essential articles of food. The shepherd | every branch; in the Peninsula, the vine takes nothing with him to the field but a is cut down almost to the ground, and in little bread, a flask of wine, and a horn of winter has much the appearance of a olives; the carretiero, or carman, carries with him only his wineskin, his loaf, and olives; and the laborer in the field, and the peasant in his cottage, often have nothing more till nightfall: indeed bread and olives form an extremely nutritive and refreshing diet. with great care, and mostly by women, the inferior bunches are suffered to remain for a day to two, when they also are gathered, and manufactured into a wine of lower quality, or hung up to dry for winter consumption. PLEASURE AFTER PAIN. withered and blackened stump. With spring, however, the branches shoot out in every direction till they attain the size of a currant-bush, which, indeed, they very much resemble. Only a few of these branches are suffered to remain, and those. which are left are cut at the end to prevent The olive-tree is extremely picturesque them running into useless wood: the vine and grotesque in its form; the trunk some- thus trimmed produces from eight to a times consisting of a huge mass of decay-dozen bunches; but these are of a superior ed wood, with young and graceful branch- flavor, and make the best wines. When es springing from the top and sides; at the grapes are gathered, which is done other times a large and bushy tree may be seen supported upon two or more small fragments of the same apparently dead wood, while the remainder of the trunk is completely hollowed out. The wood burns readily when green and the leaves emit a strong sparkling flame, and apparently contain much oil. The ground between the olive-trees is not lost, being frequently sown with grain, and sometimes, though rarely, planted with vines. The deep color of the foliage of this most useful tree gives a solemn character to the landscape, E greatly admire and subdues the usual vivid brilliancy of the sentiment which color-the effect of the clearness of the the poet Dryden exatmosphere and the heat of the climate. presses in one of Green, such as adorns our own meadows, his most celebrated is a color never seen in a Portuguese landodes, "Sweet is scape: the scanty herbage, which springs. pleasure after pain." up spontaneously, is burned by the sun We have often exinto a bright straw color; and the soil, perienced its truth, through the great heat, becomes almost and are quite in love with the paradox, white. On the sides of the hills, how- that our miseries both multiply and heightever, the beautiful pale purple flower of en our enjoyments. The Creator, unthe wild thyme, and the delicate gray of doubtedly, could have prevented the enits leaf, contrast prettily with the sur-trance of evil, both physical and moral, rounding glare; and it is only the olive into our world. We can easily imagine a with its deep hues and the low bushy condition of things from which pain, in all vines which can claim the name of green. its shapes, should have been excluded. The cultivation of the orange and the We can fancy a state fair and smiling, as lemon is confined chiefly to the neighbor- we believe Eden to have been-its beauty hood of large cities, very few groves of without one marring speck, its happiness these fruits being met with in the open without a single particle of alloy. We country. can realize, in thought at least, that golden The manner of rearing the vine is some-age about which the poets have sung so what peculiar in the Peninsula. While in sweetly, and on which the mind loves to Italy, and in some parts of France, the vine gracefully curls around the poles placed in the earth for their support, and the rich fruit hangs in large bunches from linger. But in such a scene there must have been wanting one very exquisite kind of pleasure-" the pleasure after pain;" the inhabitants of such a world must have been deprived of a species of joy as high in its tone, perhaps, as any we taste. There might, in such a system of things, have been much worthy of its author, and reflective of his glory. The powers of nature might have produced as astonishing results as they do at present, and have been balanced with as exquisite skill. The stars might have shone in a firmament as deep and blue as that in whose bosom they now burn. The planets might have woven their mystic dance round a sun as vast and lustrous as that they circle now. The clouds might have been clothed in as rich a purple. The flowers might have yielded as delicious a perfume. The mountains might have reared their heads as majestically on high, the brooks prattled as merrily, and the rivers rolled as grandly to the sea. The seasons might have performed their wonted rounds; the shower and the sunshine combined their fructifying energies, and trees and herbs clothed the face of the earth. There might also have been creatures to partake of what was thus liberally provided; and earth, and air, and water, have teemed with sentient existences. There might, too, have been-the crown and ornament of the whole-a being gifted with reason and affection, capable of admiring the beauty such a system would present, and tracing the wisdom from which it sprang; qualified not only to enjoy the good, but to love and adore the Giver. This in truth-the absence of evil supposed-is but our notion of primeval paradise. In such a world, however, there would, as we have said, have been wanting that very exquisite kind of delight derived from the remembrance of pain! The power of contrast comes to our aid in the creation of this joy; contrast, indeed, is the principal element of the happiness we are speaking of. The classical reader will promptly recall the use which the hero of the Æneid made of the "pleasure after pain" principle, when he was beset with hardships and dangers. He revived his own spirit, and he cheered the drooping spirits of his companions, by adverting to the future, and intimating the probability, that the time might come when the recollection of what they were then enduring would prove a source of enjoyment. "Perhaps," exclaimed the son of the venerable Anchises, "it will one day yield us delight to remember these sufferings." We detect in the kingdom of nature emblems of the principle in question; as, indeed, all great and lovely principles have their adumbrations in nature. Earth, with its grand and beautiful scenes, was educed from an unshapely mass, "without form and void." The gold which glitters most lustrously is that which the fire has tortured into purity. There is no calm so tranquil as that which succeeds the hurricane; no sunshine so bright and gladdening as that which breaks on the earth through an April shower. Were it not for the power of variety and contrast, what joy should we have from the most delicious of the seasons? Do not the bleakness and dreariness of winter lend a charm to the beauties of the spring and the glories of summer? And do we not detect in these, and numerous other instances, the operation and the type of the sentiment we profess so warmly to admire-" sweet is pleasure after pain"? The power of the law of contrast is indeed remarkable. We know, for example, that a sweet and lovely scene never looks so attractive as when placed side by side with one which is rugged and grand; that never does a cottage home, with its blooming garden and patch of verdure around it, seem so bewitching an object as when situated at the base of some towering Alpine summit. Beauty reposing on the lap of grandeur, is an idea with which every enthusiastic admirer of fine scenery is familiar. Painters know this principle well, and in selecting subjects for their sketches, they are fond of such a combination of the beautiful and sublime as that in question. Again, in delineating character, poets and novelists avail themselves of this same law to heighten the effect of their descriptions. We have placed side by side the gentle and the stern, the timid and the brave, the intriguing and the open, the selfish and the generous: opposite qualities, in short, are placed in vivid contrast with one another, so that, just as the cottage home we have supposed looks all the more charming that it reposes at the foot of the THE CITY OF YORK. gloomy Alpine precipice, the attributes of virtue wear all the more enticing aspect when seen in immediate contrast with those of vice. Now, it is this law that comes into operation when the remembrance of former sorrows and hardships comes to heighten present joys. We look back on the past. We remember its struggles. We think of the difficulties and dangers we had to contend with, and which, happily, we have now surmounted. We contrast our present with our past condition-the bright with the gloom-and the contrast is delightful. Indeed, our joy is comparatively a tame thing apart from this retrospect. The recollection of pain lends a peculiar zest to pleasure. Health is relished far more keenly by those who have just recovered, than by those who have never lost it. The rest of the laboring man is sweetened by the remembrance of his toils. The shore is made a thousandfold dearer to the mariner when he recalls the rude buffetings of the ocean. There is much of the human heart in the lines, we know not whose they are: "I envy not the dame, whose lord They who never knew the agony of one of those partings, which Byron says "press the life from out young hearts," can never know the real joy of meeting again. Every moment of anxious expectation-every tear rushing to the eye-every sob bursting from the bosom-is silently laying up an accession to the ecstacy of the hour when those sobs shall all be stilled, and those tears kissed away. They, if in this vale of tears there be any such, whose attachment is never put to such a test, and whose hearts are never visited by such a pang, can not realize a happiness worthy of being named with that which has come bright from the furnace of anxiety and anguish. To be relieved from a state of racking suspense-to vanquish a difficulty we dared not hope we should ever be able to overcome-to be rescued from the pressure of want, or relieved from acute bodily pain-to be reconciled to one dearly loved and with whom we had quarrelled-these, and such as these, 411 whenever experienced, bring illustrations of the truth of the maxim we have been considering: "sweet is pleasure after pain." And, in connexion with higher motives to submission when we are suffering, this may help to console and encourage us, that to look back on past trials will one day be the means of heightening our joys. This thought, too, should go far to reconcile us to our present condition, and induce us to seek with ardor that purer and nobler state after which we aspire. It can not, indeed, be doubted that the recollection of the past will be one main element in future blessedness. The toils and trials of our pilgrimage will help to deepen our ecstasy when we have reached that abode where there is no pain. THE CITY OF YORK. N the Roman times, York may be said to have been, more than London, the capital of England. The Roman emperors who visited the country for the most part took up their residence at York. Here the emperor Severus died in the year 211, after having made York his headquarters during the three or four preceding years which he spent in the island. Three remarkable mounts, a little west from the city, still bear the name of the hills of Severus: and many other remains that have been discovered in later ages attest the Roman domination. After the establishment of the Saxon heptarchy, York became the capital of the kingdom of Northumberland. Although, on the arrival of the Normans, this district, like the rest of the kingdom, quietly submitted in the first instance to the invaders, it was the scene on which, soon afterward, a struggle was made by a powerful confederacy of Saxon lords and their retainers to regain their independence. This insurrection, however, was soon crushed by the activity and energy of the conqueror, who, laying siege to York, starved it into |