SEPTEMBER IS the month of in-gathering, when the produce of the year is warehoused for our subsistence while nature reposes during winter, and is awakened in the spring, and while she is doing her summer business, until, in the ensuing autumn, she offers to our use the provision for another year. AUTUMN is aptly termed by Dr. Drake the "Evening of the Year." At this season we may advantageously indulge with these beautiful passages from his "Evenings in Autumn." He says "Evening, when the busy scenes of our existence are withdrawn, when the sun descending leaves the world to silence, and to the soothing influence of twilight, has been ever a favorite portion of the day with the wise and good of all nations. There appears to be shed over the universal face of nature, at this period, a calmness and tranquillity, a peace and sanctity, as it were, which almost insensibly steals into the breast of man, and disposes him to solitude and meditation. He naturally compares the decline of light and animation with that which attaches to the lot of humanity; and the evening of the day, and the evening of life, become closely assimilated in his mind. "It is an association from which, where vice and guilt have not hardened the heart, the most beneficial result has been ever experienced. It is one which while it forcibly suggests to us the transient tenure of our being here, teaches us, at the same time, how we may best prepare for that which awaits us hereafter. The sun is descending, but descending, after a course of beneficence and utility, in dignity and glory, whilst all around him, as he sinks, breathes one diffusive air of blessedness and repose. It is a scene which marshals us the way we ought to go; it tells us, that after having passed the fervor and the vigor of our existence, the morning and the noon of our ap pointed pilgrimage, thus should the evening of our days set in, mild yet generous in their close, with every earthly ardor softened or subdued, and with the loveliest hues of heaven just mingling in their farewell light. "It is a scene, moreover, which almost instinctively reminds us of another world; the one we are yet inhabiting is gradually receding from our view; the shades of night are beginning to gather round our heads; we feel forsaken and alone, whilst the blessed luminary now parting from us, and yet burning with such ineffable majesty and beauty, seems about to travel into regions of interminable happiness and splendor. We follow him with a pensive and a wistful eye, and, in the vales of glory which appear to open round his setting beams, we behold mansions of everlasting peace, seats of everduring delight. It is then that our thoughts are carried forward to a Being infinitely good and great, the God and Father of us all, who, distant though he seem to be, and immeasurably beyond the power of our faculties to comprehend, we yet know is about our path, and about our bed, and careth for us all; who has prepared for those who love him scenes of unutterable joy, soenes to which, while rejoicing in the brightness of his presence, the effulgence we have faintly attempted to describe shall be but as the glimmering of a distant star." Transplant York and Battersea spring sown cabbages, to come in in November. Lettuces, leeks, endive, into trenches or warm borders. Brocoli, the last, for latest spring supply. Celery in the trenches, and endive, either in the seed beds or trenches, as the plants attain a full growth. Dig up potatoes, and clear the ground. Pull up onions, and expose them for a few days to the full sun. Cut off the stalks of artichokes, and weed between the plants. Gather, and Dry, seeds as they ripen. Hoe, rake, weed, and remove Every species of litter; and carry it to the compost heap, or reserve it for burn ing, to produce ashes for manure. September 1. FIRST DAY OF SHOOTING. A correspondent transcribes from his common-place book the following memoranda : [For the Year Book.] Setters. Wood (Athenæ Oxon.) says, that Robert Dudley, duke of Northumberland, son of the great earl of Northumberland, (temp. Eliz.)was the first person who taught a dog to sit, in order to catch partridges. Dudley must have got the idea from having seen dogs sit, and beg. Shooting Flying. Pegge (Anonymiana, cent. v. 91) relates that William Tunstall was the first person who shot flying in Derbyshire. He was paymaster-general and quarter-master general of the rebel army, and made prisoner at Preston in 1715. He was taken flying, and narrowly escaped being shot flying. He died in 1728 at Mansfieldwood-house, and was there buried. Smollett, in his Sir Launcelot Greaves, mentions it as a wonderful circumstance, that (I forget his name) had been known to shoot dead a crow that was on the wing! Shooting flying is mentioned in the British Apollo, printed in 1708, i. 534. Gent (History of Rippon, 1733) has Till Fate flies faster, and commands his stay; Death! Death spares nor Rank, nor Sex, nor Young, Nor can a Form bribe off his fastʼning hold. Till Death arresting his swift flight invades ; The Charge of Death o'ertakes them with surprise. Nor scapes the Lark that serenades the Sun, Gent annexes to these lines a print of Americans say, a shooter,) shooting-birds BIRDING Archery was most successfully used in bird-killing. The perfection of a sportsman was to strike the bill of the bird once with the arrow, so as not to wound the body. A short thick arrow with a broad flat end, used to kill birds without piercing, by the mere force of the blow, was called a bird-bolt.* After the invention of fire arms the first fowling-piece was the "demi-hag," or, "hag but," a corruption of "haquebut," signifying the harquebuse, which is specifically named as used for fowling in 1585; its barrel was about three quarters of a yard long, and it discharged not only bullets but bail-shot. So early as 1548, a bill was passed to regulate shooting with hand-guns, and hail shot.† Grouse were usually taken by hawking and netting, until shooting flying was introduced, which is said by Mr. Fosbroke to have been in 1725. The communication of J. M. refers to shooting flying, as practised several years earlier. In 1727 there was a poem published in octavo, "Ptery-plegia, or the Art of entitled Shooting-flying, by Mr. Markland.” lition. He always preferred his caprices to his interests; or, according to his own notion, very ingenious, but not a little absurd," he was always of the humor of preferring the state of his mind to that of his fortune." The result of this principle of moral conduct was, that a man of the most admirable abilities was perpetually acting like a fool, and, with a warm attachment to virtue, was the frailest of human beings. In the first act of his life we find the seed that developed itself in the succeeding ones. His uncle could not endure a hero for his heir; but Steele had seen a marching regiment; a sufficient reason with him to enlist as a private in the horse-guards: cocking his hat, and put ting on a broad sword, jack boots, and shoulder belt, with the most generous feelings he forfeited a very good estate.-At length ensign Steele's frank temper and wit conciliated esteem, and extorted admiration, and the ensign became a favorite leader in all the dissipations of the town. All these were the ebullitions of genius, which had not yet received a legitimate direction. Amidst these orgies, however, it was often pensive, and forming itself; for it was in the height of these irregularities that Steele composed his "Christian Hero," a moral and religious treatise, which the contritions of every morning dictated, and to which the disorders of every evening added another penitential page. Perhaps the genius of Steele was never so ardent and so pure as at this period; and in an elegant letter to his commander, the celebrated lord Cutts, he gives an interesting account of the origin of this production, which none but one deeply imbued with its feelings could have experienced. "Tower Guard, March 23, 1701. "My Lord, "The address of the following papers is so very much due to your lordship, that they are but a mere report of what has passed upon my guard to my commander; for they were writ upon duty, when the mind was perfectly disengaged, and at leisure, in the silent watch of the night, to run over the busy dream of the day; and the vigilance which obliges us to suppose an enemy always near us has awakened a sense that there is a restless and subtle one which constantly attends our steps, and meditates our ruin.*" Mr. Nichols's "Epistolary correspon dence of Sir Richard Steele," vol. I p. 77. To this solemn and monitory work he prefixed his name, from this honorable motive, that it might serve as "a standing testimony against himself, and make him ashamed of understanding, and seeming to feel what was virtuous, and living so quite contrary a life." Do we not think that no one less than a saint is speaking to us? And yet he is still nothing more than ensign Steele! He tells us that this grave work made him considered, who had been no undelightful companion, as a disagreeable fellow-and "The Christian Hero," by his own words, appears to have fought off several fool-hardy geniuses who were for "trying their valor on him," Thus "The Christian hero," finding himself slighted by his loose companions, sat down and composed a most laughable comedy, "The Funeral ;" and, with all the frankness of a man who cares not to hide his motives, he tells us, that after his religious work he wrote the comedy because "nothing can make the town so fond of a man as a successful play." The historian who had to record such strange events, following close on each other, of an author publishing a book of piety and a farce, could never have discovered the secret motive of the versatile author; for what author had ever such honest openness of disposition? Steele was now at once a man of the town and its censor, and wrote lively essays on the follies of the day in an enormous black peruke which cost him fifty guineas! He built an elegant villa, but, as he was always inculcating economy, he dates from "The Hovel. He detected the fallacy of the South-sea scheme, while he himself invented projects neither inferior in magnificence nor in misery. He even turned alchemist, and wanted to coin gold, merely to distribute it. The most striking incident in the life of this man of volition was his sudden marriage with a young lady who had attended on his first wife's funeral-struck by her angelical beauty, if we trust to his raptures. this sage, who would have written so well on the choice of a wife, united himself to a character the most uucongenial to his own; cold, reserved, and most anxiously prudent in her attention to money, she Yet Steele has given a delightful piece of selfbiography, towards the end of his " Apology for himself and his writings," p. 80, 4. was of a temper which every day grew worse by the perpetual imprudence and thoughtlessness of his own. He calls her "Prue," in fondness and reproach; she was prudery itself! His adoration was permanent, and so were his complaints; and they never parted but with bickerings: -yet he could not suffer her absence, for he was writing to her three or four passionate notes in a day, which are dated from his office, or his bookseller's, or from some friend's house-he has rose in the midst of dinner to dispatch a line to " Prue," to assure her of his affection since noon. "Prue" used poor Steele at times very ill; indeed Steele seems to have conceived that his warm affections were all she required, for lady Steele was usually left whole days in solitude, and frequently in want of a guinea, when Steele could not raise one. He, however, sometimes remonstrates with her very feelingly. The following note is an instance: "Dear Wife, "I have been in great pain of body and mind since I came out. You are extremely cruel to a generous nature, which has a tenderness for you that renders your least dishumour insupportably afflicting. After short starts of passion, not to be inclined to reconciliation, is what is against all rules of Christianity and justice. When I come home, I beg to be kindly received; or this will have as ill an effect upon my fortune as on my mind and body. " In a postscript to another billet, he thus sneers at lady Steele's excessive attention to money. "Your man Sam owes me three pence, which must be deducted in the account between you and me; therefore, pray take care to get it in, or stop it. Such despatches as the following were sent off three or four times in a day. "It is a strange thing, because you are handsome, that you will not behave yourself with the obedience that people of worst features do but that I must be always giving you an account of every trifle and minute of my time. I send this to tell you I am waiting to be sent for again when my lord Wharton is stirring." Yet Steele, gifted at all times with the susceptibility of genius, was exercising the finest feelings of the heart; the same generosity of temper which deluded his judgment, and invigorated his passions, rendered him a tender and pathetic dramatist; a most fertile essayist; a patriot without private views; an enemy whose resentment died away in raillery, and a friend who could warmly press the hand that chastised him. Whether in administration, or expelled the house—whether affluent, or flying from his creditors-in the fulness of his heart he perhaps secured his own happiness, and lived on, like some wits, extempore. But such men, with all their virtues and all their genius, live only for themselves; they are not links in the golden chain of society. Steele, in the waste of his splendid talents, had raised sudden enmities and transient friendships. The world uses such men as eastern travellers do fountains; they drink their waters, and, when their thirst is appeased-turn their backs on them! Steele lived to be forgotten. He opened his career with folly; he hurried through it in a tumult of existence; and he closed it by an involuntary exile, amidst the wrecks of his fortune and his mind.* "I beg of you not to be impatient though September 1.-Day breaks an hour before you see Your obliged husband, Sun rises sets h. m. 3 6 Twilight ends Game first in season. September 2. LONDON BURNT, Sept. 2, 1666. Particulars of this memorable devastation are in the Every-Day Book. In 1831, an inscription charging the conflagration upon the Catholics was erased from the Monument, pursuant to a vote of the court of Common Council of London. Calamities of Authors, ii. 161. |