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place or a new one, he will have a week's holiday. Thus, on Michaelmas day, he and all his fellows, all the country over, are let loose, and are on the way to the fair: the houses are empty of them; the highways are full of them. There they go, streaming along, lads and lasses in all their finery, and with a world of laughter and loud talk. See, here they come flocking into the market-town! And there, what preparations for them: shows, strolling theatres, stalls of all kinds bearing clothes of all kinds, knives, combs, queen-cakes, and gingerbread, and a hundred inventions to lure those hard-earned wages out of his fob. And he does not mean to be stingy to-day. He will treat his lass, and buy her a new gown into the bargain. See, how they go rolling on together! He holds up his elbow sharply by his side, she thrusts her arm through his, up to the elbow, and away they go, a walking miracle that they can walk together at all. As to keeping step, that is out of the question; but besides this, they wag and roll about in such a way, that keeping their arms tightly linked, it is amazing they don't pull off one or the other. But they don't. They shall see the shows, and stand all in a crowd before them with open eye, and open mouths, wondering at the beauty of the dancing women, and their gowns all over spangles, and at all the wit, and

grimaces and summersets of harlequin and clown. They shall have a merry dinner, and a dance, like a dance of elephants and hippopotami, and then

"To-morrow to fresh fields and pastures new."

And these are the men that become sullen and desperate: that become poachers and incendiaries. How, and why? It is not plenty and kind words that make them so. What then? What makes the wolves herd together, and descend from the Alps and the Pyrenees? What makes them desperate and voracious, blind with fury, and revelling in revenge? Hunger and hardship! When the English Peasant is gay, at ease, well fed and well clothed, what cares he how many pheasants are in a wood, or ricks in a farmer's yard? When he has a dozen backs to clothe, and a dozen mouths to feed, and nothing to put on the one, and little to put in the other, then that which seemed a mere playful puppy suddenly starts up a snarling red-eyed monster!-How sullen he grows! With what equal indifference he shoots down pheasants or game-keepers. How the man, who so recently held up his head and laughed aloud, now sneaks, a villanous fiend, with the dark lantern and the match, to his neighbour's rick! this be the English Peasant?

Monster! can

"Tis the same!

'Tis the very man! But what has made him so? What has thus demonized, thus infuriated, thus converted him into a walking pestilence? Villain as he is, is he alone to blame or is there another?

THE

FARMER'S DAUGHTER.

THERE's a world of buxom beauty flourishing in the shades of the country. Farm-houses are dangerous places. As you are thinking only of sheep, or of curds, you may be suddenly shot through by a pair of bright eyes, and melted away in a bewitching smile that you never dreamt of till the the mischief was done. In towns, and theatres, and thronged assmblies of the rich and the titled fair, you are on your guard; you know what you are exposed to, and put on your breast-plates, and pass through the most deadly onslaught of beauty -safe and sound. But in those sylvan retreats, dreaming of nightingales, and hearing only the lowing of oxen, you are taken by surprise. Out

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steps a fair creature, crosses a glade, leaps a stile; you start, you stand,-lost in wonder and astonished admiration; you take out your tablets to write a sonnet on the return of the nymphs and dryades to earth, when up comes John Tompkins, and says, "It's only the Farmer's Daughter!" What! have farmers such daughters now-a-days? Yes. I tell you they have such daughters-those farm-houses are dangerous places. Let no man with a poetical imagination, which is but another name for a very tindery heart, flatter himself with fancies of the calm delights of the country; with the serene idea of sitting with the farmer in his old-fashioned chimney corner, and hearing him talk of corn and mutton-of joining him in the pensive pleasures of a pipe, and brown jug of October; of listening to the gossip of the comfortable farmer's wife; of the parson and his family, of his sermons and his tenth pig-over a fragrant cup of young hyson, or lapt in the delicious luxuries of custards and whiptcreams: in walks a fairy vision of wondrous witchery, and with a curtsey and a smile, of most winning and mysterious magic, takes her seat just opposite. It is the Farmer's Daughter! A lively creature of eighteen. Fair as the lily, fresh as Maydew, rosy as the rose itself; graceful as the peacock perched on the pales there by the window; sweet as a posy of violets and "clove-gillivers;" modest

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