Mexico, are by far the most productive; and agriculture, even in its present improveable state, yields a certain and valuable revenue. Maize flourishes in all the varieties of the Mexican temperajure; wheat and barley are cultivated on the extensive plains amidst the irregular Cordillera, and thrive most luxuriantly at elevations of from 6000 to 7000 feet. The maize is cultivated in two ways. The first and most general, called "Taparado," is by sowing in ploughed fields, which are again turned over: the other, named "Tapapê," is when it is planted at regular intervals, a square vara apart, and pressed down by the foot of the husbandman. I have seen far less standing wheat than barley, which latter occupies very extensive districts near the plains of Appan and in various other parts. The annual rains are in these places sufficient for its nourishment: but there are situations in which all the farinaceous grains require occasional irrigation; for which purpose a mountain-stream or a river is usually considered as indispensable*. No manure of any kind is used for agricultural purposes, although it could in many in many instances be most effectually employed. The time of harvest varies according to localities; but I saw barley in the sheaf near Appan, in October and November. Near the little villages, peas, beans, tonishment and elicited the praises of the neighbouring farmers, wedded as they have been to their own particular customs. If they once begin to imitate, much will have been accomplished. The Haciendas usually contain a little village, inhabited by the labourers on the labourers on the estate. The women are employed in making curd-cheeses, either for the benefit of the farm or their private consumption; but butter is rarely to be found, hogs'-lard being in most instances used in its place. The milk indeed of the cows is not of that rich quality which would be requisite for this purpose; and the heat of the climate in many of the most flourishing cattle districts is too great to admit of butter becoming solid, except during the three or four winter months. The mode of regulating rent is by the number of Fanegas* which the land could receive. It is usually paid in money, not in produce. The price of labour varies considerably, according to the situation of Haciendas. On the cattle-farms the Vaqueros, Rancheros, or herdsmen, receive about five dollars a month. The husbandman, hired by the day or week, about sevenpence English per diem. TO A LARK. For the Olio. (principally of the kind called Frijoli, Warbling songster! speed thy flight, similar to our black French beans,) varieties of Chilis or Capsicums and the Camotes or sweet potatoe, are cultivated; but coffee, cotton, indigo, Vanilla, (which at Vera Cruz was selling at 1000 pods for 150 dollars,) and other valuable productions, are chiefly reared in Oaxaca and distant districts which I did not visit. The sugar-cane, fruits, and other products of the warmer climates, are to be Through yonder boundless fields of light; To greet the coming day. In lengthen'd strains of joy prolong On all the varied scenery, found in the depths of the precipitous Glance round thy softly brilliant eye, Barrancas. But I must confess that I saw but little profusion of cultivated flowers; and still less of fruits, of which so much is said, except in the principal towns. All the agricultural implements are extremely rude, but the natives prefer them in most instances to those recently sent from England. Our ploughs are much admired, for their facility in turning up the ground to a depth the Mexican plough cannot reach, the neatness of the distribution of the crops, and the very evident improvement in the produce of many fields, has already excited the as Grain reared by this process is distinguished by the affixture of the term Riego, as Mais de Riego; Cebada de Riego. And tell the happiest spot. Ah! heedless of the coming storm, Without a care to frown: Nor mix'd with sorrow's base alloy, Thy little life is varied joy! Nor marred by endless fear: Thy lofty flight is but a change Of pleasure, for without a range, Thou'rt equal happy here. * Five Fanegas are equal to eight bushels English. But might I rise with equal wing, BALLAD, R. JARMAN. By Mrs. Cornwell Baron Wilson. I saw her when flowrets Love came with the Summer, Glow'd bright o'er her brow, And plighted her vow ! But the roses soon faded That deck'd Love's gay bowers, I saw her, when Sorrow Had blighted her cheek, When the flowers of existence Had faded away! THE MOLE CATCHER. A Village Sketch, morning, during the violet-tide-and here almost every morning I was sure to meet Isaac Bint. I think that he fixed himself the more firmly in my memory by his singular discrepancy with the beauty and cheerfulness of the scenery and the season, Isaac is a tall, lean, gloomy personage, with whom the clock of life seems to stand still. He has looked sixty-five for these last twenty years, although his dark hair and beard, and firm manly stride, almost contradict the evidence of his sunken cheeks and deeply lined forehead. The stride is awful: he hath the stalk of a ghost. His whole air and demeanour savour of one that comes from under ground. His appearance is "of the earth, earthy." His clothes, hands, and face are of the colour of the mould in which he delves. The little round traps which hang behind him over one shoulder, as well as the strings of dead moles which embellish the other, are encrusted with dirt like a tombstone: and the staff which he plunges into the little hillocks, by which he traces the course of his small quarry, returns a hollow sound, as if tapping on the lid of a coffin. Images of the church-yard come, one does not know how, with his presence. Indeed he does officiate as assistant to the sexton in his capacity of grave-digger, chosen, as it shonld seem, from a natural fitness a fine sense of congruity in good Joseph Reed, the functionary in question, who felt, without knowing why, that, of all men in the parish, Isaac Bint was best fitted to that solemn office. His remarkable gift of silence adds The Cypres Wreath. much to the impression produced by this remarkable figure. I don't think that I ever heard him speak three words in my life. An approach of that bony hand to that earthy leather cap was the greatest effort of courtesy that my daily_salutations could extort from him. For this silence Isaac has reasons good. He hath a reputation to support. His words are too precious to he wasted. Our molecatcher, ragged as he looks, is the wise man of the village, the oracle of the village inn, foresees the weather, charms away agues, tells fortune by the stars, and writes notes upon the almanacks turning and twisting about the predictions after a fashion so ingenious, that it's a moot point which is oftenest wrongIsaac Bint, or Francis Moore. In one eminent instance, our friend was, however, eminently right. He had the good luck to prophecy, before sundry witnesess -some of them sober-in the tap-room of the Bell, he then sitting, pipe in mouth, on the settle at the right hand side of the I used to meet Isaac Bint, the molecatcher every spring, when we lived at our old house, whose park-like paddock, with its finely clumped oaks and elms, and its richly timbered hedge-rows, edging into wild, rude, and solemn fir plantations, dark, and rough, and hoary, formed for so many years my constant and favorite walk. Here, especially under the great horse-chesnut, and where the bank rose high and naked above the lane, crowned only with a tuft of golden broom -here the sweetest and prettiest of wild flowers, whose very name hath a charm, grew like a carpet under one's feet, enamelling the young green grass with their white and purple blossoms, and loading the very air with their delicious fragrance-here I used to come almost every fire, whilst Jacob Frost occupied the left; he had the good fortune to foretel on New Year's Day, 1812, the downfal of Napoleon Bonaparte-a piece of soothsayership which has established his reputation, and dumbfounded all doubters and cavillers ever since; but which would certainly have been more striking if he had not annually uttered the same prediction, from the same place, from the time that the aforesaid Napoleon became first consul. But this small circumstance is entirely overlooked by Isaac and his admirers, and they believe in him, and he believes in the stars, more firmly than ever. Our mole-catcher is, as might be conjectured, an old bachelor. Your married man hath more of this world about himis less, so to say, planet-struck. A thorough old bachelor is Isaac, a contemner and maligner of the sex, a complete and decided woman-hater. Female frailty is the only subject on which he hath ever been known to dilate: he will not even charm away their agues, or tell their fortunes, and, indeed, holds them to be unworthy the notice of the stars. No woman contaminates his household. He lives on the edge of a pretty bit of woodland scenery, called the Penge, in a snug cottage of two rooms, of his own building, surrounded by a garden cribbed from the waste, well fenced with quickset, and well stocked with fruit-trees, herbs, and flowers. One large apple-tree extends over the roof-a pretty bit of colour when in blossom, contrasted with the thatch of the little dwelling, and relieved by the dark wood behind. Although the owner be solitary, his demesne is sufficient populous. A long row of beehives extends along the warmest side of the garden-for Isaac's honey is celebrated far and near; a pig occupies a commodious stye at one corner; and large flocks of ducks and geese (for which the Penge, whose glades are intersected by water, is famous) are generally waiting round a back gate leading to a spacious shed, far larger than Isaac's own cottage, which serves for their feeding and roosting-place. The great tameness of all these creatures-for the ducks and geese flutter round him the moment he approaches, and the very pig follows him like a dog-gives no equivocal testimony of the kindness of our mole-catcher's nature. A circumstance of recent occurrence puts his humanity beyond doubt. Amongst the probable causes of Isaac's dislike to women, may be reckoned the fact of his living in a female neighbourhood (for the Penge is almost peopled with duck-rearers and goose crammers of the duck and goose gender,) and being himself exceedingly unpopular amongst the fair poultry-feeders of that watery vicinity. He beat them at their own weapons; produced at Midsummer, geese fit for Michaelmas; and raised ducks so precocious, that the gardeners complained of them as forerunning their vegetable accompaniments; and "panting peas toiled after them in vain." In short, the Naiads of the Penge had the mortification to find themselves driven out of B- — market by an interloper, and that interloper a man who had no manner of right to possess any skill in an accomplishment so exclusively feminine as duck-rearing; and being no ways inferior in another female accomplishment, called scolding, to their sister nymphs of Billingsgate, they sat up a clamour and a cackle which might rival the din of their own gooseries at feedingtime, and would inevitably have frightened from the field any competitor less impenetrable than our hero. But Isaac is not a man to shrink from so small an evil as female objurgation. He stalked through it all in mute disdain—looking now at his mole-traps, and now at the stars-pretending not to hear, and very probably not hearing. At first this scorn, more provoking than any retort, only excited his enemies to fresh attacks; but one cannot be always answering another person's silence. The flame which had blazed so fiercely at last burnt itself out, and peace reigned once more in the green alleys of Penge wood. One, however, of his adversaries-his nearest neighbour-still remained silenced. un Margery Grover was a very old and poor woman, whom age and disease had bent almost to the earth; shaken by palsy, pinched by penury, and soured by misfortune-a moving bundle of misery and rags. Two conturies ago she would have been burnt for a witch; now she starved and grumbled on the parish allowance; trying to eke out a scanty subsistence by the dubious profits gained from the produce of two geese and a lame gander, once the unmolested tenants of a greenish pool, situate right between her dwelling and Isaac's, but whose watery dominion had been invaded by his flourishing colony. This was the cause of feud; and although Isaac would willingly, from a mingled sense of justice and of pity, have yielded the point to the poor old creature, especially as ponds are there almost as plentiful as blackberries, yet it was not so easy to control the habits and inclinations of their feathered subjects, who all perversely fancied that particular pool; and various accidents and skirmishes occurred, in which the ill-fed and weak birds of Margery had generally the worst of the fray. One of her early goslings was drowned—an accideut which may happen even to water-fowl; and her lame gander, a sort of pet with the poor old woman, injured in his well leg; and Margery vented curses as bitter as those of Sycorax; and Isaac, certainly the most superstitious personage in the parish-the most thorough believer in his own gifts and predictions-was fain to nail a horse-shoe on his door for the defence of his property, and to wear one of his own ague charms about his neck for his personal protection. Poor old Margery! A hard winter came; and the feeble, tottering creature shook in the frosty air like an aspen leaf; and the hovel in which she dwelt-for nothing could prevail on her to try the shelter of the workhouse-shook like herself at every blast. She was not quite alone either in the world or in her poor hut: husband, children, and grandchildren had passed away; but one young and innocent being a great grandson, the last of her descendants-remained a helpless dependent on one almost as helpless as himself. Little Harry Grover was a shrunken, stunted boy, of five years old-tattered and squalid, like his grandame, and, at first sight, presented almost as miserable a specimen of childhood, as Margery herself did of age. There was even a likeness between them; although the fierce blue eye of Margery had, in the boy, a mild appealing look, which entirely changed the whole expression of the countenance. A gentle and a peaceful boy was Harry, and, above all, a useful. It was wonderful how many ears of corn in the autumn, and sticks in the winter, his little hands could pick up! how well he could make a fire, and boil the kettle, and sweep the hearth, and cram the goslings! Never was a handier boy or a trustier; and when the united effects of cold, and age, and rheumatism confined poor Margery to her poor bed, the child continued to perform his accustomed offices-fetching the money from the vestry, buying the loaf at the baker's, keeping house, and nursing the sick woman, with a kindness and thoughtfulness, which none but those who know the careful ways to which necessity trains cottage children would deem credible; and Margery, a woman of strong passions, strong prejudices, and strong affections, who had lived in and for the desolate boy, felt the approach of death embittered by the certainty that the workhouse, always thescene of her dread and loathing, would be the only refuge for the poor orphon. Death, however, came on visibly and rapidly; and she sent for the overseer to beseech him to put Harry to board in some decent cottage; she could not die in peace until he had promised; the fear of the innocent child's being contaminated by wicked boys and godless women preyed upon her soul; she implored-she conjured. The overseer, a kind but timid man, hesitated, and was beginning a puzzled speech about the bench and the vestry, when another voice was heard from the door of the cottage. 66 'Margery,' ," said our friend Isaac, "will you trust Harry to me? I am a poor man, to be sure; but, between earning and saving, there'll be enough for me and little Harry. 'Tis as good a boy as ever liv'd, and I'll try to keep him so. Trust him to me, and I'll be a father to him. I can't say more. "God bless thee, Isaac Bint! God bless thee!" was all poor Margery could reply. They were the last words she ever spoke. And little Harry is living with our good mole-catcher, and is growing plump and rosy; and Margery's other pet, the lame gander, lives and thrives with them too. Monthly Mag. THE DEPARTED. M. THE following forcible critical remarks upon the above beautiful productions of the immortal bard of the Avon, which originally appeared in Blackwood's Magazine, we extract from a volume of Dr. Drake's recently published, entitled "Memorials of Shakspeare; or, Sketches of his Character and Geuius,' " and as these plays are decided favorites of the public, and always before them we surmise they will be received by our readers with no small degree of pleasure. Perhaps the four that may be named, as those which have been to the popular feeling of his countrymen the principal plays of their great dramatist, and which would be recognized as his master-works by philosophical criticism, are Macbeth, Othello, Hamlet and Lear. The first of these has the most entire tragic action of any of his plays. It has, throughout, one awful interest, which is begun, carried through, and concluded with the piece. This interest of the action is a perfect example of a most important dramatic unity, preserved entire. The matter of the interest is one which has always held a strong sway over human sympathy. though mingled with abhorrence, the rise and fall of ambition. Men look on the darings of this passion with strong sympathy, because it is one of their strongest inherent feelings-the aspiring of the mind through its consciousness of power shown in the highest forms of human life. But it is decidedly a historical, not a poetical interest. Shakspeare has made it poetical by two things chiefly-not the character of Macbeth, which is itself historical-but by the preternatural agencies with which the whole course of the story is involved, and by the character of Lady Macbeth. The illusion of the dagger and the sleep-walking may be added as individual circumstances, tending to give a character of imagination to the whole play The human interest of the piece is the acting of the purpose of ambition, and the fate which attends it-the high capacities of blinded desire in the soul, and the moral retribution which overrules the affairs of men. But the poetry is the intermingling of preternatural agency with the transactions of life-threads of events spun by unearthly hands-the scene of the cave, which blends unreality with real life-the preparation and cir cumstances of midnight murder-the superhuman calmness of guilt, in its elated strength, in a woman's soul-and the dreaminess of mind which is brought on those whose spirits have drunk the cup of their lust. The language of the whole is perhaps more purely tragic than that of any other of Shakspeare's plays; it is simple, chaste, and strong-rarely breaking out into fanciful expression, but a vein of imagination always running through. The language of Macbeth himself is often exceedingly beautiful. Perhaps something may be owing to national remembrances and associations; but we have observed that, in Scotland at least, Macbeth produces a deeper, a more breathless, and a more perturbing passion, in the audience, than any other drama. "If Macbeth is the most perfect in the tragic action of the story, the most perfect in tragic passion is Othello. There is nothing to determine unhappiness to the lives of the two principal persons. Their love begins auspiciously; and the renown high favour, and high character of Othello seems to promise a stability of happiness to himself and the wife of his affections. But the blood which had been scorched in the veins of his race, under the suns of Africa, bears a poison that swells up to confound the peace of the Christian marriage bed. He is jealous, and the dreadful overmastering passion which disturbs the steadfastness of his own mind, overflows upon his life and hers, and consumes them from the earth. The external action of the play is nothing-the causes of events are none; the whole interest of the story, the whole course of the action, the causes of all that happens, live all in the breast of Othello. The whole destiny of those who are to perish lies in his pas sion. Hence the high tragic character of the play-showing one false illusory passion ruling and confounding all life. All that is below tragedy in the passion' of love, is taken away at once by the awful character of Othello, for such he seems to us to be designed to be. He appears never as a lover-but at once as a husband; and the relation of his love made dignified, as it is a husband's justification of his marriage, is also dignified, as it is a soldier's relation of his stern and peri |