232 Agriculture. 



She has ripened her best fruits, and a thousand hands are ready 

 to reap them with joy. It is a gladdening sight to stand upon 

 some eminence, and behold the yellow hues of harvest amid the 

 dark relief of hedges and trees ; to see the shocks standing thickly 

 in a land of peace ; the partly reaped fields and the clear cloud- 

 less sky shedding over all its lustre. There is a solemn splendor, 

 a mellowness and maturity of beauty, thrown over the landscape. 

 The wheat crops shine on the hills and slopes, as Wordsworth 

 expresses it, " like golden shields cast down from the sun." For 

 the lovers of solitary rambles, for all who desire to feel the plea- 

 sures of a thankful heart, 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 down 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 attend- 

 ant 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 pic- 

 turesqueness of harvest are concentrated. Wheat is more par- 

 ticularly 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 crea- 

 ture of the hamlet is assembled. The farmer is in the field, like 

 a rural king among his people : 



Around him ply the reaper band, 

 With lightsome heart and eager hand; 

 And mirth and music cheer the toil, 

 While sheaves that stud the russet soil, 

 And sickles gleaming in the sun, 

 Tell jocund autumn is begun. 



The laborer, 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 than the best of them ; the blooming 



