foliage of fome thickly wooded spot; its humble fpire pointing with tapering finger to the clear blue heaven above; its ancient church marking the hallowed spot beneath whose bright green turf,

The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

As we look upon thefe "God's acres," and their " "mouldering heaps," we reflect that many a time and oft the occupants of thofe "narrow cells" had wended their way along thofe graffgrown walks, when the village chime fummoned them to their devout worship; or when, at the folemn tolling of the bell, stalwart men fobbed, and maidens wept, as they bade the last adieu to thofe alike "to fortune and to fame unknown."

It is fuch a village church that Mrs. Hemans describes in her graceful fonnet :

Crowning a flowery slope, it stood alone

In gracious sanctity. A bright rill wound,
Caressingly, about the holy ground;

And warbled with a never-dying tone
Amidst the tombs. A hue of ages gone

Seem'd, from that ivied porch, that solemn gleam,
Of tower and cross, pale-quivering on the stream,
O'er all th' ancestral woodlands to be thrown-
And something yet more deep. The air was fraught
With noble memories, whispering many a thought

Of England's fathers: loftily serene,
They that had toil'd, watch'd, struggled to secure,
Within such fabrics, worship free and pure,

Reign'd there, the o'ershadowing spirit of the scene.

And of the humble dwellings that cluster round that venerable fabric, the fame writer has faid :

The cottage homes of England!

By thousands on her plains,

They are smiling o'er the silvery brooks,

And round the hamlet fanes.

Through glowing orchards forth they peep,
Each from its nook of leaves;

And fearless there the lowly sleep,

As the birds beneath their eaves.

These cottage homes, and the ivy-mantled tower of the village church, have not greatly changed by fashion or by time. They were reared in the days of "merrie England," and are not yet altogether supplanted by model cottages. Darwin's pretty sketch of a rustic dwelling in the last century, compared with the description of Mifs Mitford of the prettieft cottage in "Our Village," will show how little has been the change which a century has made.

The rush-thatch'd cottage on the purple moor,
Where ruddy children frolic round the door;
The moss-grown antlers of the aged oak,
The shaggy locks that fringe the colt unbroke;
The bearded goat, with nimble eyes that glare
Through the long tissue of his hoary hair,
As with quick foot he climbs some ruined wall,
And crops the ivy which prevents its fall;
With rural charms the tranquil mind delight,
And form a picture to th' admiring sight.

"The prettiest cottage," fays Mifs Mitford, "on our village green, is the little dwelling of Dame Wilson. It ftands in

a corner of the common, where the hedgerows go curving off into a fort of bay, round a clear bright pond, the earliest haunt of the swallow. A deep, woody, green lane, fuch as Hobima or Ruyfdael might have painted—a lane that hints of nightingalesforms one boundary of the garden, and a floping meadow the other; while the cottage itself, a low, thatched, irregular building, backed by a blooming orchard, and covered with honeysuckle and jeffamine, looks like the chofen abode of fnugness and comfort. And fo it is."

The village of Micklethorpe, pictured by Charles Mackay in one of his best poems, is not less pleasing:

Embower'd amid the Surrey Hills
The quiet village lay,

Two rows of ancient cottages

Beside the public way,

A modest church, with ivied tower,
And spire with mosses grey.

Beneath the elm's o'er-arching boughs

The little children ran;

The self-same shadows fleck'd the sward

In days of good Queen Anne;

And then, as now, the children sang

Beneath its branches tall

They grew, they loved, they sinned, they died-
The tree outlived them all.

But still the human flow'rets grew,

And still the children play'd,

And ne'er the tree lack'd youthful feet
To frolic in its shade,

The ploughboy's whistle in the spring,
Or chant of happy maid.

Not less welcome will be the lines on the "Lovers' Tree,"

by Charles Shelton, a poet among a people who still look up to England as the honoured home of their fathers.

By many a hedge-row'd pleasant way,
By flow'ry meads, and leafy spots,
By woods, by vagrant brooklets, gay
With lilies and forget-me-nots,

By mills, whose white sails smoothly spin-
Scenes that might be contentment's realm—

We reach our cheerful village inn;

But pass we first the village elm.

It stands beside the village green,

And there has stood three hundred years;
'Mid change of time, and men, and scene,
Alone, unchanged the look it wears:
Though lightnings thrice have sear'd its head,
Though storms have scatter'd many a bough,
Its branches ne'er were wider spread,

Ne'er furnished broader shade than now.

Beneath its shade, when Anne was queen,

Sad Strephon sigh'd his hopes and fears,
And Damon piped of pastures green

In coy, consenting Chloe's ears:
For there the lovers ever came,
In evening's soft obscurity;

And still their tree retains the name

It took from them - The Lovers' Tree.

MAY DAY.

NCE in the year at leaft, the villages of England prefented a fcene of joyous feftivities. It was when the first of May ufhered in the vernal Spring, and when the hearty fummons was heard:

Come, lasses and lads, take leave of your dads,

And away to the May-pole hie;

For every he, has got him a she,

And the minstrel's standing by.

"The youth of the country" (fays Stevenson, the old writer upon Agriculture) "make ready for the morris dance, and the merry milkmaid fupplies them with ribands her true love had given her. The tall young oak is cut down for a May-pole, and the frolic fry of the town prevent the rifing of the fun, and, with joy in their faces, and boughs in their hands, they march before it,"