has certainly not been followed, except in remote and sequestered
districts, or by very old-fashioned farmers within that period.

* * * * *

Falstaff's "Buck-Basket" has puzzled the commentators; but Dr. Jamieson
thus explains it:--_Bouk_ is the Scotch word for a lye used to steep
foul linen in, before it is washed in water; the buckbasket, therefore,
is the basket employed to carry clothes, after they have been bouked, to
the washing-place.

* * * * *

PLEASURES OF EGYPT.

Sweet are the songs of Egypt on paper. Who is not ravished with gums,
balms, dates, figs, pomegranates, circassia, and sycamores, without
recollecting that amidst these are dust, hot and fainting winds, bugs,
mosquitos, spiders, flies, leprosy, fevers, and almost universal
blindness.--_Ledyard's Travels._--The same writer also says the people
are poorly clad, the youths naked, and that they rank infinitely below
any savages he ever saw.

* * * * *

There cannot be a more ill-boding sign to a nation, than when the
people, to avoid hardships at home, are forced by heaps to forsake their
native country.--_Milton._

* * * * *