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Instantly on the wing. The plants around
Feel the too potent fervours: the tall maize
Rolls up its long green leaves; the clover droops
Its tender foliage, and declines its blooms.
But far in the fierce sunshine tower the hills,
With all their growth of woods, silent and stern,
As if the scorching heat and dazzling light
Were but an element they loved. Bright clouds,
Motionless pillars of the brazen heaven,—
Their bases on the mountains-their white tops
Shining in the far ether-fire the air
With a reflected radiance, and make turn
The gazer's eye away. For me, I lie
Languidly in the shade, where the thick turf,
Yet virgin from the kisses of the sun,
Retains some freshness, and I woo the wind
That still delays its coming. Why so slow,
Gentle and voluble spirit of the air?

Oh come and breath upon the fainting earth
Coolness and life. Is it that in his caves
He hears me? See, on yonder woody ridge,
The pine is bending his proud top, and now
Among the nearer groves, chestnut and oak
Are tossing their green boughs about. He comes!
Lo, where the grassy meadow runs in waves!
The deep distressful silence of the scene
Breaks up with mingling of unnumber'd sounds
And universal motion. He is come,

Shaking a shower of blossoms from the shrubs,
And bearing on their fragrance; and he brings
Music of birds, and rustling of young boughs,
And sound of swaying branches, and the voice
Of distant waterfalls. All the green herbs
Are stirring on his breath: a thousand flowers,
By the road-side and borders of the brook,
Nod gaily to each other; glossy leaves
Are twinkling in the sun, as if the dew

Were on them yet, and silver waters break

Into small waves and sparkle as he comes.

Contrasted with this picture how refreshing are the "hedge-row elms,"-"the furrow'd land," "the russet lawns,"-" the meadows trim,"-" the upland hamlets," of Milton's 'L'Allegro.' His "sunshine holiday" is thoroughly English:

To hear the lark begin his flight,
And singing startle the dull night
From his watchtow'r in the skies,
Till the dappled dawn doth rise;
Then to come in spite of sorrow,
And at my window bid good morrow
Through the sweetbriar, or the vine,
Or the twisted eglantine;
While the cock with lively din
Scatters the rear of darkness thin,

And to the stack, or the barn-door,
Stoutly struts his dames before:
Oft list'ning how the hounds and horn
Cheerly rouse the slumb'ring morn,
From the side of some hoar hill,
Through the high wood echoing shrill:
Sometime walking not unseen
By hedge-row elms, on hillocks green,
Right against the eastern gate,
Where the great sun begins his state,

Rob'd in flames, and amber light,
The clouds in thousand liveries dight,
While the ploughman near at hand
Whistles o'er the furrow'd land,
And the milkmaid singeth blithe,
And the mower whets his scythe,
And every shepherd tells his tale
Under the hawthorn in the dale.
Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures
Whilst the landscape round it measures,
Russet lawns, and fallows gray,
Where the nibbling flocks do stray,
Mountains on whose barren breast
The lab'ring clouds do often rest,
Meadows trim with daisies pied,
Shallow brooks, and rivers wide.
Towers and battlements it sees
Bosom'd high in tufted trees,
Where perhaps some beauty lies,

The Cynosure of neighb'ring eyes.
Hard by, a cottage chimney smokes,
From betwixt two aged oaks,
Where Corydon and Thyrsis, met,
Are at their savoury dinner set
Of herbs, and other country messes,
Which the neat-handed Phillis dresses;
And then in haste her bow'r she leaves,
With Thestylis to bind the sheaves,
Or, if the earlier season lead,
To the tann'd haycock in the mead.
Sometimes with secure delight
The upland hamlets will invite,
When the merry bells ring round,
And the jocund rebecs sound

To many a youth, and many a maid,
Dancing in the chequer'd shade;
And young and old come forth to play
On a sunshine holiday.

Hay-making, the half-sportive labour of the early summer,-has been charmingly described by Joanna Baillie:

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Forth hies the mower, with his glittering scythe,

In snowy shirt bedight, and all unbraced,

He moves athwart the mead with sideling bend,
And lays the grass in many a swathey line:

In every field, in every lawn and meadow,
The rousing voice of industry is heard;
The haycock rises, and the frequent rake
Sweeps on the fragrant hay in heavy wreaths.
The old and young, the weak and strong are there,
And, as they can, help on the cheerful work.
The father jeers his awkward half-grown lad,
Who trails his tawdry armful o'er the field,
Nor does he fear the jeering to repay.
The village oracle and simple maid
Jest in their turns and raise the ready laugh;
All are companions in the general glee;
Authority, hard-favoured, frowns not there.
Some, more advanced, raise up the lofty rick,
Whilst on its top doth stand the parish toast
In loose attire and swelling ruddy cheek.
With taunts and harmless mockery she receives
The tossed-up heaps from fork of simple youth,
Who, staring on her, takes his arm away,
While half the load falls back upon himself.
Loud is her laugh, her voice is heard afar :
The mower busied on the distant lawn,
The carter trudging on his dusty way,
The shrill sound know, their bonnets toss in air,
And roar across the field to catch her notice:
She waves her arm to them, and shakes her head,

And then renews her work with double spirit.
Thus do they jest and laugh away their toil
Till the bright sun, now past his middle course,
Shoots down his fiercest beams which nono may brave.
The stoutest arm feels listless, and the swart
And brawny-shouldered clown begins to fail.
But to the weary, lo—there comes relief!
A troop of welcome children o'er the lawn
With slow and wary steps approach: some bear
In baskets oaten cakes or barley scones,

And gusty cheese and stoups of milk or whey,
Beneath the branches of a spreading tree,

Or by the shady side of the tall rick,

They spread their homely fare, and, seated round,
Taste every pleasure that a feast can give.

Old Allan Ramsay has caught the inspiration of one of his most charming songs from the

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Burns invites his "bonnie lassie" to go forth to the "foaming stream" and "hoary cliffs," when "simmer blinks on flowery braes." He only echoes the general summons to the enjoyment of "the lightsome days" which Nature gives to all her children:

Bonnie lassie, will ye go, will ye go, will ye go,
Bonnie lassie, will ye go to the Birks of Aberfeldy ?

Now simmer blinks on flowery braes,
And o'er the crystal streamlet plays,
Come, let us spend the lightsome days
In the Birks of Aberfeldy.

Bonnie lassie, &c.

While o'er their heads the hazels hing,
The little birdies blithely sing,
Or lightly flit on wanton wing,
In the Birks of Aberfeldy.
Bonnie lassie, &c.

The braes ascend like lofty wa's,
The foaming stream deep roaring fa's,
O'er-hung wi' fragrant spreading shaws,

The Birks of Aberfeldy.

Bonnie lassie, &c.

The hoary cliffs are crown'd wi' flowers
White o'er the linns the burnie pours,
And, rising, weets wi' misty showers
The Birks of Aberfeldy.
Bonnie lassie, &c.

Let fortune's gifts at random flee,
They ne'er shall draw a wish frae me,
Supremely blest wi' love and thee,
In the Birks of Aberfeldy.

Bonnie lassie, &c.

133.-PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANS.

W. CAVE.

[WILLIAM CAVE, a distinguished divine and voluminous theological writer, was born in 1637. He was of St. John's College, Cambridge, and received various preferments in the Church, without having reached any very important ecclesiastical dignity, during his long life. At his death he was Canon of Windsor, and Vicar of Isleworth. His 'Lives of the Apostles,' 'Lives of the Fathers,' and 'Primitive Christianity,' are works of standard value and authority.]

The Christian religion, at its first coming abroad into the world, was mainly charged with these two things, Impiety and Novelty. For the first, it was commonly cried out against as a grand piece of Atheism; as an affront to their religion, and an undermining the very being and existence of their gods. This is the sum of the charge, as we find it in the ancient Apologists: more particularly Cæcilius, the heathen in Minucius Felix, accuses the Christians for a desperate, undone, and unlawful faction, who by way of contempt did snuff and spit at the mention of their gods, deride their worship, scoff at their priests, and despise their temples, as no better than charnel houses, and heaps of bones and ashes of the dead. For these, and such like reasons, the Christians were everywhere accounted a pack of Atheists, and their religion the Atheism; and seldom it is that Julian the emperor calls Christianity by any other name. Thus Lucian, bringing in Alexander the impostor, setting up for an oracle-monger, ranks the Christians with Atheists and Epicureans, as those that were especially to be banished from his mysterious rites. In answer to this charge, the Christians plead especially these three things:

First, That the Gentiles were, for the most part, incompetent judges of such cases as these, as being almost wholly ignorant of the true state of the Christian doctrine, and therefore unfit to pronounce sentence against it. Thus when Crescens the philosopher had traduced the Christians, as atheistical and irreligious, Justin Martyr answers, that he talked about things which he did not understand, feigning things of his own head, only to comply with the humour of his seduced disciples and followers; that in reproaching the doctrine of Christ, which he did not understand, he discovered a most wicked and malignant temper, and showed himself far worse than the most simple and unlearned, who are not wont rashly to bear witness and determine in things not sufficiently known to them; or, if he did understand its greatness and excellency, then he showed himself much more base and disingenuous, in charging upon it what he knew to be false, and concealing his inward sentiments and convictions, for fear lest he should be suspected to be a Christian, But Justin well knew that he was miserably unskilful in matters of Christianity, having formerly had conferences and disputations with him about these things; and therefore offered the senate of Rome, (to whom he then presented his Apology,) if they had not heard the sum of it, to hold another conference with him, even before the senate itself; which he thought would be a work worthy of so wise and grave a council. Or, if they had heard it, then he did not doubt but they clearly apprehended how little he understood these things; or, if he did understand them, he knowingly dissembled it to his auditors, not daring to own the truth, as Socrates did in the face of dangerman evident argument that he was οὐ φιλόσοφος, ἀλλὰ φιλόδοξος, "not a philosopher, but a slave to popular applause and glory."

Secondly, They did in some sort confess the charge, that, according to the vulgar notion which the heathens had of their deities, they were atheists, i. e. strangers and enemies to them; that the gods of the Gentiles were at best but demons, impure and unclean spirits, who had long imposed upon mankind, and by their villanies, sophistries, and arts of terror, had so affrighted the common people, who knew not really what they were, and who judge of things more by appearance than by reason, that they called them gods, and gave to every one of them that name, which the

demon was willing to take to himself. And that they really were nothing but devils, fallen and apostate spirits, the Christians evidently manifested at every turn, forcing them to the confessing it, while, by prayer and invocating the name of the true God, they drove them out of possessed persons, and therefore trembled to encounter with a Christian, as Octavius triumphantly tells Cæcilius. They entertained the most absurd and fabulous notions of their gods, and usually ascribed such things to them, as would be accounted a horrible shame and dishonour to any wise and good man, the worship and mysterious rites of many of them being so brutish and filthy, that the honester and severer Romans were ashamed of it, and therefore overturned their altars, and banished them out of the roll of their deities, though their degenerate posterity took them in again, as Tertullian observes.

Their gods themselves were so impure and beastly, their worship so obscene and detestable, that Julius Firmicus advises them to turn their temples into theatres, where the secrets of their religion may be delivered in scenes; and to make their players priests, and that the common route might sing the amours, the sports and pastimes, the wantonness and impieties of their gods, no place being so fit for such a religion as they. Besides the attributing to them human bodies, with many blemishes and imperfections, and subjection to the miseries of human life, and to the laws of mortality, they could not deny them to have been guilty of the most horrid and prodigious villanies and enormities, revenge and murder, incest and luxury, drunkenness and intemperance, theft and unnatural rebellion against their parents, and such like; of which their own writings were full almost in every page, which served only to corrupt and debauch the minds and manners of youth; as Octavius tells his adversary, where he pursues this argument at large with great eloquence and reason. Nay, those among them that were most inquisitive and serious, and that entertained more abstract and refined apprehensions of things than the common people, yet could not agree in any fit and rational notion of a Deity; some ridiculously affirming one thing and some another until they were divided into a hundred different opinions, and all of them further distant from the truth than they were from one another; the vulgar in the meanwhile making gods of the most brutish objects, such as dogs, cats, wolves, goats, hawks, dragons, beetles, crocodiles, &c. This Origen against Celsus particularly charges upon the Egyptians.

"When you approach (says he) their sacred places, they have glorious groves and chapels, temples with goodly gates and stately porticos, and many mysterious and religious ceremonies; but when once you are entered, and got within their temples, you shall see nothing but a cat, or an ape, or a crocodile, or a goat, or a dog, worshipped with the most solemn veneration! Nay, they deified senseless and inanimate things, that had no life nor power to help themselves, much less their worshippers, as herbs, roots, and plants; nay, unmanly and degenerate passions, fear, paleness, &c. They fell down before stumps and statues, which owed all their divinity to the cost and folly of their votaries; despised and trampled on by the sorriest creatures, mice, swallows, &c., who were wont to build nests in the very mouth of their gods, and spiders to perriwig their heads with cobwebs; being forced first to make them, and then make them clean, and to defend and protect them, that they might fear and worship them, as he in Minicius wittily derides them: "In whose worship there are (says he) many things that justly deserve to be laughed at, and others that call for pity and compassion." And what wonder now, if the Christians were not in the least ashamed to be called atheists, with respect to such deities, and such a religion as this was?

Thirdly, in the strict and proper notion of atheism, they no less truly than confidently denied the charge, and appealed to their severest adversaries, whether those who owned such principles as they did could reasonably be styled atheists. None

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