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PUBLISHER'S ADVERTISEMENT

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THE FIRST EDITION.

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may be proper to observe, that the following Pages were a gratuitous Offering from the Gentleman to whom they are addressed, who joins the Publisher in thinking them well calculated to assist the great Common Cause of the Country.

The subsequent Letter from the Author is necessary to the better explanation of the circumstances under which the Stanzas were written.

[N. B. This little Poem was first published, almost gratis, to facilitate and spread its circulation amongst all orders of people, for the sake of its PRINCIPLE, not its POETRY.]

DEAR SIR,

TO A FRIEND.

You are already apprised, that my motive for visiting this place was, as expressed in the volume I had the honour lately to send you, once more to take by the hand that prototype of all that is faithful in a friend, or worthy

in a man*, JOHN HILLS. This excursion happening in the reaping season, and at a time that the prospects of plenty were extended over the face of the country, while a high sentiment of love for that country, and of magnanimous disdain for the man who presumes to threaten it with Invasion, was kindled in every bosom, you will believe that I did not "bend an eye of vacancy" on these interesting subjects; rendered yet more touching by their being placed so near the spot where I was born, and where I had passed the earliest years of life. I reviewed my juvenile scenery; and my lowly friends eagerly clustered about me, either with gay delight, or with that pensive pleasure which is yet more sweet.

Numerous were the marks of loving kindness manifested by the villagers; one neighbour offers me a horse, even though it was harvest-time! So, it was a compromise betwixt Reaper and Gleaner; the ride for mere exercise being postponed till Little Jack-so was the pony called-had carried the breakfast-scrips, luncheonbottles, and dinner-baskets into the fields. A second neighbour offered the use of his taxed cart, smarted up chaise-fashion. Another sent a basket of fruit, which, though forbidden by my doctors, I could not but taste, as a sacrifice to gratitude. A fourth presented some cornflowers. And every morning some good soul or other provided a warm harvest-cake, of which I partook at breakfast, even in the most hissing hot weather: and I literally" ate hot rolls and butter in July," lest the do

The author alludes to a passage in a note to a volume of Gleanings in England, just published, page 637.

nors

nors should deem me thankless. But nothing touched me more than the action of a little creature whom I met returning from the fields, and who put into my hands, with a nod of his head, and without uttering a word, all his gleanings of the day-some thirty or forty wheat-ears —in exchange of a penny-piece which I had given him. And poor old George Constable walked over from St. Ives to Woodhurst, in the 74th year of his age, and declared how rejoiced he was, and how glad he should be to see me every where in the known world but in his churchyard. This he said with a gay air; but the point of the old man's expression was in your calling to mind, that he is the sexton, and has put under ground some generations of men.

I should not forget a most natural action of love and affection in a poor fellow whom I encountered in one of my rides. He suspended a work of hard labour, as he caught my eye, and stretched out his arm, as if to give me welcome; but he drew it suddenly back, to wipe his hand with the bosom of his shirt, exclaiming, with accents that would have reconciled me to a grasp of the iron man," Fackins, sir, 'tis you, sure enough: my hand is something too hard for yours; but, as you have got your glove on, I must have one shake let what will come on't." And as he obeyed the impulse of his honest heart, he supplicated God's blessing on me all the while, observing, that "he knew me at once, though I had gotten a bit into an oldish man, as well as himself; and that I had done him more good, he was sure, than a pint of

Of whom the reader has a curious anecdote in page 16 of the first yolume of Harvest-Home.

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good ale would have done this smoking' weather. leave you to judge whether he did not get his pint of ale into the bargain.

All this is extremely welcome; and the more so as I know it to be genuine

"Warm from the heart, and faithful to its fires."

It is become habitual to me to describe whatever strongly impresses me; and you will not wonder that I observed my usual custom on this occasion.

What follows is the result.. But I was soon led from individual to general emotions, and was not a little gratified to see that the spirit of the country had spread itself even to this sequestered spot, inhabited by a people of almost aboriginal simplicity. I saw it diffusing itself over the fields and closes; accompany the Swains and Farmers at early morn in their way to their daily labour, and escort them back on their twilight return; I was both an eye-and ear-witness to a thousand little things, which if detailed would spread out into volumes. It all went to prove the universality of the one grand principle of patriotism. And though, both from my own observation and converse, I neither see nor hear any reason whatsoever to alter my opinions or arguments stated in another work *; it is delightful to see that the enthusiasm of the moment is too warm and too mighty for any remembrance, but that which is inspired by the love and duty which attach us to our native soil.

I pledge all the good faith that subsists between us (and I could bring many vouchers from the sylvan scene) as to what follows being never more, and often less, than Cottage Pictures.

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