without a jest, stiles and foot-paths are vanish-ing every where. There is nothing upon which the advance of wealth and population has made so serious an inroad. As land has increased in value, wastes and heaths have been parcelled out and inclosed, but seldom have foot-paths been left. The poet and the naturalist, who before had, perhaps, the greatest real property in them, nave had no allotment. They have been totally driven out of the promised land. Goldsmith complained in his day, that

The man of wealth and pride

Takes up a space that many poor supplied;
Space for his lake, his park's extended bounds,
Space for his horses, equipage and hounds;
The robe that wraps his limbs in silken sloth,
Has robbed the neighbouring fields of half their growth:
His seat, where solitary sports are seen,
Indignant spurns the cottage from the green.

And it is but too true that the pressure of contiguous pride has driven farther, from that day to this, the public from the rich man's lands. They make a solitude and call it peace." Even the quiet and picturesque footpath that led across his fields, or stole along his wood-side, giving to the poor man with his

burden, a cooler and nearer cut to the village, is become a nuisance. One would have thought that the rustic labourer, with his scythe on his shoulder, or his bill-hook and hedging-mittens in his hand, the cottage-dame in her black bonnet and scarlet cloak, the neat village maiden, in the sweetness of health and simplicity, or the boy strolling along full of life and curiosity, might have had sufficient interest in themselves, for a cultivated taste not merely to tolerate, but to welcome-passing occasionally at a distance across the park or wood, as objects agreeably enlivening the stately solitude of the hall. But they have not; and what is more, they are commonly the most jealous of pedestrian trespassers, who seldom visit their own estates, but permit the seasons to scatter their charms around their villas and rural possessions without the heart to enjoy, or even the presence to behold them. How often have I myself been arrested in some longfrequented dale,-in some spot endeared by its own beauties and the fascinations of memory, by a board exhibiting in giant characters, "STOPPED BY AN ORDER OF SESSIONS," and denouncing the terrors of the law upon tres

passers! This is a little too much. I would not be querulous for the poor against the rich. I would not teach them to look with an envious and covetous eye upon their villas, lawns, cattle, and equipage; but when the path of immemorial usage is closed, when the little streak, almost as fine as a mathematical line, along the wealthy man's ample field is grudgingly erased, it is impossible not to feel indignation at the pitiful monopoly. Is there no village champion to be found, bold enough to put in his protest against these encroachments, -to assert the public right?—for a right it is as authentic as that by which the land is itself held, and as clearly acknowledged by the laws. Is there no local " Hampden with dauntless breast" to "withstand the petty tyrants of the fields" and to save our good old foot-paths? If not, we shall in a few years be doomed to the highways and the hedges; to look, like Dives, from a sultry region of turnpikes, into a pleasant one of verdure and foliage which we may not approach. Already, the stranger, if he lose his way, is in jeopardy of falling into the horrid fangs of a steel trap; the botanist enters a wood to gather a flower and is shot with a

spring-gun; death haunts our dells and copses, and the poet complains, in regretful notes, that he

Wanders away to the field and glen,

Far as he may for the gentlemen.

I am not so much of a poet, and so little of a political economist, as to lament over the progress of population. It is true that I see, with a poetical regret, green fields and fresh beautiful tracts swallowed up in cities; but my joy in the increase of human life and happiness, far outbalances that imaginative pain. But it is when I see unnecessary and arbitrary encroachments upon the rural privileges of the public, that I grieve. Exactly in the same proportion as our population and commercial habits gain upon us, do we need all possible opportunities to keep alive in us the spirit of Nature.

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little there is in Nature that is ours.

We give ourselves up to the artificial habits and objects of ambition, till we endanger the higher and better feelings and capacities of our being; and it is alone to the united influence of religion, literature, and nature, that we must

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look for the preservation of our moral nobility. Whenever, therefore, I behold one of our old field-paths closed, I regard it as another link in the chain which Mammon is winding around us,-another avenue cut off by which we might fly to the lofty sanctuary of Nature, for power to withstand him.

July is named after Julius Cæsar, one of whose best deeds was to reform the Calendar. The Saxons called it henmonath or foliage month; hey-monath, or hay month; and Lidaaftera, or second month after the sun's descent.

About the middle of the month, the shoals of that migratory fish, the pilchard, begin to appear off the coast of Cornwall. Bees begin to kill and expel drones; and flying ants quit their nests. Hens moult or lose their feathers. The smaller birds do not moult so early, but all renew their plumage before winter, when they are in their finest and warmest clothing. Young partridges are found among the corn at this time. Flax and hemp are pulled this month.