a tree of the forest--and yet
that there shall be no visible progress from good to better in the
dwelling of those whose hands and hearts thus cultivate the soil into
rejoicing beauty. As the whole land prospers, so does each individual
dwelling. Every ten years, the observing eye sees a new expression on
the face of the silent earth; the law of labour is no melancholy lot;
for to industry the yoke is easy, and content is its own exceeding great
reward.

Therefore, it does our heart good to look on a Cottage. Here the
objections to straw-roofs have no application. A few sparrows chirping
and fluttering in the eaves can do no great harm, and they serve to
amuse the children. The very baby in the cradle, when all the family are
in the fields, mother and all, hears the cheerful twitter, and is
reconciled to solitude. The quantity of corn that a few sparrows can
eat--greedy creatures as they are--cannot be very deadly; and it is
chiefly in the winter-time that they attack the stacks, when there is
much excuse to be made on the plea of hunger. As to the destruction of a
little thatch, why, there is not a boy about the house, above ten years,
who is not a thatcher, and there is no expense in such repairs. Let the
honeysuckle, too, steal up the wall, and even blind unchecked a corner
of the kitchen-window. Its fragrance will often cheer unconsciously the
labourer's heart, as, in the mid-day hour of rest, he sits dandling his
child on his knee, or converses with the passing pedlar. Let the
moss-rose tree flourish, that its bright blush-balls may dazzle in the
kirk the eyes of the lover of fair Helen Irwin, as they rise and fall
with every movement of a bosom yet happy in its virgin innocence. Nature
does not spread in vain her flowers in flush and fragrance over every
obscure nook of earth. Simple and pure is the delight they inspire. Not
to the poet's eye alone is their language addressed. The beautiful
symbols are understood by lowliest minds; and while the philosophical
Wordsworth speaks of the meanest flower that blows giving a joy too deep
for tears, so do all mankind feel the exquisite truth of Burns's more
simple address to the mountain-daisy which his ploughshare had upturned.
The one touches sympathies too profound to be general--the other speaks
as a son of the soil affected by the fate of the most familiar flower
that springs from the bosom of our common dust.

Generally speaking, there has been a spirit of improve