A delightful author says that “August is the month of harvest. The crops usually begin with rye and 
oats, proceed with wheat, and finish with peas and beans. Harvest-home is still the greatest rural holiday io 
England, because it concludes at once the most laborious and most lucrative of the farmer’s employments, 
and unites repose and profit. Thank heaven there are, and must be, seasons of some repose in agricultural 
employments, or the countryman would work with as unceasing a madness, and contrive to be almost as 
diseased and unhealthy as the citizen. But here again, and for the reasons already mentioned, our holiday- 
making is not what it was. Our ancestors used to burst into an enthusiasm of joy at the end of harvest, 
and appear even to have mingled their previous labour with considerable merry-making, in which they 
imitated the equality of the earlier ages. They crowned the wheat-sheaves with flowers, they sang, they 
shouted, they danced, they invited each other, or met to feast, as at Christmas, in the halls of rich houses ; 
and what was a very amiable custom, and wise beyond the commoner wisdom that may seem to lie on the 
top of it, every one that had been concerned, man, woman, and child, received a little present — ribbons, 
laces, or sweatmeats. 
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 cottage, and, with sleeve-defended arms, scorns to do less than the best of them: — the blooming 
damsel is there, adding her sunny beauty to that of universal nature; the boy cuts down the stalks which 
overtop his head; children glean amongst the shocks; and even the unwalkable infant sits propt with 
sheaves, and plays with the stubble, and 
With all its twined flowers. 
Such groups are often seen in the wheat-field as deserve the immortality of the pencil. There is something 
too about wheat-harvest, which carries back the mind, and feasts it with the pleasures of antiquity. The 
sickle is almost the only implement which has descended from the olden times in its pristine simplicity — 
to the present hour neither altering its form nor becoming obsolete amid all the fashions and improvements 
of the world. It is the same now as it was in those scenes of rural beauty which the scripture history, 
without any laboured description, often by a single stroke, presents so livingly to the imagination; as it was 
when tender thoughts passed 
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, 
She stood in tears amid the alien corn ; 
when the minstrel-king wandered through the solitudes of Paran, or fields reposing at the feet of Carmel; 
or “ as it fell on a day, that the child of the good Shunamite went out to his father to the reapers. And he 
said unto his father. My head, my head ! And he said to a lad. Carry him to his mother. And when he 
had taken him, and brought him to his mother, he sat on her knee till noon, and then died.” 2 Kings, 
c. iv. 18—20. 
Let no one say it is not a season of happiness to the toiling peasantry; I know that it is. In the days 
of boyhood I have partaken their harvest labours, and listened to the overflowing of their hearts as thev 
sate amid the sheaves beneath the fine blue sky, or among the rich herbage of some green headland beneath 
the shade of a tree, while the cool keg plentifully replenished the horn, and sweet after exertion were the 
contents of the harvest-field basket. I know that the poor harvesters are amongst the most thankful con- 
templators of the bounty of Providence, though so little of it falls to their share. To them harvest comes 
as an annual festivity. To their healthful frames, the heat of the open fields, which would oppress the lan- 
guid and relaxed, is but an exhilarating and pleasant glow. The inspiration of the clear sky above, and of 
scenes of plenty around them, and the very circumstance of their being drawn from their several dwellings 
at this bright season, open their hearts and give a life to their memories: and many an anecdote and history 
from “the simple annals of the poor” are there related, which need only to pass through the mind of a 
Wordsworth or a Crabbe, to become immortal in their mirth or woe. 
