Again, in the sixth chapter, Mr. Burchell is called upon to assist the Vicar and his family in "saving an after-growth of hay." "Our labors," he says, "went on lightly; we turned the swath to the wind." It is plain that Goldsmith never saved much hay; turning a swath to the wind may be a good way of making it, but it is a slow way of gathering it. In the eighth chapter of this charming story, the Doctor says,--"Our family dined in the field, and we sat, or rather reclined, round a temperate repast, _our cloth spread upon the hay_. To heighten our satisfaction, the blackbirds answered each other from opposite hedges, the familiar redbreast came and pecked the crumbs from our hands, and every sound seemed but the echo of tranquillity." This is very fascinating; but it is the veriest romanticism of country-life. Such sensible girls as Olivia and Sophia would, I am quite sure, never have spread the dinner-cloth upon hay, which would most surely have set all the gravy aflow, if the platters had not been fairly overturned; and as for the redbreasts, (with that rollicking boy Moses in my mind,) I think they must have been terribly tame birds. But this is only a farmer's criticism,--a Crispin feeling the bunions on some Phidian statue. And do I think the less of Goldsmith, because he wantoned with the literalism of the country, and laid on his prismatic colors of romance where only white light lay? Not one whit. It only shows how Genius may discard utter faithfulness to detail, if only its song is charged with a general simplicity and truthfulness that fill our ears and our hearts. As for Goldsmith's verse, who does not love it? It is wicked to consume the pages of a magazine with extracts from a poem that is our daily food, else I would string them all down this column and the next, and every one should have a breezy reminder of the country in it. Not all the arts of all the modernists,--not "Maud," with its garden-song,--not the caged birds of Killingworth, singing up and down the village-street,--not the heather-bells out of which the springy step of Jean Ingelow crushes perfume,--shall make me forget the old, sweet, even flow of the "Deserted Village." Down with it, my boy, from the third shelf! G-O-L-D-S-M-I-T-H--a worker in gold--is on the back. And I sit reading it to myself, as a fog comes weltering in from the sea, covering all the landscape, save some half-dozen of the city-spires, which peer above the drift-like beacons. * * * * * THE REAPER'S DREAM. The road was lone; the grass was dank With night-dews on the briery bank Whereon a weary reaper sank. His garb was old,--his visage tanned; The rusty sickle in his hand Could find no work in all the land. He saw the evening's chilly star Above his native vale afar; A moment on the horizon's bar It hung,--then sank as with a sigh: And there the crescent moon went by, An empty sickle down the sky.