Robert Bloomfield was another poet-farmer of these times, but of a much humbler calibre. I could never give any very large portion of a wet day to his reading. There is truthfulness of description in him, and a certain grace of rhythm, but nothing to kindle any glow. The story of Giles, and of the milking, and of the spotted heifers, may be true enough; but every day, in my barn-yard, I find as true and as lively a story. The fact is, that the details of farm-life--the muddy boots, the sweaty workers, the amber-colored pools, the wallowing pigs--are not of a kind to warrant or to call out any burning imprint of verse. Theme for this lies in the breezes, the birds, the waving-wooded mountains ([Greek: Neriton einosiphyllon]), the glorious mornings "Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy," --and for these the poet must soar above the barn-yard and the house-tops. There is more of the spirit of true poesy in that little fragment of Jean Ingelow's,[F] beginning,-- "What change has made the pastures sweet, And reached the daisies at my feet, And cloud that wears a golden hem?" than in all the verse of Bloomfield, if all of Bloomfield were compressed into a single song. And yet, if we had lived in those days, we should all have subscribed for the book of the peasant-bard, perhaps have read it,--but, most infallibly, have given it away to some country-cousin. * * * * * I will not leave the close of the last century without paying my respects to good Mrs. Barbauld,--not so much for her pleasant "Ode to Spring," about which there is a sweet odor of the fields, as for her partnership in those "Evenings at Home" which are associated--I scarce can remember how--with roaring fires and winter nights in the country; and not less strongly with the first noisy chorus of the frogs in the pools, and the first coy uplift of the crocuses and the sweet violets. There are pots of flowers, and glowing fruit-trees, and country hill-sides scattered up and down those little stories, which, though my eye has not lighted on them these twenty odd years past, are still fresh in my mind, and full of a sweet pastoral fragrance. The sketches may be very poor, with few artist-like touches in them; it may be only a boyish caprice by which I cling to them; but what pleasanter or more grateful whim to cherish than one which brings back all the aroma of childhood in the country,--floating upon the remnant-patches of a story that is only half recalled? The cowslips are there; the pansies are there; the overhanging chestnuts are there; the dusty high-road is there; the toiling wagons are there; and, betimes, the rain is dripping from the cottage-eaves--as the rain is dripping to-day.