question whether Italy itself can show a more beautiful or picturesque scene than an English hop-garden in picking-time. The hops, which have luxuriantly climbed to the very tops of their poles, hang on all sides their heavy heads of scaly flowers, in festoons and garlands, and the groups of pickers, seated in the open air beneath the clear lustre of an autumnal sky,-age in its contentment, and youth in its joy,—and the boys and girls who carry to them the poles, covered with all their nodding honours, may match for objects of interest, the light forms and dark eyes of Italy. Kent, Sussex, and Worcestershire, are the counties most famous for the growth of hops. Considerable quantities, however, are cultivated in Nottinghamshire, and are known in commerce by the name of North Clay Hops."

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Were we to turn our eyes to foreign lands, it would be proper to notice the season of grape-gathering in the vine countries of Italy, France, and Spain, of which travellers and poets have spoken with so much interest; and in tropical regions the period of cutting the sugarcane, and plucking the coffee, which the existence of slavery in these climates has hitherto associated with very different feelings; while various other operations would also fall to be described, such as the collecting of cotton from the different plants on which it grows, and the securing of the maize, the rice, and the millet; but this extension of the subject would lead us into tedious and, in some instances, painful details, which I willingly avoid. We have good reason for thankfulness, that, in our favoured country, the labours of the harvest have not tempted man, in his unsatiable thirst for wealth, to drive his fellows to the field with the cruel lash, or to force them to encounter the death-bearing miasma of the putrescent swamp.

In the season of harvest especially, we witness the triumphs of cultivation. Let us ascend the rising ground, and while we contemplate the animating scene, reflect

*Howitt's Book of the Seasons-August.

on the human skill and labour which it displays. What a rich prospect is spread around us! how varied! how full of joy and hope? Here the ripe grain falls under the hand of the reaper. There, various shades of lighter and darker green mark the fields teeming with esculent roots. There, again, the leguminous plants, which lately filled the air with their delicious odour, and delighted the eye with the gay profusion of their flowers, bend under the load of the stores wrapped up in their swollen capsules; and, in the sloping lawn where we stand, a verdant carpet is spread, still sprinkled here and there with a few lingering wild flowers, where the animals destined for the use of man find at once abundant food and soft repose. What a variety of overpowering but most pleasing views crowd upon the mind in the contemplation,-views which all centre in a deep conviction that a Father's hand is here!

But it was not always thus. The time was when autumn did not yield her bounties in such exuberance. On this very spot, our aboriginal forefathers, and even in later times, their Saxon, and Danish, and Norman invaders, beheld a very different scene. On one hand, extended an impenetrable forest, on another, an unproductive morass; and that hill before us, now so richly chequered with luxuriant fields, was then a dark waste, profusely, but idly covered with the purple heath, or bristling thorn; while the banks of yonder gently flowing river, now covered to the brink with a soft green turf, and occasionally elevated into a sloping embankment, were furrowed and bare with the devastation of winter floods. It is interesting and instructive to reflect on the causes of so wonderful a transformation; and the more deeply it is considered, the greater reason shall we have to admire the mysterious wisdom by which human affairs are regulated.

37

SECOND WEEK-SUNDAY.

THE STABILITY OF NATURE.

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"WHILE the earth remaineth, seed time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease." Such was the promise made by the Creator to the awe-struck remnant who escaped from the destruction of the deluge. It was a promise at once beneficent and seasonable. They had just witnessed a terrible and destructive deviation from that uniformity of Nature to which they had been previously accustomed. It was natural for them to inquire if, in future, that uniformity was to cease, if, for the sins of the guilty race of Adam, the renovated world in which they were to begin their new career on the tomb of the old, was to be less stable, less governed by known rules than heretofore,-if, in short, the awful catastrophe from which they had miraculously escaped, was to be the commencement of a new order of things, in which the immediate interference of the Almighty to disturb the usual order of events was henceforth to be frequent. The assurance they received that no such change was intended, but that the world should continue as formerly, stable and uniform, and that the regular revolution of the seasons would be even more certain than ever, being secured by direct revelation, was of most material importance for the regulation of their future conduct as rational and moral agents.

In the "Winter" volume, the reader will find some remarks on the doctrine of a particular Providence,† a subject to which I do not mean at present to recur.

* Genesis viii. 22.

+ Paper "On the Unceasing and Universal Providence of God."

My object in this paper will be to show, that the government of rational beings requires the establishment of rigid and undeviating laws, and that, therefore, the existence of such laws, so far from disproving the superintending care of a paternal God, is just what might have been expected under His wise and beneficent administration.

Instead of entering into an abstract metaphysical argument on this subject, let us come at once to a practical view of it, and consider what would be the effect were the seasons to be governed by laws not definite and precise. How would rational beings act under such circumstances? Would a man toil if he could not calculate, with some degree of certainty, on obtaining the reward of his industry? Would the farmer, for example, scatter the seed in the ground, if he did not expect that the rains of spring would moisten it, that the sun of summer would warm it, and that by these genial influences, acting on a prolific soil, the grain would spring up and ripen, and harvest would increase his stores? Most assuredly not. But is not this expectation founded on his knowledge of the existence of general, and within certain bounds, invariable laws? He knows that God has endowed the soil with such qualities that, if the proper pains be employed, it will cause the sown seed to germinate. He knows further, that God has so ordered the seasons as to afford" the former and the latter rain,” and to cause his sun to give forth his increased light and warmth at such a time, and in such a degree, as to enable the qualities inherent in the soil beneficially to operate; and he knows further, that the seed he sows is gifted with such a property, that on the application of these means it will not only develope its germ, causing its root to spread in the earth, and its leaves and stem to spring forth to the light of day, but that it will grow and expand, undergoing in its progress numerous changes, till at last it will yield a great increase of valuable grain, of the same nature as that which was buried, and ap

Were it not

peared for a time to be lost in the earth. for the general laws thus impressed on the soil, the seasons, and the seed, the husbandman could have no such reasonable expectation. He would therefore cease to till and manure his soil; and he would regard it as madness to waste his precious corn by strewing it on the ground. His occupation would be gone.

The business of the farmer, then, is the result of those beneficent general laws, which the Creator has impressed on his works; and, if we now see the earth crowned with plenty, and smiling under its load of precious gifts, it is because experience has taught man that he who soweth in hope shall reap in joy.

This is but a single instance of a creative arrangement, the beneficial tendency of which is too obvious to need further comment. Were it not for the undeviating nature of those general laws by which earthly affairs are regulated, there could be no stimulus to industry in any department of art or science. Science, indeed, would have no foundation on which to rest. Its first principles would be destroyed, and it would cease to exist. Nor would it be different with art. On what could human ingenuity operate, or for what end, if there were no fixed properties in natural objects, and no known result of any labour?

General and permanent laws, then, are of the first importance in calling forth and exercising the faculties of rational beings. Without them society would stand still, and human beings, if they survived at all, would be as helpless, unintelligent, and dependant, as an infant in the arms of its mother. The depraved heart of man, however, perverts every thing; and that very system, which is so beautifully adapted to the development of our faculties, and the promotion of our happiness, has been so misrepresented and abased as to form an argument against the providential government of the Creator, or, where the argument was not formally stated, at least to leave a practical effect of a similar tendency on