thrown out, so as to find no employment by which they might earn a livelihood; and, what increases the evil, although, as regards the individuals themselves, less to be lamented, the idle and the profligate come to be included in the list of the needy. Another effect of this struggle for subsistence is, that wages are lowered beneath their due proportion to the necessities of the people; so that persons with large families, in districts where children cannot find ready employment, are subjected to great privations.

These, and other circumstances, into which I cannot stop to inquire, have occasioned a result, which, on a cursory view, must seem surprising and unexpected, that poverty does not diminish in proportion to the prosperity of a community, but, on the contrary, has a tendency in some respects to increase. There is, perhaps, no problem of political economy more difficult of solution, than that which relates to the mode of supplying the wants of the poor. That something should be done by the rich to alleviate the distresses of their destitute fellow-creatures, is an obvious dictate of common humanity, which few will be inclined to dispute. But how the relief can be systematically afforded, without eventually aggravating the evil, is a question of grave import and nice investigation. The difficulty lies in this, that wherever there are known and accessible means of supply, these means will be relied upon, so as to increase the population, and hence permanently to increase the demand: while, at the same time, expectations will be created, and wants will be felt and brought to light, which otherwise would have been resisted and subdued. The result has been remarkably exemplified in the working of the English Poor Laws, a system founded on the purest principles of benevolence, but defective in political sagacity. The evils of this system have, within the last century, become so glaring, that English 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 and inveterate system of legislation.

To the practice of gleaning, the objections do not apply which experience has proved to attach to the provisions of the English Poor Laws. It is limited in its extent, is somewhat precarious in the amount of the supply, and yields a return proportioned to the labor and diligence employed. In all these particulars, it differs from the legislative measure in question, and in every respect, the difference is salutary. I say nothing of the circumstance, that in Great Britain it is not compulsory; for a long-established custom differs in that respect little from a legal enactment. Among the Israelites, although gleaning had all the sanction and authority 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.

SECOND WEEK-TUESDAY.

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 constant 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 ellipse 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 splendor, for several nights in succession, a circumstance 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 be in the wonders of science, goes deeper, wisely and piously attributing the arrangement to the superintending care of God. There is no period of the year in which the light of the moon is of such 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 gravita

tion 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, in which the system of Nature, when viewed both on the largest and the most minute scale, is discovered to abound.

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 by 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 disc emerges from behind the trees of the forest, seems a phoenix's nest on fire." The sun has already set in his grandeur behind the western hills, 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 labors 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 barnyard, where the loaded wains, breaking the wonted silence of night with their rumbling sound, arrive one after another to swell the ample stack, and to crown the labors 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,

* [The spirit of this picture seems to have been caught from the following beautiful description of the same object, which the Editor copies from Howitt's Book of the Seasons.'

"Whilst speaking of harvest, I must not omit to notice the splendid appearance of the HARVEST MOON. The circumstance of this moon rising several nights successively almost at the same time, immediately after sunset, has given it an importance in the eyes of farmers; but it is not the less remarkable for its singular and splendid beauty. No moon during the year can bear any comparison with it. At its rising it has a character so peculiarly its own, that the more a person is accustomed to expect and to observe it, the more it strikes him with astonishment. I would advise every one who can go out in the country, to make a practice of watching for its rising. The warmth and the dryness of the earth, the clearness and balmy serenity of the atmosphere at that season, the sounds of voices borne from distant fields, the freshness which comes with the evening, combine to make the twilight walk delicious; and scarcely has the sun departed in the west, when the moon in the east rises from beyond some solitary hill, or from behind the dark rich foliage of trees, and sails up into the still and transparent air in the full magnificence of a world. It comes not, as in common, a fair but flat disc on the face of the sky,-we behold it suspended in the air in its greatness and rotundity; we perceive the distance beyond it as sensibly as that before it; and its apparent size is magnificent. In a short time, however, it has acquired a considerable altitude; its apparent bulk has diminished, its majestic grandeur has waned; and it sails on its way calmly beautiful, but in nothing differing from its usual character."-AM. ED.]

IV.

5

X.