appeared in the Daily Toast Rack. I
promised to ride no more steeple-chases, and
not to hunt without Patty's express
permission. Within the year, my father-in-law
put me into Lord Bullfinch's agency. My
dear Patty has made me what you see,—never
idle, and one of the happiest of men.

AN AUTUMN SHADOW.

IT is golden September, fragrant and bounteous,
The red corn is harvested, early and plenteous;
Rich, heavy with fruitage, the orchard boughs bending
down,
Yield to the gleaner's hand Labour's fair autumn-
crown!

In the far Western sky,
Opal and ruby vie;
Amethyst, topaz sheen,
Melting to pale sea-green,

Come out and fade again into the grey
As steals o'er the uplands the work-weary day.

Songs of the harvest-home swell through the twilight
air,
Young men and maidens come trooping, all brave and
fair,

Rich as the season is, merry as May,
Laughing and loving and jesting and gay!

Echo the noisy bells
Through the deep mossy dells,
With a wild thankful chime
All that sweet sunset time!

For 'tis the Harvest-month, fragrant and bounteous,
That giveth its golden store, early and plenteous,
Rich, heavy with fruitage, the orchard boughs bending
down,
Yield to the gleaner's hand Labour's fair autumn
crown!

Faithful Margaret watches the reapers,
Winding along by the bend of the lane,
One face is absent there, one figure wanting;
One voice she hears not swelling the strain.
She by her window under the gable,
Stands with the curtain held back in her hand.
The few who remember look up and are silent,
—The bravest and fairest are lost to their band.

He has his grave, midst the graves of brave soldiers
Green on the slope of the hill where he fell;
Unmarked midst the thickly-sown seed of the battle,
But in one faithful heart sculptured full well.

She is alone,—unwed and yet widowed,
Sacred her youth to the love of her youth,
Wearing away in a pale mournful silence
Vowed to her hero-love, love of her youth!

September shall come again, many Septembers,
Sunshiny Junes, and chill icy Decembers;
Snows on her hair, and deep lines on her brow,
Ere she shall think of him other than now!

Gold are the autumn skies,
Yet to her tear-glazed eyes,
Wear they a tint of mournfullest grey;
Gold is the autumn-wood
Berried as red as blood,
Yet clouded all o'er like a thunderous day.
New is her sorrow yet,
Bitter her tears are yet,
Leave her alone with her weeping awhile;
Peace will come home to her, —
Purified home to her,
Let her heart bide with its trouble awhile.

AGRICULTURAL MACHINERY.

THE progress of population in a civilised
state creates, and at the same time
extinguishes, inventions and manufactures. Thus,
in the fens of Lincolnshire, fishers and
fowlers, boats, leaping-poles, stilts, nets,
eel-spears, and all the paraphernalia of decoys,
have disappeared before drains, wind-pumps,
steam-pumps, ploughs, harrows, drills, and
corn-crops, which have taken the place
of swamps, lakes, wild-fowl and fish. The
wooden spoons and bowls, once the chief
furnishing of a farmer's kitchen, are
superseded by pewter and tin and Britannia
metal, from Birmingham or Wolverhampton.
The art of the falconer and the skill of the
long-bow maker have vanished before
gunpowder and the double barrel. Almost
all the ancient emblems of agriculture are
in course of being superseded. We have,
before us, a popular print of the series of
operations that precede the mill and the
baker's loaf; and we had the other day,
in Essex, at a meeting called to award the
reaping-machine prizes of the Royal Agricultural
Society, an opportunity of seeing the
most modern system of ploughing, sowing,
mowing, threshing, and grinding. The
contrast between the artistic and ancient, and
the real and modern systems, was not a little
curious.

In the picture, the sower, a stout swain,
with a sheet fastened over his shoulder and
shaped into a huge pocket before him,
dexterously flings the seed broadcast in a
semicircle around him; the reaper, with his hook,
bends to his task; the thresher flourishes his
flail—the flail itself being an improvement
that has not yet superseded the hoof of the
ox and the horse, in eastern Europe. The
plough is a short wooden instrument, with
stilts fixed at an acute angle, held down
by main force, and drawn by a string of
horses, under the care of a long whip in the
hands of a short plough-boy. All these arts
and instruments are doomed; have, indeed,
already disappeared, or have been—in the
best farms and counties—so far improved
as to be scarcely recognisable. They have
disappeared, not under the influence of inventive
talent; not because, as in manufacturers'
improved machinery, it produces a better article,
for it is not so (the grain sown without care
by the Spanish, Wallachian, or Russian
peasant, grows up plumper and finer than the
best farmer's best crop in Essex—the first of
England's corn-growing counties); but
because the progress of demand for produce,
and the decrease of the supply of rural labour,
compel the farmer to adopt the mechanical
means which economise labour and ensure