RICHES. 247 
the blooming damsel is there adding her sunny 
beauty to that of universal nature; the boy 
cuts down the stalks which over-top 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 fiowers. 
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 im- 
provements 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 




























































