The weather of the week has been disastrous, and if
it continues even a little longer, the harvest, which it had been hoped would reach, at least, an average, will be nearly or quite as bad as those of some recent years. Ireland, whose harvest till lately promised to be overflowing, is deluged with rain ; Scotland, where the prospects have all along been worst, is deluged with rain ; and even in the South of England, another week's rain will cause the most serious and heavy losses. " Depression after depression " follow one another across the Atlantic, and depression after depression follow each other in the hearts of the poor British and Irish farmers, who see all their hopes of better things vanishing rapidly away. The Archbishop of Canterbury has put out a prayer for good weather, and perhaps, as the late Professor Conington once said in these columns, it is better to pray than to fret. Still, the Archbishop might, we think, have recognised in his prayer the obvious possibility that the very thing which may be best for us is this renewed experience of calamity and disappointment, and have made that reserve in his somewhat too peremptory prayer.
