The King of Commerce. — 627 
survive in England. Both of them have been celebrated 
from very early times with feasting, dancing, and rustic 
pastimes. A harvest-home is described by Hertzner, a 
foreign gentleman who was in England at that time. 
“ As we were returning to our inn, we happened to meet 
some country people celebrating their harvest-home. 
Their last load of corn they crown with flowers, having 
besides an image richly dressed, by which, perhaps, they 
signify Ceres ; then they keep moving about, while the 
men and women, and men and maid-servants, riding 
through the streets in a cart, shout as loud as they can, till 
they arrive at the barn.” 
There were numerous other games and pastimes in vogue 
amongst our ancestors, but those we have touched upon 
will suffice to give our readers some insight into the amuse- 
ments which occupied the leisure time of our forefathers, 
and will afford sufficient data for comparison with present 
modes of recreation. 
THE KING OF COMMERCE. 
“THE cotton question is far from being settled. The 
collapse of the Southern Confederacy did not, as is 
supposed, solve the problem of the supply that may hence- 
forth be expected from the States that comprised that 
Confederacy. What quantity India can continue to con- 
tribute of her inferior sorts, and what quantity Egypt can 
in future send of her superior sorts, is as uncertain as ever. 
The past is no guide for us. All we know is this: That 
the prices which were current at Liverpool during the 
American war induced both India and Egypt to part with 
their old stocks, and to make every effort to increase their 
yield of cotton. But the relative quantity of old and of 
new cotton exported from India may, in the language of 
Mr. Beresford Hope, be said to be an Asian mystery. 
Cotton, in a general sense, is not a perishable article, and 
the old stocks of it, the accumulation of years, if in mer- 
chantable order, command as good prices, and as ready a 
sale as the staple of the new growth. India, more than 
any other country, has hitherto held considerable stocks of 
old cotton, because that portion of her surplus, grown in 
NEW SERIES.—VOL. I. ee 
