Not to be absent at that spectacle.

The building was a spacious theatre,

Half round, on two main pillars vaulted high,
With seats, where all the lords, and each degree
Of sort, might sit in order to behold;

The other side was open, where the throng

On banks and scaffolds under sky might stand:

I among these aloof obscurely stood.

The feast and noon grew high, and sacrifice

Had fill'd their hearts with mirth, high cheer and wine,

When to their sports they turn'd. Immediately
Was Samson as a public servant brought,

In their state livery clad; before him pipes
And timbrels, on each side went armed guards,
Both horse and foot, before him and behind
Archers and slingers, cataphracts and spears.
At sight of him, the people with a shout
Rifted the air, clamoring their god with praise,
Who had made their dreadful enemy their thrall.
He, patient, but undaunted, where they led him,
Came to the place; and what was set before him,
Which without help of eye might be assay'd,
To heave, pull, draw or break, he still perform'd
All with incredible, stupendous force,
None daring to appear antagonist.

At length for intermission' sake they led him
Between the pillars; he his guide requested
(For so from such as nearer stood we heard)
As over-tired to let him lean a while
With both his arms on those two massy pillars,
That to the arched roof gave main support.
He, unsuspicious, led him; which when Samson
Felt in his arms, with head a while inclined
And eyes fast fix'd he stood, as one who pray'd
Or some great matter in his mind revolved;
At last with head erect thus cried aloud:
Hitherto, lords, what your commands imposed
I have perform'd, as reason was, obeying,
Not without wonder or delight beheld:
Now of my own accord such other trial

I mean to show you of my strength, yet greater,

As with amaze shall strike all who behold.
This utter'd, straining all his nerves he bow'd:
As with the force of winds and waters pent,
When mountains tremble, these two massy pillars
With horrible convulsion to and fro

He tugg'd, he shook, till down they came, and drew
The whole roof after them, with burst of thunder,
Upon the heads of all who sat beneath,

Lords, ladies, captains, counselors or priests,
Their choice nobility and flower, not only
Of this, but each Philistian city round,
Met from all parts to solemnize this feast.
Samson, with these inmixed, inevitably
Pull'd down the same destruction on himself;
Oh dearly-bought revenge, yet glorious!
Samson hath quit himself like Samson,
And heroicly hath finished a life heroic.
On his enemies revenged, victorious

He lies among his slain, self-kill'd,

Join'd in his death with foes more numerous
Than all his life had slain before."

XV.

BOA Z.

ARMING, rather than gardening in the ordinary sense of the word, is man's oldest occupation; in point of time, at least, claiming priority of all others. Insti

tuted by divine authority, and pursued by man in his primeval innocence—with the ordinances of marriage and the Sabbath day—it is a vestige of Eden. The business of a farmer, as regards both its age and origin, is invested with a dignity that belongs to no other profession.

The sacred plough

Employ'd the kings and fathers of mankind

In ancient times."

Besides, it is probable, if not certain, that it is the one employment in which man had God for his teacher. The heathens themselves represent the gods as having taught him how to cultivate corn; and in this, as in many of their other legends, they have preserved a valuable fragment of ancient truth. While some trades are of very recent origin-photography, for example -and while many have advanced to their present stage of perfection by slow steps-as spinning, from the simple distaff, still often used in Brittany and sometimes in remote parts of Scotland, to the complicated machines that whirl amid the dust and din of crowded factories-it is a remarkable fact that the cereal grasses-wheat, barley, and other grains which the farmer now cultivates were cultivated four thousand years ago. Forming

new fabrics; discovering new metals; learning how, as in ships, to make iron swim-the sun, as in photographs, to paint portraits -the lightning, as in telegraphs, to carry messages—and fire and water, as in locomotives, to whirl us along the ground with the speed of an eagle's wing-man has, to use the words of Scripture, even in our own time, "found out many inventions." Yet he has not added one to the number of our cereals during the last four thousand years. He appears, in fact, to have started on his career with a knowledge of these a knowledge he could have obtained from none but God. He it was who taught him the arts of agriculture-what plants to cultivate, and how to cultivate them. There is that, indeed, in the nature of wheat, barley and the other cereals which goes almost to demonstrate that God specially created them for man's use and originally committed them to his care. These plants are unique in two respects-first, unlike others the fruits or roots of which we use for food, they are found wild nowhere on the face of the whole earth; and secondly, unlike others also, they cannot prolong their existence independent of man, without his care and culture.

For example, let a field which has been sown with wheat, barley or oats be abandoned to the course of nature, and wha' happens? The following year a scanty crop, springing from the grain it had shed, may rise in thin stalks on the uncultivated soil, but in a few summers more every vestige of it has vanished, "nor left a wrack behind."

A more than curious, this is an important, fact. It proves that those grains which form his main subsistence cannot maintain themselves without the hand and help of man; and proving that, it proves this also, that man started on his career a tiller of the ground-no such being as infidels, in their hatred of the Bible, represent him to have been, a naked savage, ignorant alike of arts and letters, little raised in intelligence above the wild animals in whose dens he sought a home and of whose prey he sought a share. This fact in natural history corroborates the

testimony of Scripture, and shows us, in fields where every stalk stands up a living witness for the truth of the Bible, the revelations of God's word visibly written on the face of Nature. Waving with golden corn and sounding with the songs of reapers, these fields carry the thoughtful mind back to the days when God first set man to till the ground, and, suggestive of Eden, they prompt the wish that, with its primeval employments, more of its primeval innocence were found among our rural population.

The scene before me, as I write these words, suggests another view of the occupation in which Boaz spent his days. Beyond the estuary of the Dee, over whose broad sands, celebrated in tragic song, the tide, flecked with the sails of shipping craft and fishing-boats, has rolled, lies, a few miles off, the winding shore of Wales, the land rising gently from the beach in corn and pasture fields to heights over which a picturesque range of mountains heaves itself up against the evening sky. Along that low shore lie scattered towns and villages, whose tall chimneys, dwarfing tower and steeple, pour out their smoke to pollute the air, and cast a murky veil on the smiling face of Nature. These bespeak the trades they pursue who, leaving the husbandman to his cheerful labors on the green surface of the earth, penetrate its bowels to rob them of their hidden treasures-the mine of its coals and the mountains of their metals. But these, valuable as they are, many hands as they employ, and much as they contribute to the influence and wealth of the country, are undergoing a process of exhaustion. Some think their limit will be soon reached, and are already bewailing the prospect when, with fires quenched in ruined furnaces, and spindles rusting in silent mills, and ships rotting in unfrequented harbors, Britain shall bid a long farewell to all her greatness. But when mines are empty, and furnaces stand quenched and cold, and deep silence reigns in the caverns where the pick of the pitman sounded, the husbandman shall still plough the soil. His, the first man's, shall