

 had to pay ; when boiled, and their green coats reddened, like 

 those of lobsters or of shrimps, they were served up, a friand 

 repasj a dainty dish, to porkers. Keturning again to our theme : 



" The shepherd gladly heareth thce, 

 More harmonious than he ; 

 Thee country hinds with gladness hear, 

 Prophet of the ripened year !" 



The Grecian lyrist, and the Grecian shepherd, and the Gre- 

 cian hind, were all accustomed, doubtless, to welcome with 

 becoming joy fulness the earliest strains of their summer tree- 

 hopper, which, however intrinsically harsh, would seem, in 

 their ears, full fraught with melody, as singing of verdure 

 present, and of golden stores to come, wherein they were each 

 to have his portion. So with our grasshopper; his petty 

 larcenies overlooked or forgiven, his merry chirpings might 

 sound, perhaps, no less cheery of promise in the ear of Eng- 

 lish peasant, were it not, alack ! that they can meet so sel- 

 dom with cheerful echoes in his heart. 



"We know not how it was with the Damons and the Phil- 

 Uses of our golden age (if they, or it, ever existed save in 

 fable) ; but in these, our iron times, what shepherd or what 

 hind (of. poets we say nothing) can have an ear for chirp of 

 merry grasshopper, or song of joyous bird, or bleat of play- 

 ful lambkin, when the cry of starving children follows him 

 each morning from his sorry threshold, and each evening 



