the last century, become so glaring, that our legislators have found it necessary to retrace the steps of their predecessors. But the attempt is arduous as well as painful. There is no evil more hard to cure than that which arises from a vicious system of legislation, become inveterate by long duration.

To the practice of gleaning, the objections do not apply which experience has proved to attach to the provisions of the English Poor Law. It is limited in its extent, is somewhat precarious in the amount of the supply, and yields a return proportioned to the labour and diligence employed. In all these particulars it differs from the legislative measure in question, and in each particular the difference is salutary. I say nothing of the circumstance, that in this country it is not compulsory; for a long-established custom differs in that respect little from a legal enactment. ites, although gleaning had all the rity of a sacred law, we do not find that it was ever abused so as to be productive of evil effects. In the nature of the thing, indeed, it was only calculated to be beneficial; and it is one of those Mosaic institutions, which seem not to have arisen from the peculiar circumstances of that chosen people, but which are of universal application.

Among the Israelsanction and autho

SECOND WEEK-WEDNESDAY.

THE HARVEST MOON.

THE moon, in her path through the heavens, moves with great apparent irregularity, sometimes extending her course high towards the zenith, and at other times sinking low, and, as it were, reluctantly leaving the verge of the horizon. In the time of her rising and setting there is also continual change, which causes a con

stant variety in her phases; insomuch, that poets have taken this luminary as an emblem of fickleness and caprice. Her motions, however, are regulated by strict mechanical laws, which can be calculated and predicted with the utmost exactness; and hence it follows, that in all her changes there is, after all, a most precise uniformity. She is, indeed, acted on by many countervailing forces, and the theory of her motion is consequently very complicated. The earth is the centre of her orbit, round which she moves at the distance of 237,360 miles, in an elipse of considerable eccentricity; but the sun and the planets act upon her by their attraction, with great and opposing power, disturbing her movement in every part of her course. The sun, in particular, though removed from her four hundred times further than the earth, is of such vast comparative magnitude, that were she by any accident placed but a very little nearer him, she would cease to be an attendant of our globe, and would revolve round him an independent planet. He is therefore continually producing a sensible effect on her motions, increased, of course, when she is in conjunction with him, and diminished when she is in opposition, and this again depending for the measure of its intensity on her relative distance from the earth at the time. I mention these facts without any intention of entering more minutely on this most difficult of all our planetary investigations, but merely with the view of calling the reader's attention to the wonderful balancing of forces on which our system rests, and thus to present to his contemplation the power and wisdom of that infinite Being in whose hand the balance rests.

I have at present been led to notice the motions of the moon, on account of a remarkable result of these motions during the season we are now considering. Light is of vast importance to the operations of harvest; and it is so ordered, that during two of the autumnal months, the moon rises full, and generally with very peculiar splendour for several nights in succession, a cir

cumstance which does not occur in any other period of her annual course. Astronomers inform us that this effect arises from the peculiar position of the moon's nodes, with reference to the earth's orbit; but the farmer, unskilled though he may be in the wonders of science, goes deeper, wisely and piously attributing the arrangement to the superintending care of the God of the seasons. There is no period of the year, in which the light of the moon is of so much utility; and, that its brightness should be increased and prolonged at this precise period, cannot, by any person accustomed to think of final causes, be regarded as accidental. It is, if you will, a necessary consequence of the laws of gravitation and inertia, acting on a body under the conditions of this satellite. But these conditions are not necessary, but arbitrary; and the period of the year in which the phenomenon occurs is not necessary, but arbitrary; that is to say, the size of the moon, the relative place which it occupies in the heavens, the velocity and direction of its projectile force, might each have been different from what they are, and any one of these circumstances being changed, would have materially changed the whole lunar system; or, supposing these conditions to have remained unaltered, the phenomenon, as respects the mechanical forces employed, might equally have taken place in any other season of the year, as in autumn. When we find it, therefore, actually to occur at the only period in which it could be of essential benefit, we assuredly have a sufficient reason for ranking it among those beneficent contrivances of which the system of Nature, when viewed both on the largest and the most minute scale, is discovered to be full.

The unusual brightness of the moon in the autumnal season, to which I have alluded, is doubtless owing to the state of the atmosphere, which is now remarkably free from those exhalations that serve to render it less pellucid at most other periods of the year. The long droughts of summer have exhaled much of the moisture

of the earth, while the decreasing heat serves to check the evaporation, so that the air is at this time in general very dry, which circumstance not only increases the distinctness of vision during the day, but gives peculiar beauty and power to the moon's soft radiance in the night. No person can, without emotion, observe this beautiful satellite, in her autumnal glory, rising slowly above the horizon, while the whole eastern sky glows with her beams, and, as her broad disk emerges from behind the trees of the forest, seems 66 a Phoenix's nest on fire." The sun has already set in his grandeur behind the hills of the west, and the last traces of his rays have gradually vanished from the golden clouds which adorned his going down, the stars have begun to hang out their silver lamps, and a pleasing shade is spread over the face of the earth, when the moon, majestically appearing in the opposite quarter, sheds her silver light, to be softly reflected from mountain, tower, and tree, to sleep in the silent valley, and to enlighten the labours of the harvest-field.

There cannot be a more picturesque or animating sight, than that of a busy group of reapers, plying their cheerful task under the pale rays of the conscious moon, unless it be that of the kindred employments of the barn-yard, where the loaded wains, breaking the wonted silence of night with their rumbling sound, arrive one by one to swell the ample and well-stored stack, and to crown the labours and realize the hopes of the husbandman. Every thing contributes to give a kind of enchantment to the view. The sheaves, thrown gracefully from the pitchfork, in the softened light; the busy hands of the builder, skilfully disposing them as they fall by his side; the patient horse, standing in the cart motionless, and, with drooping head, waiting his driver's signal to renew his toil, while the broad deep shadows which fall from every object, are beautifully contrasted with the brightness of the reflection on the side where the beams of the luminary fall—these, joined with the

sounds of bustle and enjoyment which, at that unusual time of the night, are ever and anon heard from every quarter, all unite to give a peculiar and very delightful character to the scene.

Rural employments are, in general, pleasing in themselves, and the associations with which they are connected lend them an additional charm; but I scarcely know of any agricultural operation which combines so many sources of agreeable sensations as the moonlight labours of the farmer, in the calmness and sweetness of an autumnal night. It wants but one accompaniment to render it complete and inexpressibly sublime; and that is the voice of prayer and praise ascending from the roof of the pious labourer, when, after the useful toils of the day, he "returns to bless his household." Why, in these days of greater prosperity and peace, do we so seldom hear those sounds, which, in the days of our persecuted forefathers, spoke from every cottage of humble thankfulness, of domestic harmony, and of hope which stretches its view beyond the fleeting things of earth?

SECOND WEEK-THURSDAY.

HARVEST HOME.

THERE is no season which, in every age, has been attended with more rejoicing than that in which the labours of harvest are completed, and all the produce of the fields are safely stored up in the barn-yard. The farmer and his dependants are then in a peculiarly joyous frame. They sympathize with each other on the accomplishment of an important work, which to him has been the subject of much anxiety, more especially when he happens to live under all the vicissitudes of an uncertain climate, from the time the grain was first depo