Chapter L: S., a Warwickshire correspondent, communicates this Easter custom to (18)

A scene like this,
Would woo the care-worn wise
To moralize,
And courting lovers court to tell their bliss.

Had I a cottage here
I’d be content; for where
I have my books
I have old friends,
Whose cheering looks
Make me amends.

For coldnesses in men: and so,
With them departed long ago,
And with wild-flowers and trees
And with the living breeze,
And with the “still small voice”
Within, I would rejoice,
And converse hold, while breath
Held me, and then--come Death!

*

* * * * *

FLORAL DIRECTORY.

Blue Sowthistle. _Sonchus Cœruleus._
Dedicated to _B. Raingarda_.

[189] Mr. Nelson’s History of Islington.

[190] To Mr. Simes, bailiff of the manor, I am indebted for a sight of
this rental.

[191] Mr. Nelson’s History of Islington.

[192] Mr. Utterson’s Preface to his edition of Lord Berners’
Froissart, 2 vols. 4to.

[193] Mr. Fosbroke’s Dict. of Antiquities.

[194] Pope’s Homer.

[195] Golden Legend.

[196] Mr. Fosbroke’s Dict. of Antiquities.

[197] Strutt’s sports, from Mr. Nichol’s Progresses of Queen
Elizabeth, &c.

[198] Mr. Nelson’s History of Islington.

[199] Ibid.

[200] Hoby MSS.

~June 27.~

_St. Ladislas_ I., king of Hungary, A. D. 1095. _St. John_, of
Moutier, 6th Cent.

THE SEASON.

Mr. Howard, in his work on the weather, is of opinion, that farmers and others, who are particularly interested in being acquainted with the variations in the weather, derive considerable aid from the use of the barometer. He says, “in fact, much less of valuable fodder is spoiled by wet now than in the days of our forefathers. But there is yet room for improvement in the knowledge of our farmers on the subject of the atmosphere. It must be a subject of great satisfaction and confidence to the husbandman, to know, at the beginning of a summer, by the certain evidence of meteorological results on record, that the season, in the ordinary course of things, may be expected to be a dry and warm one; or to find, in a certain period of it, that the average quantity of rain to be expected for the month has already fallen. On the other hand, when there is reason, from the same source of information, to expect much rain, the man who has courage to begin his operations under an unfavourable sky, but with good ground to conclude, from the state of his instruments and his collateral knowledge, that a fair interval is approaching, may often be profiting by his observations; while his cautious neighbour, who waited for the weather to ‘settle,’ may find that he has let the opportunity go by. This superiority, however, is attainable by a very moderate share of application to the subject; and by the keeping of a plain diary of the barometer and raingauge with the hygrometer and the vane under his daily notice.”

* * * * *

FLORAL DIRECTORY.

Perforated St. John’s Wort. _Hypericum perforatum._
Dedicated to _St. John_.

~June 28.~

_St. Irenæus_, Bp. of Lyons, A. D. 202. _St. Leo_ II., Pope A. D. 683.
_Sts. Plutarch_ and others, Martyrs, about A. D. 202. _Sts. Potamiana_
and _Basilides_, Martyrs.

CHRONOLOGY.

1797. George Keate, F.R.S., died, aged sixty-seven. He was born at Trowbridge in Wilts, educated at Kingston school, called to the bar, abandoned the profession of the law, amused himself with his pen, and wrote several works. His chief production is the account of “Capt. Wilson’s Voyage to the Pelew Islands;” his “Sketches from Nature,” written in the manner of Sterne, are pleasing and popular.

* * * * *

FLORAL DIRECTORY.

Blue Cornflower. _Centaurea Cyanus._
Dedicated to _St. Irenæus_.

NOW,
_A hot day_.

Now the rosy- (and lazy-) fingered Aurora, issuing from her saffron house, calls up the moist vapours to surround her, and goes veiled with them as long as she can; till Phœbus, coming forth in his power, looks every thing out of the sky, and holds sharp uninterrupted empire from his throne of beams. Now the mower begins to make his sweeping cuts more slowly, and resorts oftener to the beer. Now the carter sleeps a-top of his load of hay, or plods with double slouch of shoulder, looking out with eyes winking under his shading hat, and with a hitch upward of one side of his mouth. Now the little girl at her grandmother’s cottage-door watches the coaches that go by, with her hand held up over her sunny forehead. Now labourers look well, resting in their white shirts at the doors of rural alehouses. Now an elm is fine there, with a seat under it; and horses drink out of the trough, stretching their yearning necks with loosened collars; and the traveller calls for his glass of ale, having been without one for more than ten minutes; and his horse stands wincing at the flies, giving sharp shivers of his skin, and moving to and fro his ineffectual docked tail; and now Miss Betty Wilson, the host’s daughter, comes streaming forth in a flowered gown and earrings, carrying with four of her beautiful fingers the foaming glass, for which, after the traveller has drank it, she receives with an indifferent eye, looking another way, the lawful two-pence: that is to say, unless the traveller, nodding his ruddy face, pays some gallant compliment to her before he drinks, such as “I’d rather kiss you, my dear, than the tumbler,”--or “I’ll wait for you, my love, if you’ll marry me;” upon which, if the man is good-looking and the lady in good-humour, she smiles and bites her lips, and says “Ah--men can talk fast enough;” upon which the old stage-coachman, who is buckling something near her, before he sets off, says in a hoarse voice, “So can women too for that matter,” and John Boots grins through his ragged red locks, and doats on the repartee all the day after. Now grasshoppers “fry,” as Dryden says. Now cattle stand in water, and ducks are envied. Now boots and shoes, and trees by the road side, are thick with dust; and dogs rolling in it, after issuing out of the water, into which they have been thrown to fetch sticks, come scattering horror among the legs of the spectators. Now a fellow who finds he has three miles further to go in a pair of tight shoes, is in a pretty situation. Now rooms with the sun upon them become intolerable; and the apothecary’s apprentice, with a bitterness beyond aloes, thinks of the pond he used to bathe in at school. Now men with powdered heads (especially if thick) envy those that are unpowdered, and stop to wipe them up hill, with countenances that seem to expostulate with destiny. Now boys assemble round the village pump with a ladle to it, and delight to make a forbidden splash and get wet through the shoes. Now also they make suckers of leather, and bathe all day long in rivers and ponds, and follow the fish into their cool corners, and say millions of “_my_ eyes!” at “tittlebats.” Now the bee, as he hums along, seems to be talking heavily of the heat. Now doors and brick-walls are burning to the hand; and a walled lane, with dust and broken bottles in it, near a brick-field, is a thing not to be thought of. Now a green lane, on the contrary, thick-set with hedge-row elms, and having the noise of a brook “rumbling in pebble-stone,” is one of the pleasantest things in the world. Now youths and damsels walk through hay-fields by chance; and the latter say, “ha’ done then, William;” and the overseer in the next field calls out to “let thic thear hay thear bide;” and the girls persist, merely to plague “such a frumpish old fellow.”

Now, in town, gossips talk more than ever to one another, in rooms, in doorways, and out of windows, always beginning the conversation with saying that the heat is overpowering. Now blinds are let down, and doors thrown open, and flannel waistcoats left off, and cold meat preferred to hot, and wonder expressed why tea continues so refreshing, and people delight to sliver lettuces into bowls, and apprentices water doorways with tin-canisters that lay several atoms of dust. Now the water-cart, jumbling along the middle of the streets, and jolting the showers out of its box of water, really does something. Now boys delight to have a waterpipe let out, and set it bubbling away in a tall and frothy volume. Now fruiterers’ shops and dairies look pleasant, and ices are the only things to those who can get them. Now ladies loiter in baths; and people make presents of flowers; and wine is put into ice; and the after-dinner lounger recreates his head with applications of perfumed water out of long-necked bottles. Now the lounger, who cannot resist riding his new horse, feels his boots burn him. Now buckskins are not the lawn of Cos. Now jockies, walking in great coats to lose flesh, curse inwardly. Now five fat people in a stage coach, hate the sixth fat one who is coming in, and think he has no right to be so large. Now clerks in offices do nothing, but drink soda-water and spruce-beer, and read the newspaper. Now the old clothes-man drops his solitary cry more deeply into the areas on the hot and forsaken side of the street; and bakers look vicious; and cooks are aggravated: and the steam of a tavern kitchen catches hold of one like the breath of Tartarus. Now delicate skins are beset with gnats; and boys make their sleeping companion start up, with playing a burning-glass on his hand; and blacksmiths are super-carbonated; and coblers in their stalls almost feel a wish to be transplanted; and butter is too easy to spread; and the dragoons wonder whether the Romans liked their helmets; and old ladies, with their lappets unpinned, walk along in a state of dilapidation; and the servant-maids are afraid they look vulgarly hot; and the author, who has a plate of strawberries brought him, finds that he has come to the end of his writing.--_Indicator._

* * * * *

In the “Miscellanies,” published by the Spalding Society of Antiquaries there is a poem of high feeling and strong expression against “man’s cruelty to man:”--

Why should mans high aspiring mind
Burn in him, with so proud a breath;
When all his haughty views can find
In this world, yields to death;
The fair, the brave, the vain, the wise,
The rich, the poor, and great, and small,
Are each, but worms anatomys,
To strew, his quiet hall.

Power, may make many earthly gods,
Where gold, and bribery’s guilt, prevails;
But death’s, unwelcome honest odds,
Kicks oer, the unequal scales.
The flatter’d great, may clamours raise
Of Power,--and, their own weakness hide,
But death, shall find unlooked for ways
To end the Farce of pride.--

An arrow, hurtel’d ere so high
From e’en a giant’s sinewy strength,
In time’s untraced eternity,
Goes, but a pigmy length--
Nay, whirring from the tortured string,
With all its pomp, of hurried flight,
Tis, by the Skylarks little wing,
Outmeasured, in its height.

Just so, mans boasted strength, and power,
Shall fade, before deaths lightest stroke;
Laid lower, than the meanest flower--
Whose pride, oertopt the oak.
And he, who like a blighting blast,
Dispeopled worlds, with wars alarms,
Shall be himself destroyed at last,
By poor, despised worms.

Tyrants in vain, their powers secure.
And awe slaves’ murmurs, with a frown;
But unawed death, at last is sure,
To sap the Babels down--
A stone thrown upward, to the skye,
Will quickly meet, the ground agen:
So men-gods, of earths vanity,
Shall drop at last, to men;

And power, and pomp, their all resign
Blood purchased Thrones, and banquet Halls.
Fate, waits to sack ambitions shrine
As bare, as prison walls,
Where, the poor suffering wretch bows down,
To laws, a lawless power hath past;--
And pride, and power, and King, and Clown,
Shall be death’s slaves at last.

Time, the prime minister of death,
There’s nought, can bribe his honest will
He, stops the richest Tyrants breath,
And lays, his mischief still:
Each wicked scheme for power, all stops,
With grandeurs false, and mock display,
As Eve’s shades, from high mountain tops.
Fade with the rest, away.

Death levels all things, in his march,
Nought, can resist his mighty strength;
The Pallace proud,--triumphal arch,
Shall mete, their shadows length:
The rich, the poor, one common bed,
Shall find, in the unhonoured grave,
Where weeds shall crown alike, the head,
Of Tyrant, and of Slave.

_Marvel._

~June 29.~

Holiday at the Public Offices, except Excise, Stamp, and Custom.

_St. Peter_, the Apostle. _St. Hemma_, A. D. 1045.

_St. Peter._

From this apostle the Romish church assumes to derive her authority, and appoints this his anniversary, which she splendidly celebrates. The illuminations at Rome on this day would astonish the apostle were he alive. From the account of a recent traveller, they appear to be more brilliant than an Englishman can well imagine; he witnessed them, and describes them in these words:--

“At Ave Maria we drove to the piazza of St. Peter’s. The lighting of the lanternoni, or large paper lanterns, each of which looks like a globe of ethereal fire, had been going on for an hour, and, by the time we arrived there, was nearly completed. As we passed the Ponte San Angelo, the appearance of this magnificent church, glowing in its own brightness--the millions of lights reflected in the calm waters of the Tiber, and mingling with the last golden glow of evening, so as to make the whole building seem covered with burnished gold, had a most striking and magical effect.

“Our progress was slow, being much impeded by the long line of carriages before us; but at length we arrived at the piazza of St. Peter’s, and took our station on the right of its farther extremity, so as to lose the deformity of the dark, dingy Vatican palace. The gathering shades of night rendered the illumination every moment more brilliant. The whole of this immense church--its columns, capitals, cornices, and pediments--the beautiful swell of the lofty dome, towering into heaven, the ribs converging into one point at top, surmounted by the lantern of the church, and crowned by the cross,--all were designed in lines of fire; and the vast sweep of the circling colonnades, in every rib, line, mould, cornice, and column, were resplendent in the same beautiful light.

“While we were gazing upon it, suddenly a bell chimed. On the cross of fire at the top waved a brilliant light, as if wielded by some celestial hand, and instantly ten thousand globes and stars of vivid fire seemed to roll spontaneously along the building, as if by magic; and self-kindled, it blazed in a moment into one dazzling flood of glory. Fancy herself, in her most sportive mood, could scarcely have conceived so wonderful a spectacle as the instantaneous illumination of this magnificent fabric: the agents by whom it was effected were unseen, and it seemed the work of enchantment. In the first instance, the illuminations had appeared to be complete, and one could not dream that thousands and tens of thousands of lamps were still to be illumined. Their vivid blaze harmonized beautifully with the softer, milder light of the lanternoni; while the brilliant glow of the whole illumination shed a rosy light upon the fountains, whose silver fall, and ever-playing showers, accorded well with the magic of the scene.

“Viewed from the Trinità de’ Monti, its effect was unspeakably beautiful: it seemed to be an enchanted palace hung in air, and called up by the wand of some invisible spirit. We did not, however, drive to the Trinità de’ Monti till after the exhibition of the girandola, or great fire-works from the castle of St. Angelo, which commenced by a tremendous explosion that represented the raging eruption of a volcano. Red sheets of fire seemed to blaze upwards into the glowing heavens, and then to pour down their liquid streams upon the earth. This was followed by an incessant and complicated display of every varied device that imagination could figure--one changing into another, and the beauty of the first effaced by that of the last. Hundreds of immense wheels turned round with a velocity that almost seemed as if demons were whirling them, letting fall thousands of hissing dragons, and scorpions, and fiery snakes, whose long convolutions, darting forward as far as the eye could reach in every direction, at length vanished into air. Fountains and jets of fire threw up their blazing cascades into the skies. The whole vault of heaven shone with the vivid fires, and seemed to receive into itself innumerable stars and suns, which, shooting up into it in brightness almost insufferable, vanished, like earth-born hopes. The reflection in the depth of the calm clear waters of the Tiber, was scarcely less beautiful than the spectacle itself; and the whole ended in a tremendous burst of fire, that, while it lasted, almost seemed to threaten conflagration to the world.

“The expense of the illumination of St. Peter’s, and of the girandola, when repeated two successive evenings, as they invariably are at the festival of St. Peter, is one thousand crowns; when only exhibited one night they cost seven hundred. Eighty men were employed in the instantaneous illuminations of the lamps, which to us seemed the work of enchantment: they were so posted as to be unseen.”[201]

* * * * *

Dr. Forster, in certain remarks on the excitement of the imagination, cites some “Verses by a modern poet, on an appearance beheld in the clouds,” which may aptly come after the glowing description of the illumination of St. Peter’s:--

The appearance, instantaneously disclosed,
Was of a mighty city--boldly say
A wilderness of building, sinking far
And self-withdrawn into a wondrous depth
Far sinking into splendour, without end!
Fabric it seemed of diamond and of gold,
With alabaster domes and silver spires,
And blazing terrace upon terrace, high
Uplifted; here, serene pavilions bright
In avenues disposed; there, towers begirt
With battlements, that on their restless fronts
Bore stars--illumination of all gems!
By earthly nature had the effect been wrought
Upon the dark materials of the storm
Now pacified; on them, and on the coves,
And mountain steeps and summits, whereunto
The vapours had receded--taking there
Their station under a cerulean sky.

CHRONOLOGY.

363. The emperor Julian died, aged thirty-two. He was denominated the apostate, from having professed Christianity before he ascended the throne, and afterwards relapsing to Paganism. He received his death wound in a battle with the Persians. Dr. Watkins in his “Biographical Dictionary” says, that he was virtuous and modest in his manners, and liberal in his disposition, an enemy to luxury, and averse to public amusements.

* * * * *

FLORAL DIRECTORY.

Yellow Rattle. _Rhinanthus Galli._
Dedicated to _St. Peter_.

[201] Rome in the Nineteenth Century.

~June 30.~

_St. Paul_, the Apostle. _St. Martial_, Bp. of Limoges, 3d Cent.

_St. Paul._

Paul, the apostle, was martyred, according to some accounts, on the 29th of June, in the year, 65; according to others in the month of May, 66.[202] A Romish writer fables that, before he was beheaded, he “loked vp into heuen, markynge his foreheed and his breste with the sygne of the crosse,” although that sign was an after invention; and that, “as soone as the heed was from the body,” it said “Jesus Christus fyfty tymes.”[203] Another pretends from St. Chrysostom, that “from the head of St. Paul when it was cut off there came not one drop of blood, but there ran fountains of milk;” and that “we have by tradition, that the blessed head gave three leaps, and at each of them there sprung up a fountain where the head fell: which fountains remain to this day, and are reverenced with singular devotion by all Christian Catholics.”[204] The fictions of the Romish church, and its devotions to devices, are innumerable.

* * * * *

FLORAL DIRECTORY.

Yellow Cistus. _Cistus Helianthemum._
Dedicated to _St. Paul_.

[202] Butler.

[203] Golden Legend.

[204] Ribadeneira.

Then came hot July, boiling like to fire,
That all his garments he had cast away.
Upon a lyon raging yet with ire
He boldly rode, and made him to obey:
(It was the beast that whilom did forray
The Nemæan forest, till the Amphitrionide
Him slew, and with his hide did him array:)
Behind his backe a sithe, and by his side
Under his belt he bore a sickle circling wide.

July is the seventh month of the year. According to ancient reckoning it was the fifth, and called QUINTILIS, until Mark Antony denominated it July, in compliment to Caius Cæsar, the Roman dictator, whose surname was Julius, who improved the calendar, and was born in this month.

July was called by the Saxons _hen-monath_, which probably expressed the meaning of the German word _hain_, signifying wood or trees; and hence _hen-monath_ might mean foliage month. They likewise called it _heymonath_, or _haymonth_; “because,” says Verstegan, “therein they usually mowed and made their hay harvest;” and they also denominated it _Lida-aftera_, meaning the second “Lida,” or second month after the sun’s descent.[205]

The beautiful representation preceding Spenser’s personification of July, on the preceding page, was designed and engraved by Mr. Samuel Williams, of whom it should in justice be said, that his talents have enriched the _Every-Day Book_ with most of its best illustrations.

Now comes July, and with his fervid noon
Unsinews labour. The swinkt mower sleeps;
The weary maid rakes feebly; the warm swain
Pitches his load reluctant; the faint steer,
Lashing his sides, draws sulkily along
The slow encumbered wain in midday heat.

Mr. Leigh Hunt in his _Months_, after remarking that “July is so called after Julius Cæsar, who contrived to divide his names between months and dynasties, and among his better deeds of ambition reformed the calendar,” proceeds to notice, that--“The heat is greatest in this month on account of its previous duration. The reason why it is less so in August is, that the days are then much shorter, and the influence of the sun has been gradually diminishing. The farmer is still occupied in getting the productions of the earth into his garners; but those who can avoid labour enjoy as much rest and shade as possible. There is a sense of heat and quiet all over nature. The birds are silent. The little brooks are dried up. The earth is chapped with parching. The shadows of the trees are particularly grateful, heavy, and still. The oaks, which are freshest because latest in leaf, form noble clumpy canopies, looking, as you lie under them, of a strong and emulous green against the blue sky. The traveller delights to cut across the country through the fields and the leafy lanes, where nevertheless the flints sparkle with heat. The cattle get into the shade, or stand in the water. The active and air-cutting swallows, now beginning to assemble for migration, seek their prey about the shady places, where the insects, though of differently compounded natures, ‘fleshless and bloodless,’ seem to get for coolness, as they do at other times for warmth. The sound of insects is also the only audible thing now, increasing rather than lessening the sense of quiet by its gentle contrast. The bee now and then sweeps across the ear with his gravest tone. The gnats

Their murmuring small trumpets sounden wide;

_Spenser._

and here and there the little musician of the grass touches forth his tricksy note.

The poetry of earth is never dead;
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead:
That is the grasshopper’s.

_Keats._

“Besides some of the flowers of last month, there are now candy-tufts, catchfly, columbines, egg-plant, French marygolds, lavateras, London-pride, marvel of Peru, veronicas, tuberoses, which seem born of the white rose and lily; and scarlet-beans, which though we are apt to think little of them because they furnish us with a good vegetable, are quick and beautiful growers, and in a few weeks will hang a walk or trellis with an exuberant tapestry of scarlet and green.

“The additional trees and shrubs in flower are bramble, button-wood, iteas, cistuses, climbers, and broom. Pimpernel, cockle, and fumitory, are now to be found in corn-fields, the blue-bell in wastes or by the road-sides; and the luxuriant hop is flowering.

“The fruits begin to abound and are more noticed, in proportion to the necessity for them occasioned by the summer heat. The strawberries are in their greatest quantity and perfection; and currants, gooseberries, and raspberries, have a world of juice for us, prepared, as it were, in so many crowds of little bottles, in which the sunshine has turned the dews of April into wine. The strawberry lurks about under a beautiful leaf. Currants are also extremely beautiful. A handsome bunch looks like pearls or rubies, and an imitation of it would make a most graceful ear-ring. We have seen it, when held lightly by fair fingers, present as lovely a drop, and piece of contrast, as any holding hand in a picture of Titian.

“Bulbous rooted flowers, that have almost done with their leaves, should now be taken up, and deposited in shallow wooden boxes. Mignionette should be transplanted into small pots, carnations be well attended to and supported, and auriculas kept clean from dead leaves and weeds, and in dry weather frequently watered.

“It is now the weather for bathing, a refreshment too little taken in this country, either in summer or winter. We say in winter, because with very little care in placing it near a cistern, and having a leathern pipe for it, a bath may be easily filled once or twice a week with warm water; and it is a vulgar error that the warm bath relaxes. An excess, either warm or cold, will relax; and so will any other excess: but the sole effect of the warm bath moderately taken is, that it throws off the bad humours of the body by opening and clearing the pores. As to summer bathing, a father may soon teach his children to swim, and thus perhaps might be the means of saving their lives some day or other, as well as health. Ladies also, though they cannot bathe in the open air as they do in some of the West Indian islands and other countries, by means of natural basins among the rocks, might oftener make a substitute for it at home in tepid baths. The most beautiful aspects under which Venus has been painted or sculptured, have been connected with bathing: and indeed there is perhaps no one thing that so equally contributes to the three graces of health, beauty, and good temper;--to health, in putting the body into its best state; to beauty, in clearing and tinting the skin; and to good temper, in rescuing the spirits from the irritability occasioned by those formidable personages ‘the nerves,’ which nothing else allays in so quick and entire a manner. See a lovely passage on the subject of bathing in sir Philip Sydney’s ‘Arcadia,’ where ‘Philoclea, blushing, and withall smiling, making shamefastnesse pleasant, and pleasure shamefast, tenderly moved her feet, unwonted to feel the naked ground, until the touch of the cold water made a pretty kind of shrugging come over her body, like the twinkling of the fairest among the fixed stars.’”

[205] Dr. Frank Sayers.

~July 1.~

_St. Rumbold_, Bp. A. D. 775. _Sts. Julius_ and _Aaron_. _St.
Theobald_, or _Thibault_, 11th Cent. _St. Gal I._ Bp. 5th Cent. _St.
Calais_, or _Carilephus_, A. D. 542. _St. Leonorus_, or _Lunaire_, Bp.
_St. Simeon Salus_, 6th Cent. _St. Thieri_, A. D. 533. _St. Cybar_, A.
D. 581.

CHRONOLOGY.

1690. The battle of the Boyne, fought on this day, decided the fate of James II. and the Stuart tyranny, and established William III. on the throne of the people.

* * * * *

FLORAL DIRECTORY.

Agrimony. _Agrimonia Eupatoria._
Dedicated to _St. Aaron_.

~July 2.~

_Visitation of the B. Virgin._ _Sts. Processus_ and _Martinian_, 1st
Cent. _St. Otho_, Bp. 12th Cent. _St. Monegoude_, A. D. 570. _St.
Oudoceus_, Bp. of Landaff, 6th Cent.

* * * * *

FLORAL DIRECTORY.

White Lily. _Lilium candidum._
Dedicated to the _Virgin Mary_.

_A Morning’s Walk in July._

But when mild morn, in saffron stole,
First issues from her eastern goal,
Let not my due feet fail to climb
Some breezy summit’s brow sublime,
Whence Nature’s universal face
Illumined smiles with newborn grace,
The misty streams that wind below
With silver sparkling lustre glow,
The groves and castled cliffs appear
Invested all in radiance clear;
O! every village charm beneath.
The smoke that mounts in azure wreath
O beauteous rural interchange!
The simple spire and elmy grange;
Content, indulging blissful hours,
Whistles o’er the fragrant flowers:
And cattle rous’d to pasture new,
Shake jocund from their sides the dew.[206]

[206] Ode on the Approach of Summer.

~July 3.~

_St. Phocas_, a Gardener, A. D. 303. _St. Guthagon._ _St. Gunthiern_,
a Welsh Prince, 6th Cent. _St. Bertram_, 6th Cent.

_The Bleeding Image._

On the 3d of July is annually celebrated, in Paris, in the church of St. Leu and St. Giles, a solemn office, in commemoration of a _miracle_ wrought by the blessed virgin, in la Rue aux Ours, or the street for the bears; the history of which is as follows:--In the year 1518, a soldier coming out of a tavern in this Bear-street, where he had been gambling, and losing his money and clothes, was blaspheming the name of God; and as he passed by the image of the holy virgin, standing very quietly and inoffensively at the corner of the street, he struck it, _or her_, furiously with a knife he had in his hand; on which _God permitted_, as the modern and modest tellers of this tale say, the image to bleed abundantly. The ministers of justice were informed, and the wretch was seized, conducted to the spot where he had committed the sacrilege, tied to a post, and scourged, from six o’clock in the morning till night, till his eyes dropped out; his tongue was bored with a hot iron, and his body was cast into the fire. The blessed image was transported to Rome. This was the origin of a ceremony still remembered, and which once was very curious. The zeal of the inhabitants of Bear-street was conspicuous, and their devotion to the blessed virgin not less so. At first they only made the figure of the soldier, as we in England do of Guy Faux, and threw it into the fire; by degrees the feast became more solemn, and the soldier, who had been rudely fashioned out of faggots, was at last a composition of fireworks, which, after being carried in procession through the streets of Paris, took a flight into the air, to the great joy and edification of the Parisians, particularly of Bear-street. At last, however, the magistrates wisely recollected that the streets being narrow, and the buildings numerous in that part of the city, a fire might happen, and it would then be still more miraculous if the holy image should travel from Rome to Paris to extinguish the flames: not to mention that the holy image might not at that precise moment be so plentifully supplied as on a similar occasion our friend Gulliver was. In 1744, therefore, they forbad any future fire-work soldiers, and the poor distressed inhabitants of Bear-street, were once more reduced to their man of wood, whom they continue to burn with great affection every 3d of July, after having walked him about Paris three days. This figure is now made of osier, clothed, and armed with a knife, and of so horrid an appearance, it would undoubtedly frighten women and children who did not know the story of the sacrilegious soldier; as it is, they believe they see him breathe blasphemy. Messieurs, the associated gentlemen of Bear-street, give the money formerly spent in fireworks, to make a procession to the proxy of the blessed image which now stands where the bleeding one did, and to say a solemn mass to the blessed virgin, for the souls of the defunct gentlemen, associates of Bear-street. The mummery existed under Napoleon, as appears by the preceding particulars, dated Paris, July 12, 1807, and may be seen in the _Sunday Advertiser_, of the 19th of that month.

* * * * *

On the 3d of July, 1810, a small loaf fastened by a string, was suspended from the equestrian statue at Charing-cross, to which was attached a placard, stating that it was purchased from a baker, and was extremely deficient in weight, and was one of a numerous batch. The notice concluded by simply observing, “Does this not deserve the _aid_ of parliament?” This exhibition attracted a great crowd of people, until the whole of the loaf was nearly washed away by subsequent heavy rain.

~The Dog-days.~

Sirius, or the Dog-star, is represented as in the above engraving, on a garnet gem, in lord Besborough’s collection, etched by Worlidge. The late Mr. William Butler, in his _Chronological Exercises_, says, that on this day “commence, according to the almanacs, the Canicular, or Dog-days, which are a certain number of days preceding and following the heliacal rising of Canicula, or the Dog-star, in the morning. Their beginning is usually fixed in the calendars on the 3d of July, and their termination on the 11th of August; but this is a palpable mistake, since the heliacal rising of this star does not now take place, at least in our latitude, till near the latter end of August; and in five or six thousand years more, Canicula may chance to be charged with bringing frost and snow, as it will then, owing to the precession of the equinoxes, rise in November and December.”

Dr. Hutton remarks, that some authors say, from Hippocrates and Pliny, that the day this star first rises in the morning, the sea boils, wine turns sour, dogs begin to grow mad, the bile increases and irritates, and all animals grow languid; also, “the diseases it usually occasions in men are burning fevers, hysterics, and phrensies. The Romans sacrificed a _brown dog_ every year to Canicula, at his first rising to appease his rage.”

A Cambridge contributor to the _Every-Day Book_ affirms, that, in the year 1824, an edict was issued there for all persons keeping dogs either to _muzzle_ or _tie them up_, and many a dog was tied up by the neck as a sacrifice; whether to the _Mayor_ or _Canicular_, this deponent saith not; but the act and deed gave rise to the following

JEU D’ESPRIT.

Good mister Mayor
All _dogs_ declare
The beam of justice falters!
To miss the _puppies_--sure she’s blind,
For _dogs_ they are alone consign’d
To _muzzles_ or to _halters_!

_Cambridge_,

T. N.

Mr. Brady observes, in his “Clavis Calendaria,” “That the weather in July and August is generally more sultry than at any other period of the year, and that some particular diseases are consequently at that time more to be dreaded, both to man and beast, is past dispute. The exaggerated effects of the rising of Sirius are now, however, known to be groundless; and the superior heat usually felt during the Dog-days has been more philosophically accounted for. The sun, at this period of the year, not only darts his rays almost perpendicularly upon us, and of course with greater power; but has also continued to exert his influence through the spring and summer seasons, whereby the atmosphere and earth have received a warmth, proportioned to the continuity of its action; and moisture, in itself naturally cold, has been dissipated. Even in the course of a _day_, which has been aptly typified as a _short year_, the greatest effect of the sun is generally felt at about two o’clock, although it has then passed the meridian, because by having so much longer exerted its powers, its consequent effects are more than commensurate for the diminution of heat in its rays. The cold of winter in like manner augments about the time the days begin to _increase_, and _continues_ to do so, for a considerable time after, because, at that season, the earth has become wet and chilled, from the effects of the preceding gradual _decrease of power in the sun_, although, _at that time_, when the cold is usually most severe, that orb is ascensive, and returning from the winter solstice: and our Saxon ancestors were _experimentally_ so well aware of this latter circumstance, that in the delineation on their calendars, to illustrate the characters of the months they represented February, as a man in the act of striking his arms across his body to warm himself: while there is also yet in common use a very old saying, grounded upon the like conviction, that ‘when the days lengthen, the frost is sure to strengthen.’

“The early Egyptians, whose _hieroglyphical characters_, aptly adapted by _them_ to the peculiarity of their climate and circumstances, were the principal or perhaps sole origin of all the heathenish superstitions of other nations, were taught by long observation and experience, that as soon as a particular star became visible, the _Nile_ would overflow its banks; and they accordingly upon its very first appearance retreated to their terraces, where they remained until the inundation had subsided. This star, therefore, was called by them _Sihor_, i. e. the Nile; as Σείριος is in Greek, and _Sirius_ in Latin; and from the _warning_ it afforded them, they typified it as a _dog_, or in most cases as a man with a dog’s head; that faithful animal having been, even in those times, distinguished for his peculiar qualities of watching over the affairs of man, and affording _warning_ of approaching danger. The names assigned to this star by the Egyptians was _Thaaut_, or _Tayout_, the _dog_; and in later times _Sothis_, _Thotes_, or _Thot_, each bearing the like signification; but it was left for the subsequent ignorance of those other nations who adopted that character for _Sihor_, now _Sirius_, without considering the true origin of its appellation, falsely to assign to it, the increasing heat of the season, and its consequent effects upon animated nature. The idea, however, of any such effects, either as to heat, or to disorders, from the influence of the canicular star, is now wholly exploded, from the reasons already assigned, and because ‘that star not only varies in its rising every year, as the latitude varies, but that it rises later and later every year in all latitudes;’ so that when it rises in winter, which, by the way, cannot be for five or six thousand years, it might, with equal propriety, be charged with increasing the frost: and besides, it is to be observed, that although Sirius is the nearest to the earth of any of the _fixed stars_, it is computed to be at the enormous distance of 2,200,000,000,000 miles from our globe; a space too prodigious to admit of its rays affording _any sensible heat_: and which could not be passed by a cannon-ball, flying with its calculated velocity of 480 miles in one hour, in less than 523,211 years! Upon the whole, therefore, it evidently appears, that the origin of the name of this star was not only wholly disregarded, but that common and undigested opinion made its _conjunction_ with the _sun_, the _cause_ of heat, &c. instead of having regarded it as a _sign_ of the period when such effects might naturally be expected.”

~Mad Dogs.~

_There is no cure for the bite of a mad dog_; and as at this time dogs go mad, it is proper to observe, that immediate burning out of the bitten part by caustic, or the cutting of it out by the surgeon’s knife, is the only remedy. If either burning or cutting be omitted, the bitten person, unless opiumed to death, or smothered between featherbeds, will in a few days or weeks die in unspeakable agony. The latter means are said to have been sometimes resorted to as a merciful method of extinguishing life. It is an appalling fact, that _there is no cure for hydrophobia_.

Preventive is better than cure, and in this case it is easy. Dogs, however useful in some situations, are wholly useless in towns. Exterminate them.

Against this a cry will go forth from all dog-owners: they will condemn the measure as proceeding from a barbarian; but _they_ are the barbarians who keep animals subject to a disease fatal to human life. Such persons, so far from being entitled to a voice against its execution, merit abhorrence and contempt for daring to propose that every man, woman, and child among their friends and neighbours, should run the risk of a cruel death for the gratification of selfishness. Every honest man in every town who keeps a dog, should destroy it, and use his influence with others to destroy theirs. No means of preventing _hydrophobia_ exists but the destruction of dogs.

Oh! but dogs are useful; they guard our houses at night; they go in carts and guard our goods by day; they catch our rats; and, then, they are such faithful creatures! All this, though very true, does not urge one reason against their destruction as a preventive from their communicating a fatal and wholly incurable disease. Instead of house-dogs at night, get additional watchmen, or secure watchmen more vigilant than those you have, by paying a proper price for the important services required of them, which in most places are not half requited. Instead of cart-dogs, employ boys, of whom there are scores half-starving, who would willingly take charge of carts at little more than the expense of dog-keep. If rats must be caught, cats can catch them, or they may be poisoned. Instead of cultivating the fidelity of dogs, let dog-keepers cultivate a little fidelity in themselves towards their neighbours, and do as they would be done unto, by destroying their dogs.

Oh, but would you deprive the “poor” man of his dog? Yes. The poorer he is, the less occasion he has for a dog, and the less ability he has to maintain a dog. Few poor men in towns keep dogs but for the purpose of sport of some kind; making matches to fight them, drawing badgers with them, baiting bulls with them, or otherwise brutally misemploying them.

An act of parliament, inflicting heavy penalties for keeping dogs in towns, and empowering constables, beadles, street-keepers, and others, with rewards for carrying it into effect on every dog they meet, would put an end to _hydrophobia_.

It is a common practice to kill dogs at this season in some parts of the continent, and so did our ancestors. Ben Jonson, in his “Bartholomew Fair,” speaks of “the _dog-killer_ in this month of August.” A dog-destroyer in every parish would be an important public officer. REMEMBER! _there is no cure for the bite of a mad dog_.

* * * * *

_To the Bellflower._

With drooping bells of clearest blue
Thou didst attract my childish view,
Almost resembling
The azure butterflies that flew
Where on the heath thy blossoms grew
So lightly trembling.

Where feathery fern and golden broom
Increase the sandrock cavern’s gloom
I’ve seen thee tangled,
’Mid tufts of purple heather bloom
By vain Arachne’s treacherous loom
With dewdrops spangled.

’Mid ruins tumbling to decay,
Thy flowers their heavenly hues display,
Still freshly springing,
Where pride and pomp have passed away
On mossy tomb and turret gray,
Like friendship clinging.

When glowworm lamps illume the scene
And silvery daisies dot the green,
Thy flowers revealing,
Perchance to soothe the fairy queen,
With faint sweet tones on night serene
Soft bells are pealing.

But most I love thine azure braid,
When softer flowers are all decayed,
And thou appearest
Stealing beneath the hedgerow shade,
Like joys that linger as they fade,
Whose last are dearest.

Thou art the flower of memory;
The pensive soul recalls in thee
The year’s past pleasures;
And, led by kindred thought, will flee,
Till, back to careless infancy,
The path she measures.

Beneath autumnal breezes bleak,
So faintly fair, so sadly meek,
I’ve seen thee bending,
Pale as the pale blue veins that streak
Consumption’s thin, transparent cheek,
With death hues blending.

Thou shalt be sorrow’s love and mine
The violet and the eglantine
With Spring are banished.
In Summer pinks and roses shine,
But I of thee my wreath will twine,
When these are vanished.

_May you like it._

* * * * *

FLORAL DIRECTORY.

Tried Mallow. _Malva Sylvestris._
Dedicated to _St. Phocas_.

~July 4.~

_St. Ulric_, or _Udalric_. _St. Odo_, Abp. of Canterbury, 10th Cent.
_St. Sisoes_, or _Sisoy_, A. D. 429. _St. Bertha_, 8th Cent. _St.
Finbar_, of Crimlen. _St. Bolcan_, disciple of St. Patrick.

_St. Ulric._

He was son of count Hucbald, one of the first dukes of higher Germany. He became bishop of Augsburg, and rebuilt the celebrated cathedral there, in 962, dedicating it to St. Afra, patroness of that city, and died eighty years old, in 973, on ashes laid in the form of a cross upon a floor. Customs peculiar to this day are related in these verses:--

_St. Huldryche._

Wheresoeuer Huldryche hath his place, the people there brings in
Both carpes, and pykes, and mullets fat, his fauour here to win.
Amid the church there sitteth one, and to the aultar nie,
That selleth fish, and so good cheepe, that euery man may buie:
Nor any thing he loseth here, bestowing thus his paine,
For when it hath beene offred once, ’tis brought him all againe,
That twise or thrise he selles the same vngodlinesse such gaine
Doth still bring in, and plentiously the kitchin doth maintaine.
Whence comes this same religion newe? what kind of God is this
Same Huldryche here, that so desires, and so delightes in fish?[207]

* * * * *

FLORAL DIRECTORY.

Copper Day Lily. _Hemerocallis fulva._
Dedicated to _St. Ulric_.

See! cherries here, ere cherries yet abound,
With thread so white in tempting posies ty’d,
Scatt’ring like blooming maid their glances round
With pamper’d look draw little eyes aside,
And must be bought.

_Shenstone._

This is cherry season, but it is not to me as cherry seasons were. I like a great deal that _is_, but I have an affection for what _was_. By-gone days seem to have been more fair than these; and I cannot help trying to

“catch the manners _dying_ as they _fall_.”

I have lived through the extremity of one age, into the beginning of another, and I believe a better; yet the former has been too much detracted: every thing new is not, therefore, good; nor was every thing old, bad. When I was a boy, I speak of just after the French revolution broke out, my admiration and taste were pure and natural, and one of my favourites at all times, and in cherry-time especially, was the London barrow-woman. There are no barrow-women now. They are quite “gone out,” or, rather, they have been “put down,” and by many they are not even missed. Look around; there is not one to be seen.

In those days there were _women_ on the earth; finely grown, every way well-proportioned, handsome, and in stature like Mrs. Siddons. I speak of London women. Let not the ladies of the metropolis conceive offence, if I maintain that some of their mothers, and more among their grandmothers, were taller and more robust than they. That _they_ are otherwise may not be in their eyes a misfortune; should they, however, think it so “their _schools_ are more in fault than they.” Be that as it may, I am merely stating a fact. They have declined in personal elevation, as they have increased in moral elevation.

At that time lived the London barrow-woman:--

Her hair loose curl’d, the rest tuck’d up between
Her neatly frill’d mob-cap, was scarcely seen;
A black chip-hat, peculiarly her own,
With ribbon puff’d around the small flat crown
Pinn’d to her head-dress, gave her blooming face
A jaunty openness and winning grace.

*

On her legs were “women’s blacks,” or, in dry sunny weather, as at this season, stockings of white cotton, with black high-heeled shoes, and a pair of bright sparkling buckles; tight lacing distended her hips, which were further enlarged by her flowered cotton or chintz gown being drawn through the pocket-holes to balloon out behind, and display a quilted glazed petticoat of black or pink stuff, terminating about four inches above the ancles; she wore on her bosom, which was not so confined as to injure its fullness, a light gauze or muslin kerchief. This was her full dress, as she rolled through the street, and cried--

“Round and sound,
Two-pence a pound,
Cherries! rare ripe cherries!”

“Green and ripe gooseberries! amber-berries! ripe amber-berries!” “Currants! rare ripe currants!” ending, as she began, with cherries:--

“Cherries a ha’penny a stick!
Come and pick! come and pick
Cherries! big as plums!
Who comes? who comes?”

Each side of her well-laden barrow was dressed nearly halfway along with a row of sticks having cherries tied on them. To assist in retailing her other fruit, there lay before her a “full alehouse measure” of clean pewter, and a pair of shining brass scales, with thick turn-over rims, and leaden weights, for the “real black-hearts” that dyed the white cloth they lay on with purple stains. If she had an infant, she was sometimes met with it, at a particular spot, for her to suckle. She was then a study for a painter. Her hearty caresses of her child, while she hastily sat down on the arm of her barrow, and bared her bountiful bosom to give it nourishment; the frolic with which she tickled it; the tenderness with which she looked into its young, up-turned eyes, while the bland fluid overflowed its laughing mouth; her smothering kisses upon its crowing lips after its nurture; and her loud affectionate “God bless it!” when it was carried away, were indescribably beautiful.

As the seasons changed, so her wares varied. With the “rolling year,” she rolled round to us its successive fruits; but cherry-time was the meridian of her glory. Her clear and confident cry was then listened for, in the distance, with as much anxiety to hear it, as the proclamation of a herald, in the full authority of office, was awaited in ancient times. “What can keep the barrow-woman so long?--Surely she has not gone another way!--Hush! there she is; I hear her!” These were tokens of her importance in the neighbourhood she circled; and good housewives and servant girls came to the doors, with basins and dishes, to await her approach, and make their purchases of fruit for their pies and puddings. As she slowly trundled her barrow along the pavement, what doating looks were cast upon its delicacies by boys with ever-ready appetites! How he who had nothing to lay out envied him who a halfpenny entitled to a perplexing choice amidst the tempting variety! If currants were fixed on, the question was mooted, “Which are best--red or white?” If cherries--“white hearts, or blacks?” If gooseberries--“red or yellow?” Sometimes the decision as to the comparative merits of colour was negatived by a sudden impulsive preference for “the other sort,” or “something else;” and not seldom, after these deliberations, and being “served,” arose doubts and regrets, and an application to be allowed to change “these” for “them,” and perhaps the last choice was, in the end, the least satisfactory. Indecisiveness is not peculiar to childhood; “men are but children of a larger growth,” and their “conduct of the understanding” is nearly the same.

* * * * *

Mr. George Cruikshank, whose pencil is distinguished by power of decision in every character he sketches, and whose close observation of passing manners is unrivalled by any artist of the day, has sketched the barrow-woman for the _Every-Day Book_, from his own recollection of her, aided somewhat by my own. It is engraved on wood by Mr. Henry White, and placed at the head of this article.

* * * * *

Before barrow-women quite “went out,” the poor things were sadly used. If they stopped to rest, or pitched their seat of custom where customers were likely to pass, street-keepers, authorized by orders unauthorized by law, drove them off, or beadles overthrew their fruit into the road. At last, an act of parliament made it penal to roll a wheel or keep a stand for the sale of any articles upon the pavement; and barrow-women and fruit-stalls were “put down.”

_Fruit Stalls._

These daily purveyors to the refreshment of passengers in hot weather are not wholly extinct; a few, very few, still exist by mere sufferance--no more. Upon recollection of their number, and the grateful abundance heaped upon them, I could almost exclaim, in the words of the old Scotch-woman’s epitaph--

“Such desolation in my time has been
I have an end of all perfection seen!”