"I left my poor plough to go ploughing the deep."

That song told of a war-time, and of naval dangers and glories; and the chorus was roared out as if "the inconstant wind" was a very jolly thing, and "the carpenter" who tempted the ploughman "for to go and leave his love behind," not at all a bad fellow.

I read 'The Farmer's Boy' after I was familiar with the farmer's kitchen. It is worth reading now, if it were only for its pictures of a past age. Even at that time the Harvest Home was becoming ungenteel :—

"Here once a year Distinction lowers its crest,

The master, servant, and the merry guest,
Are equal all; and round the happy ring
The reaper's eyes exulting glances fling,
And, warm'd with gratitude, he quits his place,
With sun-burnt hands and ale-enliven❜d face,
Refills the jug his honour'd host to tend,

To serve at once the master and the friend;
Proud thus to meet his smiles, to share his tale,
His nuts, his conversation, and his ale.

Such were the days-of days long past I sing,
When Pride gave place to Mirth without a sting;
Ere tyrant customs strength sufficient bore
To violate the feelings of the poor;

To leave them distanc'd in the madd'ning race,
Where'er Refinement shows its hated face:
Nor causeless hated;-'tis the peasant's curse,
That hourly makes his wretched station worse;
Destroys life's intercourse; the social plan
That rank to rank cements, as man to man:
Wealth flows around him, Fashion lordly reigns;
Yet poverty is his, and mental pains.

Our annual feast, when Earth her plenty yields,

When crown'd with boughs the last load quits the fields,
The aspect still of ancient joys puts on;

The aspect only, with the substance gone:
The self-same Horn is still at our command,
But serves none now but the plebeian hand;
For home-brew'd Ale, neglected and debased,
Is quite discarded from the realms of taste.
Where unaffected Freedom charm'd the soul,
The separate table and the costly bowl,

Cool as the blast that checks the budding Spring,

A mockery of gladness round them fling."

Were I to see that homestead once more, I have no doubt I should find, like the grandsire of Crabbe's poem, that "all is changed." The scenes which live in my recollection can never come back; nor is it fitting that they should. With the primitive simplicity there was also a good deal of primitive waste and carelessness. Except in the dairy, dirt and litter were the accompaniments of the rude housekeeping. The fields were imperfectly cultivated; the headlands were full of weeds; there was one meadow close to the house, called the Pitle (still a Norfolk word), in which I assiduously, but vainly, worked with a little hoe at defying thistles. I have no doubt that "all is changed," or the farm would be no longer a farm. The neglect belonged to the times of the dear loaf. The "refinement" of Bloomfield really means the progress of improvement.

WINDSOR, AS IT WAS.

My earliest recollections of Windsor are exceedingly delightful. I was born within a stone's throw of the Castle gates; and my whole boyhood was passed in the most unrestrained enjoyment of the venerable and beautiful objects by which I was surrounded, as if they had been my own peculiar and proper inheritance. The king and his family lived in a plain barrack-looking lodge at his castle foot, which, in its external appearance and its interior arrangements, exactly corresponded with the humble taste and the quiet domestic habits of George III. The whole range of the castle, its terrace, and its park, were places dedicated to the especial pleasures of a school-boy. Neither warder, nor sentinel, nor gamekeeper interfered with our boisterous sports. The deserted courts of the upper quadrangle often re-echoed, on the moonlight winter evenings, with our whoo-whoop; and delightful hiding places indeed there were amongst the deep buttresses and sharp angles of those old towers. The rooks and a few antique dowagers, who had each their domicile in some lone turret of that spacious square, were the only personages who were disturbed by our revelry ;-and they, kind creatures, never complained to the authorities.

But if the inner courts of Windsor Castle rang with our sports, how much more noisy was the joy in the magnificent play-ground of the terrace! Away we went, fearless as the chamois, along the narrow wall; and even the awful height of the north side, where we looked down upon the tops of the highest trees, could not abate the rash courage of follow my leader. In the pauses of the sport, how often has my eye reposed upon that magnificent landscape which lay at my feet, drinking in its deep beauty, without a critical thought of the picturesque! Then, indeed, I knew nothing about "The stately brow

"Th' expanse below

Of grove, of lawn, of mead survey."

My thoughts, then, were all fresh and vivid, and I could enjoy the scenes amongst which I lived, without those artificial and hackneyed associations which make up the being of the man. Great, too, was my joy, when laying my eye to the edge of the eastern wall, and looking along a channel cut in the surface, I saw the dome of St. Paul's looming through the smoke at twenty miles distance. Then, God be praised, my ear had not been shattered, nor my heart hardened, by dwelling under the shadow of that dome ;-and I thought of London, as a place for the wise and the good to be great

and happy in-and not as an especial den in which

"All creeping creatures, venomous and low,"

might crawl over and under each other.

The Park! what a glory was that for cricket and kite-flying. No one molested us. The beautiful plain immediately under the eastern terrace was called the Bowling Green;-and, truly, it was as level as the smoothest of those appendages to suburban inns. We took excellent care that the grass should not grow too fast beneath our feet. No one molested us. The king, indeed, would sometimes stand alone for half an hour to see the boys at cricket;-and heartily would he laugh when the wicket of some confident urchin went down at the first ball. But we did not heed his majesty. He was a quiet good-humoured gentleman, in a long blue coat, whose face was as familiar to us as that of our writing master; and many a time had that gracious gentleman bidden us good morning, when we were hunting for mushrooms in the early dew, and had crossed his path as he was returning from his dairy to his eight o'clock breakfast. Every one knew that most respectable and amiable of country squires, called His Majesty; and truly there was no inequality in the matter, for his majesty knew every one.

This circumstance was a natural result of the familiar and simple habits of the court. There was as little parade as can well be imagined in all the