582 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OE SCIENCE, 



" You and you are sure together 

 As the winter to foul weather." 



As You Like It, Y., 'j. 



It is only luxurious ages and persons who can expose themselves to the 

 weather only when and how they like, and come in to a comfortable home when 

 sufficiently "braced," who can like winter. 



The opinion is often expressed that the climate of these islands, and indeed 

 of western Europe altogether, has undergone a change for the worse during the 

 last two or three centuries. Even if our average temperature has not decreased, 

 or our mean rain-fall — or rather number of wet days — been augmented, we have, 

 men say, a less prospect of warmth, and dryness, and calm coming when they are 

 wanted,— that is, from the blooming of the wheat to the ingathering of the vari- 

 ous crops. True, we have had, since 1870, great store of unseasonable weather, 

 among which 1879 holds a memorably evil pre-eminence. But let us listen to the 

 following passage : 



' ' Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain. 

 As in revenge, have sucked up from the sea 

 Contagious fogs ; which falling on the land 

 Have every pelting river made so proud 

 That they have overborne thejr continents ; 

 The ox hath therefore stretched his yoke in vain. 

 The ploughman lost his sweat, and the green corn 

 Hath rotted ere its youth attained a beard. 

 The fold stands empty in the drowned field, 

 And crows are fatted with the murrain flock. 

 The nine men's morris is filled up with mud, 



x\nd the quaint mazes in the wanton green, ' 



For lack of tread are undistinguishable. 

 The human mortals want their winter cheer. 

 No night is now with hymn or carol blest ; 

 Therefore the moon, tlie governess of floods. 

 Pale in her anger, washes all the air 

 That rheumatic diseases do abound. 

 And through this distemperature we see 

 The seasons alter; hoary-headed frosts 

 Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose ; 

 And on old Hyem's chin and icy crown 

 An od'rous chaplet of sweet summer buds 

 Is as in mockery set. The spring, the summer, 

 The chiding autumn, angry winter change 

 Their wonted liveries, and th' amazed world 

 By their inverse now knows not which is which." 



Midsummer Nighfs Dream, Act II., Sc. 2. 



