of the young flowers, and breathing the breath of life into birds and insects, it may appear melancholy to follow them to their graves in the great funeral procession of autumn; but in the beautiful provisions of our system there is in reality no such thing as death. Nature's great business is reproduction; and as she works always upon the same materials, spirit and matter, life and extinction, one organisation and another, are perpetually interchanging substances and natures without any annihilation of either. With all due deference to Shakspeare, "Imperial Cæsar dead and turned to clay" might be converted to nobler purposes than those which Hamlet has assigned; for there is no product or element of Nature with which he may not have become renewed and blended under the vivifying and mysterious mouldings of her hand

"The leprous corpse, touch'd by this spirit tender,
Exhales itself in flowers of gentle breath;
Like incarnations of the stars when splendour
Is changed to fragrance, they illumine death,
And mock the merry worm that wakes beneath :

Nought we know dies. Shall that alone which knows,
Be as a sword consumed before the sheath

By sightless lightning?".

If Pythagoras had limited his system of transmigration to the body instead of the soul, he would not have been very remote from the truth; for he might have drawn from Nature abundant analogy for his

theory. The rains that fall to reascend in sap are but so much future leaves and flowers; wine is simply bottled sunshine and showers; corruption puts on incorruption, and even yonder dunghill, which has already passed through various stages of incarnation, is destined to others in the ceaseless round of reproduction, and changing into beauty, fragrance, and life, shall either be converted into tulips and roses, flutter in the air in the form of butterflies and moths, or reassuming a vegetable being, become again incorporated with men, beasts, or birds.

Never proposing to myself any definite object in my rural rambles, I know not whither they will conduct me, sometimes strolling to the uplands, at another roaming along the valleys, and not unfrequently exemplifying the " scriptorum chorus omnis amat nemus" of Horace by plunging into the woods, and exclaiming as I stretch myself beneath the trees

"Here let me, careless and unthoughtful lying,
Hear the soft winds above me flying,

With all the wanton boughs dispute,

And the more tuneful birds to both replying;
Nor be myself, too, mute."

It is exactly the same in writing. I begin with one intention, and end with another; start for Cornwall, and am carried away by some freak of the pen to Harwich or the Highlands. The dunghill which I just now introduced by way of illustration has occasioned a new subject to shoot up in my imagination, and determined me to write a profound essay on the very interesting subject of manure! Not that I mean to be

stercoraceous and agrestick, as if I were inditing for the Farmer's Journal;-no, I shall endeavour, like Virgil, "to toss my dung about with an air of dignity,” in which I have the better chance of succeeding, inasmuch as the material upon which I am about to dilate is no fat and filthy compost, but a curious and cleanly powder. Very few are probably aware that there is every year a considerable importation of bones from the Continent, which are crushed and used for manure; many an English farmer thus realizing towards his continental neighbours the well-known threat of the Giant to little Jack and his companions"I'll grind their bones to make me bread," and affording at the same time a new and more striking illustration of that system of reproduction from old materials to which I have already alluded. Residing upon the eastern coast, and farming a considerable extent of country, I have made repeated and careful experiments with this manure; and as the mode of burial in many parts of the Continent divides the different classes into appropriated portions of the churchyard, I have been enabled, by a little bribery to sextons and charnel-house men, to obtain specimens of every rank and character, and to ascertain with precision their separate qualities and results for the purposes of the farmer, botanist, or common nurseryman. These it is my purpose to communicate to the reader, who may depend upon the caution with which the different tests were applied, as well as upon the fidelity with which they are reported.

A few cartloads of citizen's bones gave me a luxu

riant growth of London pride, plums, Sibthorpia or base money-wort, mud-wort, bladder-wort, and mushrooms; but for laburnum or golden chain I was obliged to select a lord mayor. Hospital bones supplied me with cyclamen in any quantity, which I intermixed with a few seeds from the Cyclades Islands, and the scurvy-grass came up spontaneously; while manure from different fields of battle proved extremely favourable to the hæmanthus or blood-flower, the trumpetflower and laurel, as well as to widow-wail and cypress. A few sample sculls from the poet's corner of a German abbey furnished poet's cassia, grass of Parnassus, and bays in about equal quantities, with wormwood, crab, thistle, stinging-nettle, prickly holly, teazel, and loose-strife. Courtiers and ministers, when converted into manure, secured an ample return of jackin-a-box, service-apples, climbers, supplejacks, parasite plants, and that species of sun-flower which invariably turns to the rising luminary. Nabobs form a capital compost for hepatica, liver-wort, spleen-wort, hips, and pine; and from those who had three or four stars at the India House I raised some particularly fine China asters. A good show of adonis, narcissus, jessamine, cockscomb, dandelion, monkey-flower, and buckthorn, may be obtained from dandies, although they are apt to encumber the ground with tickweed; while a good drilling with dandisettes is essential to those beds in which you wish to raise Venus's looking-glass, Venus's catchfly, columbines, and love-apples. A single dressing of jockies will ensure you a quick return of horsemint, veronica or speedwell, and colt's-foot; and a

very slight layer of critics suffices for a good thick spread of scorpion senna, viper's bugloss, serpent's tongue, poison-nut, nightshade, and hellebore. If you are fond of raising stocks, manure your beds with jobbers; wine-merchants form the most congenial stimulant for sloes, fortune-hunters for the marygold and golden-rod, and drunkards for Canary wines, mad-wort and horehound. Failing in repeated attempts to raise the chaste tree from the bones of nuns, which gave me nothing but liquorice-root, I applied those of a dairy-maid, and not only succeeded perfectly in my object, but obtained a good crop of butter-wort, milk-wort, and heart's ease. I was equally unsuccessful in raising any sage, honesty, or everlasting from monks; but they yielded a plentiful bed of monk's hood, jesuit's bark, medlars, and cardinal flowers. My importation of shoemakers was unfortunately too scanty to try their effect upon a large scale, but I contrived to procure from them two or three ladies' slippers. As schoolboys are raised by birch, it may be hardly necessary to mention, that when reduced to manure they return the compliment; but it may be useful to make known as widely as possible, that dancing-masters supply the best hops and capers, besides quickening the growth of the citharexylum or fiddle-wood. For your mimosas or sensitive plants there is nothing better than a layer of novel-readers, and you may use up the first bad author that you can disinter for all the poppies you may require. Coffee-house waiters will keep you supplied in cummin; chronologists furnish the best dates, post-office men serve well for