All over this land there are spots like this, of bewildering beauty; where toil and rest, and wo and happiness, have struggled together for years. There are thousands, ay! tens of thousands, of humble cottages, the lives of whose inmates have never won a thought from the rich and proud, and yet in those cottages beat as true hearts as in the most gorgeous mansions of the realm. The rich are born, and great is the rejoicing thereat; they live, and crowds shout triumphs wherever they go; they die, and they are laid by obsequious hands in proud mausoleums; but the poor come and go like the leaves of the forest, and no man careth for their fate. Their childhood of early toil; their youth of premature sorrow; their lives of hard, unyielding, grinding poverty, what does the world care for these? Yet the poor are not without comfort. They have within their own circle as kindly bosoms as the rich; they have dear ones, loved with a fervor wealth can rarely win, to cheer them in distress; they have a fireside, humble, indeed, but still a fireside around which to gather with their prattlers, and smile and be merry after the toils of the day are done. With early dawn the cottager is up and afield. If he labors at the soil, you will find him with the plough in hand, keeping his monotonous track to and fro, regardless, apparently, of the stifled air, or the sultry rays of noon-day. He may pause an hour or so at dinner, but he is soon at his labor again. The cattle may be dozing under the trees, the birds may be carolling gaily around, the woods, and streams, and all nature may be full of merry play, but still he must keep up his weary toil, until twilight at length releases him, and he hurries home to spend a few hours of fleeting happiness among his little ones, to sleep, and again to resume his toil. But there is a bright side to the picture. The Cottager was not always a man, he was once a happy child, and in gazing on the frolicks of his little ones, his own youth appears to be renewed. And where do the domestic affections exist with more purity than in our cottages? From the love of a child for its little brother or its sister, up to the love of a mother for her first-born, there is nothing purer, deeper, or more enduring than the affections of those who inhabit our cottages.