in brewing), although their great country

man's line,

"While greasy Joan doth kele the pot,"

was, of course, so familiar to all of them!

But it is not my purpose to discuss at length the changes to which our tongue has yielded, nor to weary you with elaborate attempts at philological illustration; nor need I desire to enlist YOUR sympathy for a too much neglected and too often despised race. We know well that though

the rustic has sometimes a woodbine at his cottage-door, he has more frequently penury and want, and disease within; and that though, unlike the artisan, he at certain seasons of the year may trudge to his labour with the lark above his head, he at others returns hungry, and cold, and weary, to a cheerless home where food and fuel are scanty.

Should the day happily arrive when the condition of the agricultural labourer may

be permanently improved, none will rejoice more heartily than the Angler, whose pursuit leads him to the retired nooks and corners of our birth-land, and affords him so many opportunities of studying the habits and feelings of a race to whom England is so much indebted.

Believe me, my dear Sir,

Your affectionate friend

and fellow-countryman,

J. Y. AKERMAN.

LONDON,

St. Valentine's Day, 1850.

It is good in discourse, and specch of conversation, to vary and intermingle speech of the present occasion with arguments, tales with reasons, asking of questions with telling of opinions, and jest with earnest: for it is a dull thing to tire, and as we say now, to jade a thing too far. BACON, Of Discourse.

L'accent du pays où l'on est né, demeure dans l'esprit et dans le cœur comme dans le langage. ROCHEFOUCAULT.

Vita rustica sine dubitatione, proxima et quasi con

sanguinea sapientiæ.

COLUMELLA.

FIRST DAY.

B

Cunctas veris opes et picta rosaria gemmis

Laniger in calathis, aspice, Maius habet, Mensis Atlantigenæ dictus cognomine Maiæ, Quem merito multum diligit Uranie.

Again the merry month of May
Has made our hills and valleys gay;
The birds rejoice in leafy bowers,

AUSONIUS.

The bees hum round the breathing flowers; Blythe Morning lifts his rosy eye,

And Evening's tears are tears of joy.

BURNS.