Nations, therefore, have fittingly rejoiced in every century since the creation in the joyfulness of harvest. It has been a time of activity and of songs. Never was there a generation that had more cause to put forth their reaping and rejoicing hands and sing so heartily as ours. The coming month will see the Pharaoh of monstrous monopoly, and all his wretched selfish hosts, drowned in the Red Sea of abundance. The corn dealers will be smothered in the showering-down heaps of their own commodity; the speculator who has so long sought his own fattening at the cost of a nation's starvation and misery, shall find that there is a greater speculator in the blue serene above him, whose hand can whelm him in the gulf of his own schemes, and craze all the chariot wheels of his cunning. Praise to God—the God of harvests—and to Him whose cattle are on a thousand hills. Let us go out and rejoice amid the sunshine, and the wheat stooping to the sickle, and the barley to the scythe, and in the certain assurance that the loaf never was cheaper than it shall be within the next six months, never the heart of labor more strengthened with abundance.

There is no month more beautiful than August. It has a serene splendor and maturity about it that is delightful. The soil is dry, the sky is bright and beautiful, with scattered and silvery clouds. The foliage is full and luxuriant—the grass fields mown in June and July are now full of the richest green, and cattle wander in finest condition through them, or lie in groups around worthy of a painter's hand. There is a sort of second spring in trees, the oak and the elm, especially, putting forth new shoots of a lighter tint. The hedges put on the same vernal looking hue, and the heather on the moors, and sweet scabiuses, blue chicory, the large white convolvulus, hawkweeds, honeysuckles, and the small blue campanula, make the fields gay. The nuts, still green, hang in prodigal clusters on the tall old hedges of old woodland lanes. Young frogs in thousands are issuing from the waters, and traversing the roads; and birds having terminated their spring cares, are out enjoying their families in the sunny and plentiful fields.

191

The poor man, with his half dozen children, toils, and often di, soder the vain labor of winning bread for them. God feeds his family of countless my riads swarming over the surface of all bis countless words, and none know need but through the follies or the cruelty of their fellows. God pours his light from innumerable suns on innumerable rejoicing planets; he waters them everywhere in the fitting moment; he ripens the food of globes and of nations, and gives them fair weather to garner it; and from age to age, amid his creatures of endless forms and powers, in the beauty, and the sunshine, and the magnificence of Nature, he seems to sing throughout creation the glorious song of his own divine joy in the immortality of his youth, in the omnipotence of his nature, in the eternity of his patience. and the abounding boundlessness of his love.

What a family hangs on his sustaining arm! The life a souls of infinite ages and of uncounted worlds! Let a ment's failure of his power, of his watchfulness, or of his wi do good, occur, and what a sweep of death and annihil.. through the universe! How stars would reel, planets expir and nations perish! But from age to age no such catastroph occurs, even in the midst of national crimes, and of atheis that denies the hand that made and feeds it: life springs wit a power ever new, food springs up as plentifully to sustain and sunshine and joy are poured over all from the invisi throne of God, as the poetry of the existence he has given. there come seasons of dearth or of failure, they come bu warnings to proud and tyrannic man. The potato is smi that a nation may not be oppressed for ever; and the harve diminished, that the laws of man's unnatural avarice ma rent asunder. And then again the sun shines, the rain and the earth rejoices in a renewed beauty, and in a rede plenty.

It is amid one of these crises that we at this moment and hail the month of harvests with unmingled joy. did the finger of God demonstrate his beneficent will m spicuously than at this moment. The nations have bear and rebuked, and again the bounty of heaven overflows in golden billows of the ocean of abundance. God wi the arts of man to check his bounty, to create scarcit lish dearness, to enfeeble the hand of the laborer, an table of the poor, shall be put to shame That h shall eat and be glad, whether corn

or die.

THE VIRGIN MARTYR.-MASSINGER AND DECKER.

Angelo, an angel, attends Dorothea as a page. ANGELO. DOROTHEA. The time, Midnight. Dor. My book and taper.

Ang. Here, most holy mistress.

Dor. Thy voice sends forth such music, that I never

Was ravished with a more celestial sound.

Were every servant in the world like thee,

So full of goodness, angels would come down
To dwell with us: thy name is Angelo,
And like that name thou art. Get thee to rest;
Thy youth with too much watching is opprest.

Ang. No, my dear lady. I could weary stars,
And force the wakeful moon to lose her eyes,
By my late watching, but to wait on you.
When at your prayers you kneel before the altar,
Methinks I'm singing with some quire in heaven,
So blest I hold me in your company.
Therefore, my most loved mistress, do not bid
Your boy, so serviceable, to get hence;
For then you break his heart.

Dor. Be nigh me still, then.

In golden letters down I'll set that day,
Which gave thee to me. Little did I hope
To meet such words of comfort in thyself,
This little, pretty body, when I coming
Forth of the temple, heard my beggar-boy,
My se et-fac'd, godly beggar-boy, crave an alms,
Which with glad hand I gave, with lucky hand;
And when I took thee home, my most chaste bosom
Methought was filled with no wanton fire,
But with a holy flame; mounting since higher,
On wings of cherubims, than it did before.

Ang. Proud am I that my lady's modest eye
So likes so poor a servant.

Dor. I have offer'd

Handfuls of gold but to behold thy parents.
I would leave kingdoms, were I queen of some,
To dwell with thy good father; for, the son
Bewitching me so deeply with his presence,
He that begot him must do 't ten times more.
I pray thee, my sweet boy, show me thy parents;
Be not ashamed.

Ang. I am not: I did never

Know who my mother was; but, by yon palace,

Fill'd with bright heav'nly courtiers, I dare assure you, And pawn these eyes upon it, and this hand,

My father is in heav'n; and, pretty mistress

If your illustrious hour-glass spend his sand
No worse, than yet it doth, upon my life,
You and I both shall meet my father there,
And he shall bid you welcome.
Dor. A bless'd day!

MY MOTHER'S BIBLE.-GEORGE P. MORRIS.

This book is all that's left me now!-
Tears will unbidden start-
With faltering lip and throbbing brow,
I press it to my heart.

For many generations past,

Here is our family tree;

My mother's hands this Bible clasp'd;
She, dying, gave it me.

Ah! well do I remember those

Whose names these records bear:
Who round the hearth-stone used to close
After the evening prayer,

And speak of what these pages said,

In tones my heart would thrill!
Though they are with the silent dead,
Here are they living still!

My father read this holy book

To brothers, sisters dear;

How calm was my poor mother's look,
Who lean'd God's word to hear.

Her angel face-I see it yet!

What thronging memories come!

Again that little group is met

Within the halls of home!

Thou truest friend man ever knew,

Thy constancy I've tried;

Where all were false I found thee true,

My counsellor and guide.

The mines of earth no treasures give

That could this volume buy:

In teaching me the way to live,

It taught me how to die.