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

Upon the grass no longer hangs the dew;
Forth hies the mower, with his glittering scythe,
In snowy shirt bedight, and all unbraced,
He moves athwart the mead with sidling 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 none 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 same scene :—

Without the help of art,

Like flow'rs which grace the wild,
Her sweets she did impart,
Whene'er she spoke or smiled:
Her looks they were so mild,
Free from affected pride,
She me to love beguiled;-
I wish'd her for my bride.
Oh! had I a' the wealth
Hopetoun's high mountains fill,
Insured long life and health,
And pleasure at my will;

I'd promise, and fulfil,

That none but bonnie she,

The lass of Patie's mill,

Should share the same with me.

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. miestab

The braes ascend like lofty wa's,
The foaming stream deep roaring fa's,
O'erhung 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.

Leigh Hunt, who ever delights in rural happiness, pictures the

season:

Bright Summer comes along the sky,

And paints the glowing year; Where'er we turn the raptured eye

Her splendid tints appear.

When Morn, with rosy fingers fair,
Her golden journey takes;

When Noon averts his radiant face,
And shoots his piercing eye;
And Eve, with modest, measured pace,
Steps up the western sky:

Thus when so fit to lift the song
To gratitude and heaven,

When freshening zephyrs fan the air, To whom her purple charms belong,

And animation wakes:

By whom those charms are given?

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 impor tant 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. He died 1713.]

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, rank 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 danger-an evident argument that he was où piλóσοφος, 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 theirs Besides the attributing to them human bodies, with many blem ishes and imperfections, and subjection to the miseries of human life, and to the laws of mortality, they could not deny them to