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 and 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-^ides, 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 epicurisrn, as spring is that of a more .refined 

 and spiritual enjoyment.^ Nature has pow bountifully 

 provided for every sense. The trees that afford a pleas- 

 ant shade, are surrounded with ap undergrowth of fruit- 



