ORIGINAL POETRY. ADAM'S THANKSGIVING. BY THE HON. D. G. OSBORNE. FATHER, thy world was fair and bright, That shone o'er Eden's groves and bowers. Thy loving hand for me prepared ; To thank thy love for what was given, One precious boon was still denied me; Beings who hover near thy throne, VARIETIES. AN AMERICAN LOCK.-A recent American paper contains an advertisement, strongly recommending a newlyinvented lock; and after giving numerous praises of its various excellences, sums up with the following exceedingly questionable quality for a lock that is intended to be serviceable. "The lock (says the advertisement) has been in use nearly eight years, and although frequently tried, has never yet, in any one instance, been opened." GIPSIES IN ENGLAND.-Shortly after their first arrival in England, which is upwards of three centuries since, a dreadful persecution was raised against them, the aim of which was their utter extermination; for the being a gipsy was esteemed a crime worthy of death, and the gibbets of England groaned and creaked beneath the weight of gipsy carcases, and the miserable survivors were literally obliged to creep into the earth in order to preserve their lives. But these days passed by; their persecutors became weary of pursuing them; they showed their heads from the holes and caves where they had hidden themselves; they ventured forth, increased in numbers, and each tribe or family choosing a particular circuit, they fairly divided the land among them. In Eng. land, the male gipsies are all dealers in horses, and sometimes employ their idle time in mending the tin and copper utensils of the peasantry: the females tell fortunes. They generally pitch their tents in the vicinity of a village or small town by the road side, under the shelter of the hedges and trees. The climate of England is well known to be favourable to beauty, and in no part of the world is the appearance of the gipsies so prepossessing as in that country; their complexion is dark, but not disagreeably so, their faces are oval, their features regular, their foreheads rather low, and their hands and feet small. The men are taller than the English peasantry, and far more active. They all speak the English language with fluency, and in their gait and demeanour are easy and graceful; in both points standing in striking contrast with the peasantry, who in speech are slow and uncouth, and in manner dogged and brutal.-Barrow's Gipsies of Spain. The Baron Beranger relates, that having secured a pickpocket in the very act of irregular abstraction, he took the liberty of inquiring whether there was any thing in his face that had procured him the honour of his being singled out for such an attempt. "Why, sir," said the fellow, "your TRUE AND FALSE RELIGIONS.-True and false religions face is well enough, but you had on thin shoes and white are names that easily engage men's affections on the hear-stockings in dirty weather, and so I made sure you were a ing of them; the one being the aversion, the other the desire, at least as they persuade themselves, of all mankind. This makes men forwardly give into these names, wherever they meet with them; and when mention is made of bringing men from a false to the true religion, very often without knowing what is meant by those names, they think nothing can be done too much in such a business, which they entitle for God's honour, and the salvation of men's souls.-Sunday Times. Not on the rich, the titled, nor the proud, are nature's noblest gifts bestowed. No!-nor by these high and haughty ones are they discerned, encouraged, or appreciated in others. Genius may descend to flatter power and worship wealth, and power and wealth may reward the parasite according to his talents; but it has ever been, and ever will be, that the truly independent man-he who, confident of his own powers, and satisfied in his mental resources, seeks no adventitious aid, ever finds the mean in soul prepared to traduce his labours, and in an adverse hour, to blacken and destroy his reputation. Too many people confound charity with donation; they are satisfied with having given the most ready vent to the generous impulse; they have gratified a high and a low feeling the kindness, and we fear also, the ostentation. That is not charity which goes about with a white pocket-handker. chief in the hand, and is followed by a flourish of trumpets! No; charity is a calm, severe duty; it must be intellectual to be advantageous. It is a strange mistake that it should be ever considered a merit; its fulfilment is only what we owe to each other, and is a debt never paid to its full extent. flat." If men would only be determined to overcome a difficulty, they would find it half performed before they thought that they had commenced; it is the want of exertion, and not ability, that makes so many men unsuccessful. rable; it is a practice against which every man of mind he be fit to govern a family; and his family, ere he be fit to PERFECTION.-Aim at perfection in every thing, though in most things it is unattainable; however, they who aim at it, and persevere, will come much nearer to it than those whose laziness and despondency make them give it up as unattainable.-Chesterfield. ILLUSTRATIONS OF HUMANITY. No. XXXVII. THE REAPERS. THE Occupation of farming is one of the most ancient on record. It is perhaps next in antiquity to that of gardening; which last, as our readers are aware, is contemporaneous with the time of Adam himself. Agriculture has been a favourite avocation in all ages of the world, and can boast among its patrons many of the most distinguished names which are inscribed on the tablet of history. The mere circumstance of agriculture being so favourite a pursuit, is a proof that it is also one of a pleasant kind; for persons will never be found evincing, in great numbers, a marked predilection for any occupation which is not productive of pleasure to those who follow it. you were thankfully receiving the beneficent gifts of the great Benefactor, who, though dwelling in the skies, regulates the destinies of our lower world. The pleasing reflection suggests itself to one's mind, that in that corn which is now in the act of falling under the sickle, there is the provision for an entire year for man and beast. You do not look on it as the property of the farmer who is entrusted with its cutting down and gathering in; you regard him as only the steward of that bountiful Being who vouchsafed the favourable seasons, acting on behalf of the great family of man. The agriculturist himself will consume but a mere fraction of the produce of his farm. That produce will feed the mouths and fill the stomachs of thousands, whose faces he has never seen and never will see in this world. Perhaps the meals which are eaten in the harvest field are the heartiest and most grateful to the palate, of which the human appetite ever partook. Homely though they be, they are wholesome and pleasant to the taste, to a degree of which those who live on the luxuries of towns can form no conception. The reaper has always an excellent appetite, caused by the invigo rating breezes and his active labours; and his palate not being vitiated by the artifices of scientific cookery, he enjoys his meals with infinite zest. Farming, however, like every other pursuit, has its comparative pleasures. Every branch of the business, if business it may be called, is not equally agreeable. The most pleasant is doubtless that of reaping,— always of course assuming that the crops are good, and the weather propitious. The season of harvest is to the farmer what the haven is to the sailor after a long and anxious voyage. It is the fulfilment of all his hopes the goal on which his eye from the mo- Reapers include persons of both sexes. On the ment of his casting the seed into the earth, has been harvest field you see males and females, married and constantly fixed. During the intervening months he single. Of course, the female being the weaker vessel, has lived by faith; now is the season of his faith's is not able to go through so much labour as her lord fruition. His hopes are at length realised; the hour and master; still she is able to do sufficient in the for which he so anxiously looked and longed has now work of cutting down, to render her aid desirable. arrived, and as he gazes on his fields white unto har-In many harvest fields, indeed, the greatest proporvest, and laden with the bounties of Providence, he feels a measure of happiness of which those who follow the avocations of the crowded city can form no conception. Nor is it the farmer only that rejoices with a peculiar joy in the season of harvest. His pleasures are largely shared by all whom he employs to cut down and gather in the fruits of the earth. The harvest field is the scene of hard labour, but the severity of the toil is materially diminished by the agreeable circumstances under which it is performed. Nature herself usually wears a smiling aspect in the autumn of the year. The weather is genial, and the smile of satisfaction and gratitude which the reaper observes in the countenances of the farmer and his family, calls forth by an unaccountable sympathy a smile from himself. Love, the proverb tells us, begets love. With equal truth may it be said, that witnessing the happiness of others produces a similar feeling in every generous breast. Who ever yet gazed on the countenances of a band of reapers without being delighted with the evidences of happiness with which their every look, and word, and movement abounded? We know of no more grateful spectacle than that of witnessing the operations of an efficient company of reapers. It is pleasant to see the sickle applied to the ample handful of corn, fully ripe and abundant in its produce, the moment it is grasped. You feel as if tion of the reapers are females; the labours of a certain number of the other sex being required in binding the sheaves, making the stacks, and in other departments of agricultural duty. The harvest field is almost proverbial for the num ber of courtships which have been matured into mar riage, and the attachments which have been formed in it. If among the reapers there be two persons of opposite sexes who had previously commenced the work of courtship, they always contrive to be placed next each other on the scene of the sickle's operations, and the attachment already formed, however slight, hardly ever fails to ripen into a proposal and acceptance before the reapers celebrate the conclusion of their labours in the ceremony of "harvest home." And on innumerable occasions, attachments which have terminated in speedy marriage, have been formed “on the stubble," while the sickle was busy in the discharge of its destructive functions, even in cases where the parties were unknown to each other when they "took" the harvest field. To find out, if possible, the number of matrimonial unions which are fairly traceable to the soft things said in the midst of the harvest operations, were indeed no incurious or uninteresting subject of inquiry. That Cupid delights in a special manner to hover over the heads of the unmarried reapers, is one of those facts which all must concur in admitting, because it is undeniably proved by the number of matrimonial results which are clearly attributable to attachments either formed or matured, while the parties are busy plying the sickle. In some parts of the country the process of cutting the crops is performed by the scythe. The use of this implement, however, is not likely ever to become general. The sickle, though not so expeditious in its operations, performs its work much more cleanly, and in a far more business like manner. Corn cut down by the scythe is left on the ground in a state of confusion which is unpleasant to the eye, and is prejudicial to the ricking and to the severance of the grain from the ear. With the sickle it is otherwise. The corn is laid on the ground with the most perfect regularity, the ears being all together, and the process of subsequent separation of the grain from the straw, is consequently performed with comparative ease and expedition. A very large proportion of the reapers in England, and in the south and western parts of Scotland, consist of persons who have emigrated from Ireland for the purpose; and when the harvest is finished, a considerable majority of their number return forthwith to their native country. In many instances, however, they do not return at all, but become denizens of localities on "this side of the water." A very large number visit England for the purpose of engaging in the toils of the harvest field every year, and almost entirely live on the fruits of their labour, from the conclusion of one harvest to the commencement of another. Their average earnings in the harvest season are between four and five pounds. In the lowland districts of Scotland, again, there is a very large yearly importation of persons from the northern Highlands to aid in the labours of the harvest. They often walk on foot in coming to, and returning from, the scene of their operations, a distance of from one hundred to a hundred and fifty miles; and are quite contented with the produce of their four or five weeks' labour, if they can carry home with them fifty or sixty shillings. THE HEROINES OF BURNS. Ir is generally known that the fine impassioned songs of Burns the poet were mostly written with regard to real women-in some instances of no great beauty in the world's estimation, and in most of very humble rank, but almost always genuine and real women of this world, whom the poet was pleased to admire for the time being, and not ideal, as was too much the case in the poetical age which had preceded his time. In this respect he was very different from the poets of a former age, with their supposititious Daphnes and Phillises. With Burns, to quote a line of old Maclaurin, Lord Dreghorn “Nelly, not Neæra, was her name." Plain, downright Annies and Nannies, and Tibbies and Jeannies, they were every one of them. He was a great poet-more particularly a great lyrical poet-perhaps we may say, the greatest that has lived; and in whatever sphere he had been born, there was it certain that the maidens, whether in silk or drugget, must have been made immortal. We have the poet's own authority, that the first flame in his bosom was kindled in his fifteenth autumn, by a "bonnie sweet lassie," who was assigned to him as his of the power she had acquired over him; and he himself partner in the harvest-field. She was unwitting at first did not know, as he tells us, "why he liked so much to loiter behind with her, when returning in the evening from their labours; why the tones of her voice made his heartstrings thrill like an Eolian harp; and particularly why his pulse beat such a furious rattan when he looked and fingered over her little hand to pick out the cruel nettlestings and thistles." Love brought poetry to its aid, and he now composed his first verses, beginning "Once I loved a bonnie lass, and aye I love her still" a very poor set of rhymes truly, but curious as the first tunings of so sweet an instrument. Her name appears to have been Nelly Blair, and, like many of his subsequent flames, she was a house-servant. The daughter of an individual in whose house she at one time served, communicated, through a newspaper, a few years ago, her recollections of Burns's visits on the occasions when "rockings" were held in the house. These were meetings of the rustic youth of both sexes, at which the lasses plied their spinning-wheels, (formerly their rocks, hence the name,) and the young men knitted light supper of country fare. Often did this lady meet stockings; the entertainment consisting of songs, and a Burns at the head of a little troop, coming from a distance of three or four miles to attend these meetings, with the spinning-wheel of some lass over his shoulder, and a hundred jokes in his mouth to keep the party in merriment. Often had the lady of the house to find fault with her damsels next day, for their want of alacrity, the result of larity of the poet. their late sitting, enjoying the exquisite humour and jocu Another of his very early Dulcineas was a certain Isabella Steven or Stein, who lived near his father's farm of Lochlee. He was then about seventeen. But, alas! she was an heiress-her father a laird, that is to say, the proprietor of probably twenty acres of moor land, with a cothouse and garden. She therefore looked high, and the consequence was the song beginning— "Oh, Tibbie, I hae seen the day, His next serious fit of passion was while he was studying land-measuring at Kirkoswald. The fair maid's name was Peggy Thomson, and he celebrates her in his song, "Now westlin wins," &c. She became the wife of a person named Neilson, and long lived in Ayr. About the time he was two or three and twenty, his attachments came in such thick and rapid succession, that there is no individualising them. Scarce a maiden existed in the happy parish of Tarbolton who had not been a transient object of worship to Robert Burns. There was one whom he celebrates under the name of Montgomery's Peggy. To this girl, who had been reared in rather an elegant way, he made love, merely to show his arts in courtship. He got really in love, and was then refused. "It cost me several heartaches," he says, "to get rid of the affair." Another, named Anne Roland, the daughter of a farmer, is said to have been the "Annie" of the beautiful song the "Rigs of Barley." "It was upon a Lammas night, When corn rigs are bonnie, I hied away to Annie. The time flew by wi' tentless heed, To see me thro' the barley," &c. The heroine of " My Nannie O," that most exquisite of songs, was Agnes Fleming, the daughter of a farmer at Caldcothill, near Lochlee, Ayrshire, and at one time a servant: "Her face is fair, her heart is true, As spotless as she's bonnie, 0 ; The opening gowan wat wi' dew, Nae purer is than Nannie, O." At about four and twenty, while still assisting his father in the small, poor farm of Lochlee, he became acquainted with the young woman whom he addresses in several of his published letters as "My dear E--." From these letters he appears to have at first made sure of obtaining the young woman's hand, but to have been finally rejected. It is probable that this person was the heroine of his song, "From thee, Eliza, I must go," which seems to have been written on the eve of his going abroad. The letters are in very pure English, and of a more moderate and rational complexion than the most of his compositions of that class, while the song ranks with his best. It commences as follows: "Farewell, farewell, Eliza dear, The maid that I adore; A boding voice is in my ear, We part to meet no more. The latest throb that leaves my heart, While death stands victor by, That throb, Eliza, is thy part, And thine that latest sigh." In the course of a short tour with Dr. Adair, August 1787, the poet first saw Miss Charlotte Hamilton at Harvieston, on the banks of the romantic little river Devon. She was a sister of his friend, Mr. Hamilton, of Mauchline; was born on the banks of the Ayr, and was afterwards married to James M. Adair, Esq., surgeon. Miss Hamilton is celebrated in the following verses: "How pleasant the banks of the clear winding Devon, With green spreading bushes, and flowers blooming fair; But the bonniest flower on the banks of the Devou, Was once a sweet bud on the braes of the Ayr," &c. She is characterized by the poet, at this time, as a charming young lady. The following song, the poet tells us, was composed out of compliment to Miss Ann Masterton, daughter of his friend, Mr. Allan Masterton, who afterwards became Mrs. Derbishire, and is now, or was lately, resident in London. “ Ye gallants bright, I red ye right, Beware of bonnie Ann; Her comely face, sae fu' o' grace, Your heart she will trepan. Her een sae bright, like stars by night, Sae jimply laced her genty waist, Beware o' bonnie Ann." No less beautiful are the following lines composed on Miss Dean Jeffrey, daughter of the minister of Lochmaben. Burns, spending an evening with this gentleman at his | manse, was much pleased with the young lady who did the honours of the table, and next morning, at breakfast, he presented her with the song. She is now Mrs. Renwick, and resides in New York. "I gaed a waefu' gate yestreen, A gate I fear I'll dearly rue; It was her een sae bonnie blue. She talked, she smiled, my heart she wil'd; She charmed my soul, I wistna how; And aye the stound, the deadly wound, Cam frae her een sae bonnie blue," &c. We had almost forgotten the circumstance which produced one of Burns's most beautiful effusions. In a summer evening of 1786, while walking in the woods of Ballochmyle, the poet casually met a Miss Wilhelmina Alexander, sister of Claud Alexander, Esq., of Ballochmyle, who was enjoying the evening in the beautiful grounds around her brother's mansion, and is described as a very charming young lady. Burns enclosed the song to Miss Alexander, who was deterred by considerations of delicacy from taking notice of it at the time, though, we believe, she still preserves it with the greatest care. The lady is still, or was lately, living unmarried; and she owes the immortality she has now acquired, to this chance rencontre with the poet. ""Twas even, the dewy fields were green, All nature listening seemed the while, A maiden fair I chanced to spy; Behold the lass of Ballochmyle," &c. This brings us to Highland Mary, the most interesting of all Burns's heroines. He was now the joint tenant with his brother of the little farm of Mossgiel, in the parish of Mauchline. Mary Campbell, for such was her name, was as lowly a maiden as any he ever admired, being the dairywoman at Colonel Montgomery's house of Coilsfield, a gentleman who afterwards became twelfth Earl of Eglin toun. There is a white thorn near the house, beneath whose boughs the poet-lover often met his simple mistress. He celebrates her charms, and his own happiness, in the song of the "Highland Lassie." The design of going in search of fortune to the West Indies was still upon him, and he is found asking his mistress if she will accompany him. "Will you go to the Indies, my Mary, At length he resolved to marry her, and endeavour to remain contented at home; and they met on the banks of the Ayr" to live one day of parting love," previous to a visit which she was to pay, in anticipation of her marriage, to her relations in Argyleshire. Alas! it was their last meeting. In the song of “ Highland Mary," the history of this precious day is written in immortal light. "The lovers," says Mr. Cromek, "stood on each side of a small |