on the spot where the church now stands. This continued for several days and nights, till the people of Varengeville were tired out, and resolved to finish building where the devil had begun. Nor could they have played him a more scurvy trick. This devil was so simple as merely to calculate that the villagers would have a couple of hundred paces further to go to church, without considering that sublime Nature would there preach them such a sermon as could not fail to make an impression on the most obdurate heart. Had the celebrated Eulenspiegel then been the devil's clerk of the works, he could not more literally have obeyed the injunction to take care to let all the churches be placed as far as possible from their respective villages. The sun was fast declining. Gladly would I have stayed to witness the scene of his setting, but I had still two good leagues to walk to Dieppe. To have wished me a good night's rest would have been superfluous nor did the devil, to whom I had told such home truths, disturb my slumbers by unpleasant dreams. BROKEN FAITH. Thou'rt not forgotten,-by the flash The sudden start-the lip compress'd, Thou'rt not forgotten,-by the cloud Which once was sunny as thine own, The light of wit no longer beams Upon his words and ways, In bitterness he smiles, and turns From thoughts of former days. Thou'rt not forgotten,--by the fierce Despair that mocks control, When the calm pity of thy glance Strikes daggers to his soul! Or when he sees another seek Thou'rt not forgotten,-every hour For since he broke his faith with thee RURAL FESTIVALS. "To the inhabitants of London," says a modern writer, "it is almost in vain that the year brings round its magic changes, for they know not of the breathing spring, the blooming summer, the rich autumn, and the ruin-spreading winter." This proscription is, we would fain hope, too sweeping to apply even to the brick-environed Londoner; but in some degree it is certainly applicable to all the inmates of crowded towns and cities, who are prohibited by circumstances from familiar connexion with the country and its varied attractions. The Maypole and its festive games (or rather, alas! we would say, the remnants of them), the sheepshearing merriment, the hay-harvest festivity, the gladsome hilarity with which each successive season is welcomed, alike in its own peculiar toils and its own apportioned relaxations-these, the denizen of the town knows little of, or knows of but as relics of ruder days, more honoured, perhaps, (he may have been taught to think,) in the breach than in the observance. But there is one country festival, which, taking its rise in a circumstance in which every one in the empire, from the Queen on the throne to the peasant in the mud hovel, is individually interested, cannot be quite overlooked by any person not entirely devoid of reflection, but whose annual return must bring even to him a sense of joy in its aspect of hope and plenty. It is that festival now celebrating, now also quickly drawing to a close, which is expressed more eloquently in two words than in the most laboured description-HARVEST HOME. For now all Nature pours forth her Io Paeans to the great Giver of life and joy now the bounteous soil yields with lavish prodigality the stores which successive seasons have been fostering in her bosom; the luscious fruits, the ripened corn, the wholesome vegetables, the perfected fruition of "the fatness of the earth, and the dews of heaven;" now that golden earth gives back gleam for gleam to the sun, in return for the rays she borrows from him; the farmer is filling his barns; the merry labourer is piling the yellow sheaves; and the poor, their countenances enlivened with happiness at the prospect of some short relief from privation, glean the ears that have been flung From the full sheath, with charitable stealth," -all feel the inspiring effect of the hour of Nature's jubilee, and all hearts are opened to the contagious influence of joy. "Now is the time for mirth, Nor cheek or tongue be dumbe; The golden pomp is come." Accustomed from earliest infancy to the hourly use of this "staff of life," corn, we are apt to pass onward without reflecting on the original production of a vegetable, which, from habit, we receive too much as a matter of course. The introduction here of many of our most valued vegetables we can distinctly trace from their parent soil, but of corn we know not the origin, neither do we know of any land in which it grew spontaneously. Egypt is said by many authors to be the country whence corn sprang, and some say it grew spontaneously there-as Homer, “The soil untill'd a ready harvest yields, With wheat and barley wave the golden fields;" but we have Bible testimony to the effect that corn was cultivated there as far back as 3500 years ago; for Joseph, having bought up all the land and produce, gave the people seed to sow the land. From Egypt and Syria, corn, and the practice of its cultivation, made an easy transit into Europe; and, though we know not the definite time at which it was first grown in our island, we are told that Cæsar on his earliest invasion found it here. Carrying with it the especial blessing of the Almighty, as the food expressly provided by him for the use of his creatures, it is found to flourish in every climate, in every country; and so quickly were its valuable properties discovered and estimated, that in the beginning of the seventeenth century, when it was first cultivated in North America, some of the petty kings would mortgage their whole kingdoms, which were as large as the counties of England, for four or five hundred bushels of this grain, to be paid the following harvest."* 66 A season which brought in its arms a production so fraught with blessings could not but be looked forward to with hope, and be received with thankfulness and joy. Man's natural disposition would lead to such results, but they were not left to the fickle and uncertain ordinance of man. "In the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when ye have gathered in the fruit of your land, ye shall keep a feast unto the Lo d seven days; on the first day shall be a sabbath, and on the eighth day shall be a sabbath-and ye shall rejoice before the Lord your God seven days.”—" Thou shalt observe the feast of tabernacles seven days, after that thou hast gathered in thy corn and thy wine: And thou shalt rejoice in thy feast, thou, and thy son, and thy daughter, and thy manservant, and thy maid-servant, and the Levite, the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow that are within thy gates. Seven days shalt thou keep a solemn feast unto the Lord thy God, in the place which the Lord shall choose: because the Lord thy God shall bless thee in all thine increase, and in all the works of thine hands, therefore, thou shalt surely rejoice." "To Ceres bland," the fair and majestic goddess who taught the art of tilling the earth, and sowing this most magnificent of its productions, the ancients offered ever the first fruits of this golden spoil, accompanied with sacrifices and other oblations, for all the hinds bend low at Ceres' shrine; Mix honey sweet, for her, with milk and mellow wine. And Ceres call, and choral hymns resound." The Eleusinian mysteries were instituted in her honour by the Athenians; and the Romans, in the time of Numa Pompilius, were so scrupulous that they would not even taste of new corn before a due portion had been offered to the priests, judging that so invaluable a produce was under the special care of several divinities. A chaplet of corn was the most sacred badge and ensign of the first priesthood instituted in Rome.t If our pagan ancestors erred in the application of their thanksofferings, "When, for their teeming flocks and granges full, to the feeling of gratitude and joy which incited them is one well worthy of encouragement and imitation. To the lower classes of the ancients corn-harvest was especially a season of jubilee; for at that time the distinctions of rauk were forgotten, and master and servant, slave and lord, without distinction, without fear, and without favour, miscellaneously crowded the festive board. The respect and good feeling shown to domestics, on these occasions, originated probably in a due sense of their valuable services, since on their industry and activity must depend much of the proprietor's success in housing his corn. Consequently they have continued to hold very important stations in the autumn's jubilee. The iron hand of civilization (so called) is so fast rubbing down every trace of homefelt, heartfelt, originality, that shortly it will be only in the moth-eaten pages of antiquarians that we shall learn anything of those customs which, in our own country, from the time at least of the Anglo-Saxons, have, in the autumn of the year, bound high and low, rich and poor, in one band of fellowship and cheerful innocent hilarity. One of the most engaging of these customs, and most strongly tending to encourage the happier and more liberal einotions of the mind, was that to which we have casually alluded, of allowing the destitute to follow in the track of the reaper, and glean a little harvest of their own. In that beautiful law which disdains not to notice "a bird's nest" which shall "chance to be on the ground," it is thus written-" When ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy field, neither shalt thou gather the gleanings of thy harvest.”— "When thou cuttest down thine harvest in thy field, and hast forgot a sheaf in the field, thou shalt not go again to fetch it: it shall be for the stranger, for the fatherless, and for the widow: that the Lord thy God may bless thee." That this benevolent custom continued till a late date (happily it is not entirely exploded yet) we learn from scattered notices; as this from Thomson The gleaners spread around, and here and there, It is impossible to imagine a more beautiful picture than a harvestfield presents to the eye, when "Before the ripen'd field the reapers stand, In fair array; each by the lass he loves, By nameless gentle offices her toil. At once they stoop and swell the lusty sheaves; While through their cheerful band the rural talk, The rural scandal, and the rural jest, Fly harmless." Description, however, cannot do justice to it. An eye-witness alone can comprehend the exuberant overflow of animation, of good humour and joy, which, on a favourable day, pervade every breast, from the brawny yeoman of sixty years who leads the field, to the babe of as many weeks who is swathed in a clothes-basket near the hedge, under the care of other urchins as innocent, as happy, as noisy, and luckily a few months older than itself. In Cumberland, where women perform much of the harvest-work, and whole families turn out, it is no unusual thing to see swarms of children in an unoccupied portion of the field; the infants secured in clothes-baskets' (vulgariter swills), by which those who have the burden of an additional year or two on their shoulders can drag them about when a little change of position is requisite: and at noon, fathers and mothers, and elder brothers and sisters, cluster round them, give and take the homely, hearty repast, and enjoy in every variety of picturesque form and attitude the hour's repose, which the morning's labours render so requisite, so refreshing, and so sweet. 66 The Harvest Home" gala is still in some measure observed: the labourers have still a harvest-supper, at which in some places the master condescends to make one; but of the original and graphic features and ceremonies of the feast few traces remain. These ceremonies varied in different places, but all included some rustic merriment or some magnificent pageant on the bringing home of the hock-cart, or cart containing the last sheaves of corn. The horses of this cart are universally garlanded; the cart itself and the sheaves are hung with the same flowery spoil, while the sons and daughters of summer, "by whose tough labours and rough hands" the work was perfected, crowned with ears of corn, ride triumphantly in the cart, or with more humble devotion parade by its side; or, if (as still in some counties) more classically inclined, a buxom damsel, in gay attire, and garlanded with ears of corn, is mounted on the forehorse, and, as Ceres, queens it on her willing subjects for the remainder of the feast. Sometimes the gentle goddess is only effigied by a bundle of wheat rudely formed and dressed as a woman, and placed upright in the cart among the supporting sheaves; in some places this deity is dispensed with altogether, and a more homely and practically merry joke is in vogue of forcing the owner to drive home his own hockcart, while his merry helpmates strive with all their energies to throw pails of water on the newly-dried corn during its progress; nor is the most able Jehuship of the charioteer at all times efficacious to avert the calamity. Herrick's numbers want none of their usual fascination when he describes the hock-cart of his own county. "Crown'd with the eares of corne, now come, Come forth, my lord, and see the cart, As spotlesse pure as it is sweet; The harvest swaines and wenches bound |