And crouching Giles, beneath a neighbouring tree
Tugs o'er his pail and chants with equal glee,
Whose hat with tattered brim, of nap so bare,
From the cow's side purloins a coat of hair,
A mottled ensign of his harmless trade,

An unambitious, peaceable cockade.”

Who would not like to have this pastoral subject painted and hung up in their rooms to look at? A spring sky overhead, sunny, and with an atmosphere almost of a primrose colour, especially where the sunlight was unbroken by the tall, shadowing elm-trees; the milk-kits of a clean creamy white, and the well-scoured bright hoops glittering like silver; the red cow, which Giles was milking, standing in the full stream of sunshine, and looking like rich red velvet, reflected in gold; Mary, simple, sweet, pretty, and singing, her head a little aside, and if you looked close you might fancy that you saw her white teeth, her russett gown drawn up through the pocket-hole, and beneath the neck cut a little low, while her hair hung down in graceful negligence; the mistress, a fine clean specimen of an English farmer's wife, in her deshabille, neat without study, as she ever is in the very thickest of her work, a little pride about her foot and ankle, for gay buckles were worn about that period; here a cart-wheel, there a shed; a shepherd dog, stretched out and basking in the warm beams of the morning, with chanticleer crowing on the moss-covered railings; a neighbouring pond partly seen beside the trees, just to give a lower light to the subject;-and who, if it were well done, would covet a picture more rural ?

"On airy downs the shepherd idling lies,

And sees to-morrow in the marbled skies."

A very old thought, briefly and beautifully expressed; for no one can forget that allusion is made to the same subject in the pages of the New Testament; and that there

are numberless passages scattered over our earlier writers, which record similar prophecies of what the morrow will be from the appearance of the evening sky. Nor can we doubt but that the early Patriarchs, as they tended their flocks, were well-skilled in prognosticating the changes of the weather; and that their experience was gathered from close observation of the changes which they noted in their out-of-door life.

But after all the beautiful passages we have quoted from the first part of "The Farmer's Boy," there is not one in his Spring which excels in description that exquisite scene of "young lambs at play." How he appeals to the reader's feelings in the commencement, measuring them by his own, asking if their eyes have never brightened at beholding young lambs leap across their path, or run huddling in little clusters, and halting with looks of wonderment at the passer-by! We regret having quoted the lines in our description of "Sheep Shearing," and must beg the reader to refer back to page 148, for they will endure reading over again. A bird or a leaf startles them when they have stopped for a moment, and off they set again :

Scattering the wild-briar roses into snow,
Their little limbs increasing efforts try,

Like the torn flower the fine assemblage fly."

And how tenderly he deplores their fate, comparing them to the "torn flower," that perishes in its bloom: and sincerely do we believe that he would have battened upon the cheese "too big to swallow, and too hard to bite," and the coarsest of brown bread, all the days of his life, ere he would have given up one of his little white flock to the

Murdering butcher with his cart!"

We can fancy Lamb himself reversing this portion of the

poem: what a shower of puns would he call down? how he would balance the knotty point, whether or not we should forego the luxury of lamb and salad, mint sauce and peas? what excuses he would find for conscience? and how, in the end, as in his "origin of roast pig," he would show cause why lambs come to be eaten, as well as sheep? The hillocks of thyme, and the wild-briar rose, would give a poetical zest to his appetite, and he would have shown how useless stuffing would be in a sweet, little white thing, flavoured so nicely by nature? It would have formed a rich companion to his Chinese tale.

SUMMER.

Bloomfield commences the second part of his "Farmer's Boy," by dwelling upon the moral lesson the farmer reads in the uncertainty of seasons, and how he is taught to rely upon an All-wise Providence, and how vain are all efforts and labour, if the weather is unfavourable. At one time he prays for rain, at another for sunshine. A shower descends, and he calls for the harrows to try the ground; but all beneath the surface is dry, hard, and white-baked clods, or crumbling dust; the turnips wither, and the bladed corn looks wan and weak; until, at last, the rain comes down, slow and sure and certain, penetrating to the very roots, and Giles is again out in the fields, and thus bursts forth in full song:

"That up from broad rank blades which droop below,
The nodding wheat-ear forms a graceful bow,
With milky kernels, starting full, weighed down,
Ere yet the sun hath tinged its head with brown:
Whilst, thousands in a flock, for ever gay,
Loud chirping sparrows welcome in the day;
And from the mazes of the leafy thorn,

Drop one by one upon the waving corn:

Giles with a pole assails their close retreats,
And round the grass-grown dewy border beats;
On either side, completely overspread,

Here branches bend, there corn o'ertops his head."

And for some time he is lost to the sight-all you can see from a distance is his pole, beating about among the hawthorn branches; or perhaps you catch his voice chanting that ancient ditty of

"Away birds, away, take an ear, and leave an ear,
And come no more until next year."

Then all is still; for he has found a sweeter green spot

"Just where the parting boughs light shadows play,
Scarce in the shade, nor in the scorching ray;"

and stretched out on the cool turf, all amongst what some young ladies who ruralise call "the nasty live things," he with pleasure watches the "swarming insects creep around his head;" and never did poet discourse more eloquent music than he has given utterance to, whilst noting how

"The small-dust-coloured beetle climbs with pain,
O'er the smooth plantain leaf, a spacious plain!
Thence higher still, by countless steps conveyed,
He gains the summit of a shivering blade,
And flirts his filmy wings, and looks around,
Exulting in his distance from the ground.”

Every one who has read this poem remembers the following passage describing the skylark, and how by the aid of his hat he manages to shade the glare of sunshine from his eyes, watching her as she floats through light and shade now concealed under some dark cloud; then again seen like a black speck on the floating silver of the sky

until, lost to sight, though still heard singing, like a hidden angel that carols somewhere between the blue heaven and earth:

the

green

"Just starting from the corn she cheerly sings,

And trusts with conscious pride her downy wings;
Still louder breathes, and in the face of day,
Mounts up, and calls on Giles to mark her way;
Close to his eyes his hat he instant bends,
And forms a friendly telescope that lends
Just aid enough to dull the glaring light,
And place the wandering bird before his sight:
Yet oft beneath a cloud she floats along,
Lost for a while, yet pours her varied song;
He views the spot, and as the cloud moves by,
Again she stretches up the calm blue sky;
Her form, her motion, undistinguished quite,

Save when she wheels direct from shade to light."

And so he continues to watch her until sleep overpowers him; for there is a drowsy motion in the waving of the branches, and the nodding of the green corn beside him, strengthened by the far-off music of that little "fluttering songstress," wheeling and warbling through the blue and silver and purple, that seems drawn like a curtaining of gauze between heaven and earth, as if only to hide the stars from our view until the twilight shadows settle down. Next comes the harvest, and "the first sheaf its plumy top uprears;" the "keen sickle" is removed from its "twelvemonth's rest;" the sweeping scythe now "rips along;" the sturdy mower bends over his work and strains every sinew; cottages are empty-half a dozen men might plunder the whole village, and meet with no opposition; even the little children are out gleaning; the "laughing dairy-maid" has gone into the harvest field; the farmer has quitted his elbowchair, his pipe and brown jug of foaming ale, and exchanged his "cool brick floor" for the sultry and stubbly harvest