"Where are the advantages beyond the means, first, of mere sub- IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL, II. LONDON: PRINTED FOR LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS, PATERNOSTER-ROW. 1842. FOREST LIFE. CHAPTER XXX. "The friendly shade Shuts out the world's bright glare." OUR friend Mr. Hay has a noble farm. His cleared and cultivated acres may be counted by hundreds, and his "stock" of all kinds will far outnumber them. A wide tract of forest land hems in his clearing, and this too calls him master. He is wont to boast that he has more land enclosed within a ring-fence than any man in the county; and he boasts still louder that it is all the fruit of his own industry; and, loudest of all, that it has never made him proud. He maintains, and insists upon his family's maintaining, the simplicity of habits and manners that is usual in the neighbourhood, and watches with jealous eye every tendency towards an imitation of those who attempt He goes daily fashion and style among us. into the field with his men, and his wife and daughters spin and wear wool and flax of home production. No imported luxury graces their daily table. Mrs. Hay, to be sure, has her tea, but she has it in the afternoon, before the family supper; and the sugar (for the few who like "sweet'nin'" in their tea) comes from no further off than the farm "sugar-bush." Notwithstanding these strict sumptuary laws, however, no family lives in greater comfort and abundance. Mr. Hay's house is large enough to make a respectable figure any where, though it lacks as yet the beautifying aid of the paintbrush. His barn would make a hotel of tolerable dimensions, and the various outhouses and sheds, and coops and pens, that cluster round it, make passing travellers fancy they are coming upon a rising village in the deep woods. A fine young orchard adorns the sloping bank behind the house; whole |