Now a tall Worcester vase, with all its elegance and gilding, though it may be valued at 5,000_l._, lacks that sympathy, and may please the eye but does not touch the heart. For it has never shared in the jovial feast nor comforted the weary; the soul of man has never communicated to it some of its own subtle essence. But this hollow bowl whispers back the genial songs that were shouted over it a hundred years ago. On the ancient Grecian pottery, too, the hunter with his spear chases the boar or urges his hounds after the flying deer; the women are dancing, and you can almost hear the notes of the flute. These things were part of their daily life; these are no imaginary pictures of imaginary and impossible scenes: they are simply scenes in which every one then took part. So I think that the old English jugs and mugs and bowls are true art, with something of the antique classical spirit in them, for truly you can read the hearts of the folk for whom they were made. They have rendered the interpretation easy by writing their minds upon them: the motto, 'Prosperity to the Flock,' for instance, is a good one still; and 'Drink fair; don't swear,' is yet a very pleasant and suitable admonition. As I looked at the jug, the cat coughed under the table. 'Ah,' said Mrs. Luckett, 'when the cat coughs, the cold goes through the house.' Hilary, returning to the subject of the cheese, said that the best was made when the herd grazed on old pastures: there was a pasture field of his which it was believed had been grazed for fully two hundred years. When he was a boy, the cheese folk made to keep at home for eating often became so hard that, unable to cut it, they were obliged to use a saw. Still longer ago, they used to despatch a special cheese to London in the road-waggon; it was made in thin vats (pronounced in the dairy 'vates'), was soft, and eaten with radishes. Another hard kind was oval-shaped, or like a pear; it was hung up in nets to mature, and traded to the West Indies. He looked to see when the moon changed in 'Moore's Almanac,' which was kept for ready reference on the mantelpiece. Next to Bible and Prayer-book comes old Moore's rubric in the farmhouse--that rubric which declares the 'vox stellarum.' There are old folk who still regret the amendments in the modern issue, and would have back again the table which laid down when the influence of the constellations was concentrated in each particular limb and portion of the body. In his oaken cabinet Hilary had 'Moore' from the beginning of the century, or farther back, for his fathers had saved them before him. On the narrow margins during his own time he had jotted down notes of remarkable weather and the events of the farm, and could tell you the very day cow 'Beauty' calved twenty years ago.