2 2O July Processions for Rain. 



breaking into several different channels, of which not 

 one is navigable ; whilst the occasional trees along the 

 banks are too far from the water to get the slightest 

 benefit from it, and their foliage is burnt to the sem- 

 blance of a premature autumn. The most important 

 affluents in such a time often cease to flow altogether, 

 and consist of nothing but a long series of stagnant 

 pools, which infect the air, with hot stones or baked 

 mud between them. At such a time the great bridges 

 seem nothing but lines of useless arches built long ago 

 for some forgotten purpose. Leaves wither, flowers 

 fade, the pastures are scorched, and animals droop and 

 languish. Yet, even here, might the art of a true 

 landscape-painter find motives, like that of the poet, 

 in the very desolation of the persistent sunshine, which 

 has its own melancholy like the gloom of the north, 

 and, like it, cannot be borne without resignation. The 

 starving herds resign themselves to a condition of Na- 

 ture beyond their power to alter ; the peasants go to 

 the priests and ask them to pray for rain, or get up 

 some procession. At length, in some ancient city, the 

 cathedral doors are opened wide, and out of the cool 

 pleasant gloom within comes forth into the fierce heat 

 of an August afternoon a mitred bishop, all gleaming 

 with gold and jewels, behind a heavy shrine carried on 

 eight priests' shoulders, with little windows in its gilded 

 sides, through which you may see the brown bones 

 of a saint who died long ago, and a long procession 

 winds slowly chanting about the quaint old streets. 

 Then the evening comes with its short twilight, and the 



