deeply."-"To paint the manners and occupations of rural life," said he again, "the mind, or at least my mind, must enjoy tranquillity." Bloomfield pines;-and General Delancey enjoys two thousand a year!

CHAPTER IV.

THERE is no occupation so fascinating to the imagination, as that of the shepherd. This chiefly arises from the simplicity with which shepherds are introduced as actors on the theatre of scripture; where allusions to patriarchal manners are so frequently occurring. It is a mode of life, which, in some climates, must indeed be highly delightful.

Come hither, come hither,-by night and by day,
We revel in pleasures, that never are gone:
Like the waves of the summer, as one dies away,
Another as sweet and as shining comes on.

Moore.

Job had 7000 sheep; 3000 camels; 500 yoke of oxen; and 500 she-asses1: and these were doubled at the end of his trial. He was the greatest proprietor in all the East. Jacob, too, must have had large flocks and herds3; since he sent to his brother Esau, as a peace-offering, no less than 200 she-goats and 20 he-goats; 200 ewes and 20 rams; 30 milch camels, with their colts; 40 cows; 10 bulls; 20 she-asses, and 10 foals.

Moses kept sheep on Mount Horeb : he had fled

'Ch i. v. 3.

2 Ch. xlii. v. 12.

Gen. xxxii. v. 14.

from before Pharaoh, and was sitting by the side of a well, when the daughters of Midian came to draw water for their father's flock. When they arrived at the well, the neighbouring shepherds came to drive them away: but Moses stood up and assisted them. When these young maids returned to their father's house, they told him of the assistance they had received from Moses. Upon hearing this, Jethro invited the Egyptian exile to his board; married him to his daughter Zipporah; and gave him charge of all his flocks. These flocks Moses kept on Mount Horeb; where the God of the Israelites appeared to him in a burning bush; and where he received the command to deliver the children of Israel from the bondage, beneath which they laboured in the land of Egypt.

race.

II.

Homer calls kings shepherds of the people; and the Messiah is represented as the shepherd of the human "Tell me, oh thou, whom my soul loveth, where thou feedest; where thou makest thy flock to rest at noon? If thou know not, thou fairest among women, go thy way forth by the footsteps of the flock, and feed thy kids beside the shepherds' tents'." In Isaiah, "Jehovah in his goodness shall feed his flock like a shepherd; he shall gather the lambs with his arm; carry them in his bosom; and gently lead those that are with young." In the Psalms 3, the royal poet exclaims, "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want: he maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside the still waters.

1 Song of Solomon, ch. i. v. 7, 8.
3 Ps. xxiii, 1, 2.

2 Ch. xl. v. 11.

He restoreth my soul." In Ezekiel the prophet reproves bad shepherds. These are represented as feeding themselves, and giving no food to their flocks: as clothing themselves with their wool; as neglecting the sick; neither binding up the wounds of those that are injured; nor searching for those that are lost. In St. Matthew1, "When the Son of Man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory; and before him shall be gathered all nations; and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats. And he shall set the sheep on his right hand; but the goats on his left."

The following passage, too, occurs in Mrs. Barbauld's admirable Hymns for Children. Thus the association begins in the earliest period of life.

"Behold the shepherd of the flock, he taketh care for his sheep, he leadeth them among clear brooks, he guideth them to fresh pasture; if the young lambs are weary, he carrieth them in his arms; if they wander, he bringeth them back.

"But who is the shepherd's Shepherd? who taketh care for him? who guideth him in the path he should go? and, if he wander, who shall bring him back?

"God is the shepherd's Shepherd. He is the Shepherd over all; he taketh care for all; the whole earth is his. fold; we are all his flock; and every herb, and every green field is the pasture, which he hath prepared for us.

"God is our Shepherd, therefore we will follow him; God is our father, therefore we will love him; God is our king, therefore we will obey him.”

1 Ch. xxv. 31,

III.

In the earlier ages of Greece, shepherds were held in great esteem. Their names were given to Mounts Citharon and the Caucasus: and in Egypt that of the shepherd, Philistis, was given to one of the pyramids. Homer has many allusions to this agreeable life. In one place he compares a general marshalling his army, to a shepherd gathering his flock': in another, the clamour of a multitude to the bleating of sheep, standing to be milked and in a third passage a general, surveying his troops, to the delight of a shepherd leading his flock to the mountains3. Similar passages occur in Tasso, in Ariosto, and in Camöens.

Boccalini has frequently illustrated his subjects by references to flocks and herds. In one instance he makes sheep and shepherds illustrate the maxim, that the best means to make nations quiet, humble, and obedient, is to afford them all possible opportunities of becoming rich1. In another he draws a moral from the circumstance of the sheep having sent ambassadors to Apollo to request being allowed long horns and sharp teeth. And in a third advertisement he makes Apollo declare, that he loved husbandmen and shepherds far better than nobility.

The Afghauns are stated to be extremely partial to a pastoral life. They enter upon it, says an accomplished traveller, with pleasure, and abandon it with regret.

? Il. book iv.

1 Il. book ii. * Adv. from Parnassus, lxvii.

5 Adv. lxxxviii.

6

3 Il. book xiii.

E. of Monmouth, p. 84. Ed. 1674.
Adv. xcii.
T Elphinstone.

The shepherds are emancipated from control; a few families, closely connected by blood and interest, associate together; and they require no magistrate. Feeling the charms of independence, they lead a life of ease. Their flocks supply them with almost every thing they want; and the frequent change of scene, with hunting and guarding their flocks, gives variety to their lives, and affords relief from the listlessness of monotony.

IV.

The Guanchos of the Canary Islands have a curious opinion, in respect to the efficacy of the bleating of lambs and sheep1: when they want rain, therefore, they collect their flocks into one spot. Then they separate the lambs from the ewes; upon which both set up a violent bleating, which the Guanchos imagine will induce the Deity to favour them with rain.

The Murtats of the Crimea keep numerous flocks of goats; while the Coriacs, wandering along the north-east sea of Okotska, devote themselves to the pasturing and breeding of deer. Some chiefs have not less than 5000. The sheep of Zaara, in the states of Tunis, are as large as fallow deer in Zetland and in Zealand the shepherds pull the wool from them, instead of shearing; believing that practice to be the better method of making it grow of a fine quality. In Japan there is neither a sheep nor a goat. In the Taurida, they are, on the contrary, so numerous, that flocks extend even to 50,000: and he is but a common proprietor, who has a flock of only 1000.