es of costume and colour; and ploughs and
harrows, with their whistling boys and steady carters, going through,
with a slow and plodding industry, the main business of this busy
season. What work beansetting is! What a reverse of the position
assigned to man to distinguish him from the beasts of the field! Only
think of stooping for six, eight, ten hours a day, drilling holes in the
earth with a little stick, and then dropping in the beans one by one.
They are paid according to the quantity they plant; and some of the poor
women used to be accused of clumping them--that is to say, of dropping
more than one bean into a hole. It seems to me, considering the
temptation, that not to clump is to be at the very pinnacle of human
virtue.

Another turn in the lane, and we come to the old house standing amongst
the high elms--the old farm-house, which always, I don't know why,
carries back my imagination to Shakspeare's days. It is a long, low,
irregular building, with one room, at an angle from the house, covered
with ivy, fine white-veined ivy; the first floor of the main building
projecting and supported by oaken beams, and one of the windows below,
with its old casement and long narrow panes, forming the half of a
shallow hexagon. A porch, with seats in it, surmounted by a pinnacle,
pointed roofs, and clustered chimneys, complete the picture! Alas! it is
little else but a picture! The very walls are crumbling to decay under a
careless landlord and ruined tenant.

Now a few yards farther, and I reach the bank. Ah! I smell them
already--their exquisite perfume steams and lingers in this moist, heavy
air. Through this little gate, and along the green south bank of this
green wheat-field, and they burst upon me, the lovely violets, in
tenfold loveliness. The ground is covered with them, white and purple,
enamelling the short dewy grass, looking but the more vividly coloured
under the dull, leaden sky. There they lie by hundreds, by thousands.
In former years I have been used to watch them from the tiny green bud,
till one or two stole into bloom. They never came on me before in such
a sudden and luxuriant glory of simple beauty,--and I do really owe one
pure and genuine pleasure to feverish London! How beautifully they are
placed too, on this sloping bank, with the palm branches waving over
them, full of early bees, and mixing their honeyed scent with the more
delicate violet odour! How transparent and smooth and lusty are the