hid, lest they should excite undue envy, the silver teaspoons and teapot, and the bundles of coffee and tea and white sugar, together with the tortoise shell combs and gold ear-rings which the good natured husband had been importuned to buy. Let not the reader turn away with contempt from this simple picture; the event was an important one in the family of farmer Gull, and supplied it with a stock, not only of necessities and luxuries, but of conversation and pleasure for a full season. But alas! in the train of all this prosperity and gladness marched the forerunners of decay. Farmer Gull's heavy purse of shining dollars had won the heart of many a knight of the counter, and many were the plans laid to obtain a a closer intimacy with their owner. Here Mrs. Gull was invited to sit down in the parlour to rest herself; and there was she pressed to stay to tea. One talked to her about her butter and her cheese, and another about her rosy faced children. In short, it so happened, that in the course of a few years, she had at least half a dozen acquaintances in the shopkeeping line, each of whom were under engagement to spend a short time during the Dog-days at Melrose; for so was the farm now styled. With these new acquaintances, new views and expectations filled the minds of the wife and daughters. The old family Bible and the Pilgrim's Progress were less frequently read and quoted; the calico short gowns in which they used to visit their neighbours of a summer evening gave place to dresses of silk and white muslin, and their talk was now of the fashions and the new novels. Among other changes it was determined to make a merchant of Jonathan, and a place was accordingly engaged for him with the particular friend of the family, Mr. Seersucker.----I was struck with the appearance of the lad when he came to bid me good bye and take his books from school. He was dressed in a suit of tidy homespun, made up by the hands of his mother and sisters, and which was, from the sheep that furnished the wool to the thread with which the garments were sewed, the produce of his father's farm. The good old fashioned notions of domestic industry were not then extinct. Our farmers had not then found that it was cheaper to keep a family of strapping daughters idle at home, and send the wool to one factory to be carded and spun, and to another to be wove and dyed, and then to a fop of a tailor to be made up into coats, than to have the cards, the wheel, and the loom at their own fire-side; giving wholesome occupation to their family, enlivening the gloomy hours of winter, and cementing by good humour and mutual assistance the ties of family and kindred. We had not then found out the grand modern secret of economy; that it is better to pamper a few inordinate manufacturing establishments, with all their consequences, of a degraded and dependant population and high taxes, than to let every individual pursue his own interests, and to encourage that best