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FOR ARLISS'S POCKET MAGAZINE.

MR. EDITOR,-I am glad to see that you have united the utile with the dulce, in your publication. As you have very judiciously introduced into your last number a paper of the society for the employment of the indigent, and the reduction of poor's rates, I take the liberty to transmit you an extract of a letter from that eminent agriculturalist, A. Young, Esq. which will, I think convey to your readers the best illustration of the subject which I have yet seen. Your's, &c.

PHILO RUSTICUS.

"In the counties of Rutland and Lincoln the practice is to attach land to cottages, sufficient to support that number of cows which the cottagers are able to purchase; they are tenants to the chief landlords, and not sub-tenants to farmers; yet the latter are very generally friends to the system: well they may be so! for the poor-rates are next to nothing, when compared with such as are found in parishes, wherein this advantageous system is not established. In the late miuute enquiries made by the Board of Agriculture, into the state of the labouring poor throughout the kingdom, many persons were written to, who reside in the districts where this system is common; and it was found by their replies, that the practice stands the test of present distress, as well as it supported the opposite difficulties of extreme scarcity, "It is most to be regretted, that so admirable an example is not copied in every part of the kingdom. In those countries where no such practice is met with, it is very rare indeed, to meet with a labourer who has saved any money; their reliance is entirely on the parish, and their present earnings are dissipated at the ale-house. Not so in Lincolnshire: the men who wish to save their money to buy cows, and girls who desire husbands, take the same means to secure them. Sobriety, industry, and economy, are thus secured, and children are trained from their infancy to the cultivation of a garden, and attending cattle, instead of starving with unemployed spinning-wheels. No object can better deserve the attention of men of considerable landed property. If some change of management, decisive in

its nature, does not take place, poor-rates will continue to increase till they will absorb the whole landed revenue of the kingdom."

To the Editor of Arliss's Pocket Magazine.

SIR,-I have, for a long period, had it in my mind to ask, through your kind medium, one simple question of your numerous, and highly-respectable readers: I nów do myself that honour.

Will, then, Sir, any one among them have the good ness to inform me where that sweetest of rural bards, Robert Bloomfield, resides? at least, where a commu› nication would find him? I have no doubt, Sir, somebody connected with your work knows, for I very well remember seeing him named, with all due respect, in a late number thereof. He lived, as I find by his last publication, (Banks of Wye) at Shefford, in Bedfordshire, in 1813; but I fear, Sir, since that period there hath been many a rude storm of life pelting him to "adversity and scorn," according to the fate of genius in general.

Sir! Robert Bloomfield has, by the genius of his works, and, more particularly, by the man lightening

It will give us great pleasure to be able, in any manner, to forward the object of Beppo, whose private letter to us, on this subject, is not less honourable to his feelings than is the letter which we now lay before our readers. We have ourselves recently heard that Mr. Bloomfield is labouring under difficulties. Should it unfortunately be true that he is so, we trust that the public, which has received so much pleasure from his works, will hasten to place him in that situation of comfort which he so well deserves. We will personally make enquiries with respect to the truth of the report, and we request that our readers will give us all the information in their power, in order that something may be done to rescue al man of genius and worth from the iron grasp of poverty. Should the report be untrue, we are sure that Mr. Bloomfield, in consideration of the friendliness of our motives, will readily excuse us for thus bringing his name before the public.

Perhaps some of our readers may not be aware that Mr. Bloomfield is an excellent maker of that exquisitely wildtoned and poetical instrument, the Eolian Harp.-ED.

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in every part of them, endeared himself to the world, as well as delighted it; the world, therefore, Sir, have a right to know where he is, and how he fares. He is public property, and it would be an endless disgrace, to this humane and tasteful country, to let such a man as the author of "The Farmer's Boy," slip through its fingers, and die in obscurity. Let a more splendid rural genius of a sister county serve as an example to guard us against a like deplorable event.

Poor Burns!

I am but an humble individual, and perhaps a still more hunible poet; for all that, Sir, I may, if I like, be a great admirer of Robert Bloomfield: such is the case, Sir, in common, I have not the smallest doubt, with hundreds of your enlightened readers: and nothing would give me greater pleasure than being informed, that our English Theocritus" lives in a house with a roof to it; and where that house is to be found.

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I beg your pardon, Sir, for giving you so much trouble, and am, Your respectful servant, March 28th, 1819.

DETACHED THOUGHTS.

ВЕРРО.

"Popular zeal and interference, even when misdirected, is a symptom of vigour and energy in nations; those emotions and proceedings which tend to repress its ebullitions, are symptoms of senility and exhaustion: from the eruptive fever of democratic effervescence, countries recover by slight and temperate affusions of concession; but from the passive sullenness of inirritable despair there is no convalescence."

"It is surely not of useful tendency to ascribe all sorts of virtues to the successful; to embellish a Septimius Severus into a Scipio; or to saint the criminality of a Constantine. Titus, by prosecuting libellers and rewarding flatterers, has descended to posterity as a benefactor of mankind; and has buried the memory of his Syrian enormities under the chiselled marble of expensive panegyric. It is better to render praise inseparable from virtue: and to make desert the condition of immortality." A. A.R.

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