excitement, and he wants exciting. It rouses him out of that beclouded and unimaginative dreamy state in which he stalks along the solitary fields, or wields the flail in the barn; digs the drain or the ditch, or plashes the fence, from day to day and week to week. The energies that he has, and they are chiefly physical, are all called forth. He is in a bustle. The weather is fine and warm--his blood flows quicker. The gates are thrown open--the hay rustles in the meadow, or the golden corn stands in shock amid the stubble: the wagons are rattling along the lanes and the fields. His neighbours are all called out to assist. The labourers leave every thing else, and are all in the harvest-field. The women leave their cottages, and are there too. Young, middle-aged, and old,--all are there, to work or to glean. The comely maiden with her rosy face, her beaming eyes, and fair figure, brings with her mirth and joke. The stout village matrons have drawn footless stockings on their arms to protect them from the sun and stubble--they have pinned up their bed-gowns behind, or doffed themselves to the brown stays and linsey-woolsey petticoat, and are amongst the best hands in the field. Even the old are feebly pulling at a rake, or putting hay into wain-row, or looking on, and telling what they have done in their time. The beer-keg is in the field, and the horn often goes round. The lunch is eaten under the tree, or amongst the sheaves. In the house at noon, there is a great setting out of dinner; beans and bacon, huge puddings and dumplings are plentiful,--it is a joyous and a stirring time. There is no other season of the year in which the farm-servant enjoys himself so much as in harvest; not even in his few other days of relaxation--on his visit to the fair, to the statutes, to the ploughing match, or on _Mothering_ Sunday, when all the “servant-lads” and “servant-wenches” are, in some parts of the country, set at liberty for a day, to go and see their mothers. See him at any other time, and what a plodding, simple, monotonous life he leads! He rises at an early hour--we have seen in this chapter at _what an hour_ the Rev. Mr. Robinson had his men up;--if he be going to work in the farm-yard, he goes out and gets to it till breakfast-time: but if he be going to plough, or to do work at a distance, or to carry corn home that has been sold at market by his master, or to fetch bones, rape-dust, or other manure from the town, or coals from the pit, he is up, whether it be summer or winter, at an hour at which townspeople are often not gone to bed. In early spring, and autumn he gets up to plough at five and six o’clock in a morning. It is pitch dark, and dismally cold. He strikes a light with his tinder, for lucifers he never saw, and has only heard of, as a horrible invention for setting ricks on fire. He slips on his ancle-boots without lacing them, and out he goes to fodder his horses, and rub them down. That done, he comes in again.