such mirage as can be seen in our climate. It is not like the mirage of the African desert; but it is sufficiently strange to impress young observers with wonder and awe. The boldest and highest headlands in the southernmost parts of England are the fittest stations from which to look out for this natural magic.
So they are for the night scenery of the season. The skies are growing darker now, at this distance from Midsummer, and more fit to set off the brilliancy of the summer meteors. How glorious they are! Not so flashing as those of the winter, but rolling and wheeling so grandly down the sky! Those policemen and night nurses, and mothers with wakeful babies, and sea-officers on watch, who first saw the falling stars of the 12th of this month, a quarter of a century ago, were much to be envied; and especially the sea-captains who were called to witness the marvel. They, with the whole arch of heaven above them, and the coast-guard, and any meditative man who might be out on the headlands that night, were privileged men. That meteor-shower, raining from one centre down over the whole dome, must have been as much like a miraculous portent as any spectacle witnessed by men now living. Stories are told in New York and elsewhere of persons returning late from visits and excursions who might have seen the whole, but saw nothing,—never once thought of looking overhead! For years after, a general watch was kept by people worthy of the sight; and so the spectacle was honoured till it died out. That stream of world-material has flowed away from our path in the heavens, and left us but little new wisdom, though an immortal remembrance of what we saw. There is no clear August night, however, in which we may not see more or less of those ineffable fireworks; and sometimes, as soon as the sun is gone, or even before he is gone, there may be some indications of what we should have seen if it had now been midnight; some greenish star in the blue heaven, some golden streak in the green or lilac horizon, some shower of sparks in the upper air, which would have shone grandly after dark. We sometimes sit beside the Beacon till bed-time, facing all ways, to count the number of falling stars per hour. We take it in turn to face the sea, as that, after all, is as solemn and beautiful as the heavens themselves on a lustrous summer’s night.
When that time has come, however, we are about to depart. If I am to be in the Highlands in time for the opening of the black-cock shooting, we must be turning homewards, as I have to deposit my party, and look after my concerns for a day or two before starting for Scotland. The grouse shooting must begin without me, on the 12th; but it is pleasant to make one on the other opening day—the 20th. So we take our way leisurely homewards through regions busy with the great harvest of the year.
Last year we heard complaints from county to county, from parish to parish, of the mischief done by the scarcity of labour. There were few or no Irish reapers to be seen on the roads: and the resident hands were so few in proportion to the demand that great waste was made while farmers were waiting their turn. If the weather was not fickle, there was the evil of the shedding of the grain. There were petitions for soldiers, petitions for paupers; but, where everything was granted, and where pay was highest, there was still much loss. The remedy is obvious enough. Reaping machines must come into general use. If only rich agriculturists can buy machines for their own use, the farmers of a neighbourhood may subscribe to set up a depôt of agricultural machinery, so managing their crops as not to want the same implement all on the same day. My girls ask me if I can bear to think of the sickle going out of use. It is a mournful thought, certainly; but there is no help for it. The sickle shines all through human history, as the distaff did till lately. The sun coming out of a total eclipse was the “golden sickle” of thousands of years ago; and the young moon was Diana’s silver sickle. We see the sickle on the tombs of Egypt, together with the millstones, and the loom, and the fishermen’s nets. The distaff is nearly lost; and the mill is too much altered to be known; and the plough and sickle will probably go out together. When children hereafter read in the Bible of sticking the sickle in the sheaf, or in classical history of its use as a symbol, they will ask what it was like, though we, in our childhood, saw parcels of it, with a specimen outside, in every ironmonger’s shop in country places. Its pretty form will be forgotten, except in pictures; and its gleam will be no more seen in the evening light, nor its flash in the noonday sun. It is better so. Much human toil and much human food will be saved; and in time our children may have graceful and pleasant associations with the instruments which are taking the place of the husbandman’s old tools; but we need not be ashamed of mourning the sickle and the plough, if we should survive their use. Neither is gone yet. To one field where we observe a reaping-machine at work, we see several where groups of men, women, and boys are toiling in the old way at cutting and binding. With all their fun and frolic, all their pleasant restings in the shade, and all the good things with which they quench their thirst, their piecemeal cutting and hacking, and gathering into bundles, does look barbaric beside the quick, clean work made by the machine. The new method must certainly gain ground every year.
Will it be so with the way of making merry at the end of the work? Here and there we come upon traces of the old ceremonies of harvest-home as I once saw them in the Eastern counties. The men sometimes join hands in a circle, and raise the stunning cry, known as “Hallo-largesse”—hallooing for a largesse—clamorously blessing the farmer or squire for a gift in money. The tipsy fellows, reeling with drink, and flaunting streamers of gay ribbons, used to be the terror of village and country-town after harvest. Now the mischief is taken in hand by Lord Albemarle and other kindly employers, who subscribe more than the old largesse to make a festival day for the wives and children, as well as the harvest-men themselves. We certainly devoutly wish them success when we find our road obstructed, and our carriage