There is genuine poetry in pastoral life which it would be sad to lose. Nevertheless, agricultural science and literature are between them rapidly taking the romance out of it. Perhaps we should add, hard times, and the vital importance of making things pay. It is a pity to lose the faculty of discf jning the beauty of the dewy eve and rising moon, or listening as the amorous thrush concludes his song; or only to think of the price of mutton and of wool, or of lambs as fore and hind quarters.
The haunt o' Spring's the primrose brae,
The Summer's joy the flocks to follow;
How cheerie through the shortening day
Is Autumn in her weeds o' yallow!
The sweetness of pastoral life is going. It is disappearing under the influence of commercial enterprise, the spread of science, and the difficulties of competition. We ourselves are victims to utilitarianism, and must plead guilty to sharing in the universal want of sentiment, even when "birds rejoice in leafy bowers, and bees hum round the breathing flowers;" or when "within yon milk-white hawthorn bush, among her nestlings sits the thrush."
