quisitive human life at the front windows; sounds of responsive threshing-flails from t barns on far-off hill-sides, of barking watc dogs, and shrill chanticleer in the pauses.

the more welcome and cheery is it then, b cause Home is ahead, with its bright fires, a loving faces, and dry comforts uncounted.

There is no reason why a storm of ra should be a spell of gloom, to be grumbl through as we get through the annual Fa Day of the Governor. Why do we choose be no better than barometers, such sensiti children of the weather? Why should v consent to let the clouds make or mar our ha piness? Does not the sun shine at the cent of our being forever? It ought rather to that rainy days, by the mysterious aid of the associations, bring us into closer and better a quaintance with ourselves, external attractio having for the time parted with the most their power; and, in this better sense, are the to be offered a hail and a welcome, and eve hoarded with those golden strips and margi of our existence, when we journey more par sangs than on any other. At home, they ser to wash the heart clean of its worldliness, eve as they wash the windows with their welcom flood.

GARDEN WORK.

O Almighty first planted a Garden," ys Bacon," and, indeed, it is the f human pleasures; it is the greatest ment to the spirits of man."

ere is no ancient gentlemen," says the igger in Hamlet, "but gardeners, ditchgrave-makers; they hold up Adam's

on."

the gentle old Archbishop Sancroft to nd Hough, who was visiting him in

"Almost all you see is the work of -n hands, though I am bordering on years of age. My old woman does the g, and John mows the turf and digs for at all the nicer work- the sowing, graftadding, transplanting, and the like I o no other hand but my own, so long, at s my health will allow me to enjoy so g an occupation."

- The Poets are full of the delights of ing; Cowley and Pope, at least, came

to realize their dreams in this respect. C can run through very few pages of Engl verse, and not have to leap hedges of allusi to gardens, or without bringing away a me ory stuck full with their fragrant blosso An appreciative writer observes that "Bac and Milton were the prophet and the hera Pope and Addison the reformer and the legis tor, of horticulture.". Spenser's stanzas abou with real garden pictures, terrace raised abo terrace, and lawn stretching beyond law The garden scene in "Romeo and Juliet" the favorite one with all readers, because the fragrant atmosphere of the garden, in t tempered moonlight, and to the sound of tric ling waters, love is made in the true spirit romance. Tennyson has shown us how it attempted in the more exquisite passages

his everywhere-quoted "Maud." The po

Shenstone wrote from his favorite Leasowe "I feed my wild ducks, I water my carnation happy enough if I could extinguish my ar bition quite." Father Adam was placed in garden to "dress and keep it." Every read of English recalls at once Milton's fine descri tion of our first parents in Eden, rising wi the dawn, to dress the alleys green,

"Their walk at noon, with branches overgrown."

gray old monks, in fact, who had an en to the good things of life in their ere the first genuine cultivators of flowd fruits, and around their solitary keeps ning slept securely many a productive

and blossoming orchard. They had ue relish for what those things brought and tended a tree or a flower with the zeal with which they wore the pavement ch with their frequent devotions. They t us horticulture, and we are thus betheir debtors for more than the mere ng they were instrumental in handing

-The sincerest pleasures of the home-life woven closely in with those of the garden. we almost made one of my own heart, from habit of living over again the delight I to take in digging, planting, weeding, and ering the little half-acre Elysium, where so luxuriantly my bulbous cabbages and ht-eyed beans. I am conscious that Goëthe not miss of the general truth in his obseron that he took the solidest delight in the plest pleasures; and, for an enduring pleas, clean and sweet both in itself and its memes, we can truly think of nothing in Nature Tore a little garden. It should not be so

large as to become a task-master, and th worry out the placid zeal; but only spacio enough to excite the physical energy and gi a healthy start to the thought.

I am not making any allusion to city garder now, nor to their more luxuriantly gay cousi of the suburbs, where the owner is far fro being the author, but employs his gardener a many a man does his upholsterer; those mak beautiful "estates," and are objects of attrac tion alike to shrewd brokers and fashionabl lovers of Nature; but they have few of th savory associations of simplicity, and peace and home. Fine enough exotics may grow and show there, whose health and beauty sal aried gardeners look carefully after; but you will search in vain for simple morning-glories climbing like eager children to the window-sil to peep in, or for snowy caps out among th bean-poles in the delicious summer weather.

Work, before breakfast, in the retired gar den-spot is a sort of inspiration for the rest of the day. In that still hour, you mark how your lettuce and cabbages have shot up during the night, and at once renew your faith in Nature. I fear my closest friend would have failed to recognize me then, as I used to look in that patched and shredded apparel, the limp