Oxen, o'er the furrow'd soil, The sombre wood-the cheerful plain, Gild the ripe fields with mellowing hand, sports of the field allured him from the pursuits of literature at college, and the domestic comforts of wife and home. To the Editor. To disemburthen oneself of ennui, and to find rational amusement for every season of the year, is a grand desideratum in life. Luckily I have hit on't, and beg leave, as being the properest place, to give my recipe in the Everlasting Calendar you are compiling. I contrive then to give myself employment for every time of year. Neither lively Spring, glowing Summer, sober Autumn, nor dreary Winter, come amiss to me; for I have contrived to make myself an Universal Sportsman, and am become so devoted a page of Diana, that I am dangling at her heels all the year round without being tired of it. In bleak and frozen January, besides sliding, skating in figures, and making men of snow to frighten children with, by means of a lantern placed in a skull at the top of them, I now and then get a day's cock shooting when the frost breaks, or kill a few small birds in the snow. In lack of other game, a neignbour's duck, or goose, or a chicken, shot and pocketed as I sally out to the club dinner, are killed more easily than my dairymaid does it, poor things! In February, the weather being rainy or mild, renders it worth my while to send my stud into Leicestershire for hunting again; and so my white horse Skyscra per, my old everlasting chestnut Silvertail, the only good black in the hunt Sultan, and the brown mare Rosinante, together with Alfana the king of the Cocktails, a hack or two, and a poney for errands, are "pyked off" pack and baggage for Melton; and then from the first purple dawn of daylight, when I set off to cover, to the termination of the day with cards, I have plenty of rational amusement. Next month, forbearing March hares, I shoot a few snipes before they are all gone, and at night prepare my fishing tackle for April, when the verdant meadows again draw me to the riverside to angle. My wife has now rational employment for the rest of the Summer in catching and impaling the various flies of the season against my trout mania comes, which is usual early in May, when all her maids assist in this flyfowling sport. I have generally been successful in sport, but I shall never forget my disappointment VOL. I. 145 L wnen on throwing in a flyline which was not baited by myself, I found that Sally, mistaking her new employment, had baited my hook with an earwig. In June I neglected my Grass for the same sport, and often let it stand till the Hay is spoiled by Swithin, who wipes his watery eyes with what ought to be my Winter's fodder. This gives me rational, though troublesome, employment in buying Hay or passing off the old at market. July, however, affords plenty of bobfishing, as I call it, for roach, dace, perch, and bleak. I alsó gudgeon some of my neighbours, and cast a line of an evening into their carp and tench ponds. I have not, thank my stars, either stupidity or patience enough for barbel. But in August, that is before the 12th, I get my trolling tackle in order, and am reminded of my old vermin college days, when shutting my room door, as if I was "sported in" and cramming Euclid, I used to creep down to the banks of the Cam, and clapping my hands on my old rod, with his long line to him, exclaimed, in true Horatian measure, the only Latin line I ever cited in my life, Progenie longa gaudes captare Johannes. But, oh! the 12th day of August, that mountain holiday, ushered in by the ringing of the sheep bell-'tis then that, jacketed in fustian, with a gun on my shoulder, and a powder horn belted to my side, I ramble the rough highland hills in quest of blackcocks and red game, get now and then a chance shot at a ptarmagan, and once winged a Capercaille on a pine tree at Invercauld. In hurrying home for the First of September, I usually pass through the fens of Lincolnshire, and there generally kill a wild duck or two. You must know I have, besides my pointers, setters, and spaniels, water dogs of every sort. Indeed my dog establish ment would astonish Acteon. There are my harriers, Rockwood, Ringwood, Lasher, Jewler, Rallywood, and twenty more; my pointers, Ponto and Carlo; my spaniels, Dash and Old Grizzle; Hedgehog and Pompey, my water dogs. No one, I bet a crown, has better greyhounds than Fly and Dart are, nor a surer lurcher than Groveller. I say nothing of those inferior "Lares," my terriers-ratcatching Busy, Snap, and Nimbletoes, with whom, in the absense of other game, I go sometimes for a frolic to a farmhouse, disguised as a ratcatcher, and take a shilling for ferret work. But now I come to thy shrine, O lovely Septembria, thou fairest nymyh in Diana's train, with rolling blue eyes as sharp and as true as those of a signal lieutenant; I come to court thee again, and may thy path be even paved with the skulls of partridges. Again I come to dine with thee on the leveret's back or pheasant's wings. We've wildboars' bladders for wine bottles, ramshorns for corkscrews, bugles for funnels, gunpowder for snuff, smoke for tobacco, woodcock's bills for toothpicks, and shot for sugar plums! I dare not proceed to tell you how many brace of birds Ponto and I bag the first day of shooting, as the long bow, instead of the fowling piece, might be called my weapon. But enough rodomontading. I now come to October. Pheasants by all that's volatile! And then, after them, I go to my tailor and order two suits-scarlet for master Reynard, and a bottlegreen jacket for the harriers, topboots, white corderoy inexpressibles, and a velvet cap. Then when the covers ring again with the hallowed music of harriers, I begin skylarking the gates and setting into wind to follow the foxhounds in November. When The dusky night rides down the sky, And the Huntsman winds his horn. With three days in the week chace, and pretty little interludes of hunting with beagles, or of snipe shooting, I manage to get through December to the year's end. My snug Winter evenings are spent in getting ready my guns, smacking new hunting whips, or trying on new boots, while my old hal! furnishes ample store of trophies, stags' horns hunted by my great grandfather, cross bows, guns, brushes won on rivals of Pegasus, and all sorts of odd old fashioned whips, horns, and accoutrements, hanging up all round, which remind me of those days of yore when I remember the old squire and his sporting chaplain casting home on spent horses all bespattered from the chase, before I had ridden any thing but my rocking horse. There then have I rational amusement all the year round. And much and sincerely do I praise thee, O Diana! greatest Diana of the Ephesians at thy feet will I repose my old and weatherbeaten carcass at last and invoke thy St. Milburge, 7th Cent. She was sister to St. Mildred, wore a hair cloth, and built the monastery of Wenlock, in Shropshire. One day being at Stokes, a neighbouring village, brother Hierome Porter says, that " a young gallant, sonne to a prince of that countrey, was soe taken with her beautie, that he had a vehement desire to carrie her away by force and marrie her." St. Milburge fled from him and his companions till she had passed a little brook, called Corfe, which then suddenly swelled up and threatened her pursuers with destruction, wherefore they desisted. She ordered the wild geese who ate the corn of her monastic fields to be gone elsewhere, and they obeyed her as the waters did. After her death, her remains were discovered, in 1100, by two children sinking up to their knees in her grave, the dust whereof cured leprosies, restored the sight, and spoiled medical practice A diseased woman at Patton, drinking of the water wherein St. Milburge's bones were washed, there came from her stomach" a filthie worme, ugly and horrible to behold, having six feete, two hornes on his head, and two on his tayle." Brother Porter tells this, and that the 66 worme was shutt up in a hollow piece of wood, and reserved afterwards in the monasterie, as a trophie, and monument of S. Milburg, untill by the lascivious furie of him that destroyed all goodnes in England, that, with other religious houses, and monasteries, went to ruine."* Hence the "filthie worme" was lost, and we have nothing instead but the Reformation. FLORAL DIRECTORY Apricot. Prunus Armeniaca. Dedicated to St. Milburge. THE SEASON. If ice still remain let those who tempt it beware: The frost-bound rivers bear the weight Let each who crowds to see them skate For, like the world, deceitful ice Porter's Flowers of the Saiz ts STONING JEWS IN LENT.-A CUSTOM. From the sabbath before Palm-Sunday, to the last hour of the Tuesday after Easter, "the Christians were accustomed to stone and beat the Jews," and all Jews who desired to exempt themselves from the infliction of this cruelty, commuted for a payment in money. It was likewise ordained in one of the Catholic services, during Lent, that all orders of men should be prayed for except the Jews.t These usages were instituted and justified by a dreadful perversion of scripture, when rite and ceremony triumphed over truth and mercy. Humanity was dead, for superstition Molochized the heart. From the dispersion of the Jews they have lived peaceably in all nations towards all, and in all nations been persecuted, imprisoned, tortured, and put to death, or massacred by mobs. In England, kings conspired with their subjects to oppress them. To say nothing of the well-known persecutions they endured under king John, the walls of London were repa'red with the stones of their dwellings, which his barons had pillaged and destroyed. Until the reign of Henry II., a spot of ground near Red-crossstreet, in London,was the only place in all England wherein they were allowed to bury their dead. In 1262, after the citizens of London broke into their houses, plundered their property, and murdered seven hundred of them in cold blood, King Henry III. gave their ruined synagogue in Lothbury to the friars called the fathers of the sackcloth. The church of St. Olave in the Old Jewry was another of their synagogues till they were dispossessed of it: were the sufferings they endured to be recounted we should shudder. Our old English ancestors would have laughed any one to derision who urged in a Jew' behalf, that he had "eyes," or "hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections passions;" or that he was "fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christ ian is." They would have deemed a man mad had one been found with a desire to prove that the poor Jew, In corporal sufferance feels a pang as great As when a Christian dies. To say nothing of their more obvious sufferings for many centuries, the tide of public opinion raged against the Jews vehemently and incessantly. They were addressed with sneers and contumely; the finger of vulgar scorn was pointed at them; they were hunted through the streets in open day, and when protected from the extremity of violence, it was with tones and looks denoting that only a little lower hate sanctuaried their persons. In conversation and in books they were a by-word, and a jest. A work printed in 1628, for popular entertainment, entitled "A Miscellany of Seriousness with Merriment, consisting of Witty Questions, Riddles, Jests," &c. tells this story as a good joke. A sea captain on a voyage, with thirty passengers, being overtaken by a violent tempest, found it necessary to throw half of them overboard, in order to lighten the vessel. Fifteen of the passengers were Christians, and the other fifteen were Jews, but in this exigency they unanimously agreed in the captain's opinion, and that he should place the whole thirty in a circle, and throw every ninth man over till only fifteen were left. To save the Christians, the captain placed his thirty passengers in this order, viz.: four Christians, five Jews; two Christians, one Jew; three Christians, one Jew; one Christian, two Jews; two Christians, three Jews; one Christian, two Jews; two Christians, one Jew. He began to number from the first of the four Christians thus: CCCC. JJJJJ. CC. J. CCC. J. C. JJ. CC. JJJ. C. JJ. CC. J. By this device, the captain preserved all the Christians, and deeped all the Jews. Selden says, "Talk what you will of the Jews, that they are cursed, they thrive wherever they come: they are able to oblige the prince of their country by lending him money; none of them beg; they keep together; and for their being hated, my life for yours, Christians hate one another as much." This was true, but it is also true that three quarters of a century have not elasped since hatred to the Jews was a national feeling. In 1753, a bill was brought into the House of Lords for naturalizing the Jews, and relieving them from persecuting disabilities. It passed there on the ground advantage, by encouraging wealthy perthat it would operate to the pubic sons professing the Jewish religion to remove hither from foreign parts to the increase of the capital, commerce, and credit of the kingdom. The corporation. of London in common council assembled, petitioned against it on the ground that it would dishonour the christian religion, the interest and trade of the kingdom in endanger the constitution, and prejudice general, and London in particular. A body of London merchants and traders also petitioned against it. Certain popu.. lar orators predicted that if the bill passed, the Jews would multiply so fast, become so rich, and get so much power, that their persons would be revered, their customs be imitated, and Judaism become the fashionable religion; they further alleged that the bill flew in the face of prophecy, which declared that the Jews should be scattered without a country or fixed habitation till their conversion, and that in short it was the duty of Christians to be unchristian. But the bill passed the commons after violent debates, and received the royal sanction. The natior. was instantly in a ferment of horror and execration; and on the first day of the next session of parliament, ministers were constrained to bring in a bill to repeal the act of naturalization, and to the foul dishonour of the people of England at that period, the bill was repealed. From that hour to the present, the Jews have been subjected to their old pains, penalties, disqualifications, and privations. The enlightenment of this age has dispelled much of the darkness of the last. Yet the errors of public opinion then respecting the Jews, remain to be rectified now by the solemn expression of a better public opinion. Formerly, if one of the "ancient people" had said in the imploring language of the slave, "Am I not a man, and a brother?" he might have been answered, No, you are not a man, but a Jew." It is not the business of the Jews to petition for justice, but it is the duty of Christians to be just. In the "General Evening Post" of June 21, 1777, a paragraph states, tha |