AUGUST.


[Illustration]

All around
The yellow sheaves, catching the burning beam,
Glow, golden lustre.

MRS. ROBINSON.


This is the month of harvest. The crops usually begin with rye and oats,
proceed with wheat, and finish with pease and beans. Harvest-home is
still the greatest rural holiday in England, because it concludes at
once the most laborious and most lucrative of the farmer's employments,
and unites repose and profit. Thank heaven, there are, and must be,
seasons of some repose in agricultural employments, or the countryman
would work with as unceasing a madness, and contrive to be almost as
diseased and unhealthy as the citizen. But here again, and for the
reasons already mentioned, our holiday-making is not what it was. Our
ancestors used to burst into an enthusiasm of joy at the end of harvest,
and even mingled their previous labour with considerable merry-making,
in which they imitated the equality of the earlier ages. They crowned
the wheat-sheaves with flowers, they sung, they shouted, they danced,
they invited each other, or met to feast as at Christmas, in the halls
of rich houses; and, what was a very amiable custom, and wise beyond the
commoner wisdom that may seem to lie on the top of it, every one that
had been concerned, man, woman, and child, received a little present,
ribbons, laces, or sweetmeats.