JULY. 175 



nature is indulging a languid repose, faint and ex 

 hausted with the sultry heats of July. 



As June was peculiarly the month of music and 

 flowers, July is the harvest month of the early fruits ; 

 and though the man of feeling would prefer the last 

 month, the present certainly offers the most attractions 

 to the epicure. Strawberries are in their ripest abun 

 dance, and fill the air with fragrance even more delicious 

 than their fruit. While these are becoming scarce, the 

 raspberry bushes that embroider the walls arid fences, 

 hang out their ripe red clusters of berries, where the 

 wild rose and the elder flower scent the air with their 

 healthful fragrance. The rocks and precipices, so lately 

 crowned with the early flowers, are beautifully festooned 

 with thimbleberries, that spring out in tufts from their 

 mossy crevices, half covered with green umbrageous 

 ferns. Ripe fruits hang in abundance from the bram 

 bles that creep over the green hill-sides, like so many 

 garlands of beads around the bosom of nature, and 

 there is no spot so barren, that it is not covered with 

 something that is beautiful to the sight, or grateful to 

 the sense. The little bell-flowers, that hung in profu 

 sion from the low blueberry bushes, whose beauty and 

 fragrance we so lately admired, are transformed into 

 azure fruits, that rival the flowers in elegance. Nature 

 seems to be inviting all her children to partake of the 

 pleasures of sense, and would convert us all into epi 

 cures, by changing into delicious fruits, those beautiful 

 things we contemplated, so lately, with a tender senti 

 ment, allied to that of love. Summer is surely the sea 

 son of epicurism, as spring is that of a more refined 

 and spiritual enjoyment. Nature has now bountifully 

 provided for every sense. The trees that afford a pleas 

 ant shade, are surrounded with an undergrowth of fruit- 



