Nor do the perceptions retain that tentative power which enables them to hold, for any length of time, their grasp on the objects of sensual or even of intellectual enjoyments.

Now you can afford to buy any book that pleases you, but I do not see that you ever bring me home any nice old purchases

now.

"When you came home with twenty apologies for laying out a less number of shillings upon that print after Lionardo, which we christened the 'Lady Blanche;' when you looked at the purchase and thought of the money,—and thought of the money and looked again at the picture,-was there no pleasure in being a poor man? Now you have nothing to do but to walk into Colnaghi's and buy a wilderness of Lionardoes. Yet do you?

"Then, do you remember our pleasant walks to Enfield and Potter's bar, and Waltham, when we had a holiday,-holidays and all other fun are gone, now we are rich; and the little handbasket, in which I used to deposit our day's fare of savory cold lamb and salad; and how you would pry about at noontide for some decent house where we might go in and produce our store, only paying for the ale that you must call for; and speculate upon the looks of the landlady, and whether she was likely to allow us a table-cloth; and wish for such another honest hostess as Izaak Walton has described many a one on the pleasant banks of the Lea, when he went a fishing; and sometimes they would prove obliging enough, and sometimes they would look grudgingly upon us, but we had cheerful looks still for one another, and would eat our plain food savorily, scarcely grudging Piscator his Trout Hall? Now, when we go out a day's pleasuring, which is seldom, moreover we ride part of the way, and go into a fine inn and order the best of dinners, never debating the expense, which, after all, never has half the relish of those chance country snaps, when we were at the mercy of uncertain usage and precarious welcome.

"There was pleasure in eating strawberries before they became quite common; in the first dish of peas, while they were yet dear, to have them for a nice supper, a treat. What treat can we have.

The tendons relax and the sensibilities recoil; and at length the appetite turns in indifference, if not disgust, from that on which it has been satisfied. And the more the taste is pampered, the more fastidious it becomes, the more difficulty it has in finding an object on which it can rest. If the

now? If we were to treat ourselves now, that is, to have dainties a little above our means, it would be selfish and wicked. It is the very little more that we allow ourselves, beyond what the actual poor can get at, that makes what I call a treat. When two people, living together as we have done, now and then indulge themselves in a cheap luxury which both like, while each apologizes, and is willing to take both halves of the blame to his single share, I see no harm in people making much of themselves, in that sense of the word. It may give them a hint how to make much of others. But now, what I mean by the word,—we never do make much of ourselves. None but the poor can do it. I do not mean the veriest poor of all, but persons as we were, just above poverty.

"I know what you were going to say, that it is mighty pleasant at the end of the year to make all meet; and much ado we used to have every thirty-first night of December to account for our exceedings; many a long face did you make over your puzzled accounts, and, in contriving to make it out, how we had spent so much-or that we had not spent so much-or that it was impossible we should spend so much next year-and still we found our slender capital decreasing; but then, betwixt ways and projects, and compromises of one sort or another, and talk of curtailing this charge, and doing without that for the future, and the hope that youth brings, buoyant and laughing spirits, (in which you were never poor till now,) we pocketed up our loss; and, in conclusion, with ‘lusty brimmers,' (as you used to quote it out of hearty, cheerful Mr. Cotton, as you called him,) we used to welcome in 'the coming guest.' Now we have no reckoning at all at the end of the old year; no flattering promises about the new year doing better for us."

other alternative be taken, and a capacity for more continued sensual enjoyment be secured, then comes premature old age and decay, if not remorse.

It may be partly from this fact, and partly from the heroic virtues which a life of austere early culture produces, that it is to these sterile countries that we are to look as the nurseries whence spring the races by which great empires. are founded.

These remarks may be taken as introductory to the following observations on the effect of the alternation of seasons. c1. As necessitating labor.

§ 55. The few countries in which we find a fertile soil and an equal and genial climate, are those in which men are the most abject. Mr. Ellis gives us an example taken from the Otaheitans. They have a soil eminent for its richness, a climate for its equal and generous benignity. They live, however, almost as brutes on the spontaneous produce of the soil, and when urged to work, though only to the slight extent which is necessary to bring them to the comforts of civilization, they reply: "We should like these things very well, but we cannot have them without working; that we do not like, and therefore would rather do without them. The bananas and plantains ripen on the trees; the pigs fatten on the fruits that fall beneath them. These are all we want. Why then should we work?"

This inquiry, however, is one which the seasons, in by far the greater part of the habitable globe, do not permit to be put. The keen air of autumn braces the nerves, and the necessities of winter call hunger into that council of war in which the physical energies make their appearance, all

whetted and armed for the great battle with nature, for which the early spring is clearing the way. Other allies soon appear. The sun does his part in lifting off the barricades of snow and ice, and softening the frosted gates of the rigid earth so as to let the invader readily in. Necessity, energy, the cheering calls of the opening season, the pleasure and triumph of that fruition which the gradual development of the year makes coincident with toil, combine to spur the husbandman to his post. And not the least beneficent part of this arrangement is the provision which brings on the several harvests in a measured procession. Those who, even under our own evenly distributed harvest system have chanced to visit a village when the wheat is being gathered in-who have seen how all the available male force, from the old man who is all the rest of the summer a fixture in the porch, down to the stable-boy whom the traveler depends upon to put up his horse, are at work harvesting, will understand the object of the arrangement by which the several crops, beginning with the hardy early vegetable, and ending with the no less hardy winter fruit, mature at distinct intervals. For the wheel of the seasons is regularly cogged, and as each cog comes on in its turn, it moves a distinct process of vegetation. Were it not so, the neat but small farm of the growing but still not rich farmer would cease to exist. When the harvest came there would be a sweep made for hands. As the capitalist saw his ripening corn, which a day or two longer would kill, he would force from his weaker neighbor whatever aid his wealth or his power enable him to secure. To bring in the full harvest, also, would require a large increase of the present agricultural population, and

would in this way greatly derange the balance so necessary between the several industrial classes. Besides, let us observe the momentous consequences which would follow from a concentration of the several harvests. Now, when one crop fails, another remains. When improvidence or adverse weather kills the wheat that may be planted in the fall, April still remains open for oats, May for Indian-corn and for potatoes. So the storm of August may still follow the benignant sky of July, or precede that of September; and the harvest-home, which may be desolate one month, may abound in beauty and richness the next.

d. As generating energy, patience, and a sense of the beautiful.

§ 56. Let us observe, in addition, the moral and social effects produced by this development of the seasons, distinguished as it is by a combination of general laws with special adaptations. Napoleon said during the hundred days, that society can only really move onward under two forcesgovernmental pressure and popular impulse; and that it was in this respect like the ship which required the application of both wind and helm. So it is with the general laws of the seasons, producing both certainty enough to invoke steady work, and irregularities and special adaptations enough to generate enterprise, and at the same time an intelligent caution. By this same combination, while, on the one hand, the comprehensive wisdom of the Creator is displayed, on the other, by those immediate applications of a special divine will to human agency, man is made to know more deeply his entire dependence upon God.

Nor should it be forgotten that to this alternation of sea