CHAPTER VIII. 



A Wet February— A Good Time Coming— Sir Walter Scott— Mr. Gladstone— Death of Sir 



David Brewster. 



One swallow doesn't make a summer, says the proverb, and unless 

 one fine day (the 19th) makes a spring, we haven't for the last six 

 weeks [February 1870] and more had a single hour of a character 

 to be disassociated from one of the wettest and wildest winters 

 on record. No sooner has one storm died away, less from any 

 voluntary cessation on its part than from sheer exhaustion of its 

 forces, than, after a slushy, sludgy interregnum of brief duration, 

 it has been succeeded in every instance by another and another 

 still of equal or greater violence and fury, so that of quiet or calm 

 we have known little, and of sun or moon or stars we have seen 

 hardly the briefest glimpse since Old New Tear's Day. When 

 Foote, the incomparable comedian (Johnson said of him that " the 

 dog was irresistible "), after acquiring and dissipating several 

 fortunes, was at last lucky enough to be able to set up his carriage 

 in a more dashing style than ever, he selected as liis motto, and 

 emblematical of his career, the Avords Iterum, Iterum, Itei-umque ! 

 (Again, and Again, and Again 1) It has struck us that if the 

 Meteorological Society were to apply to the Herald's CoUe'^e for a 

 crest and armorial bearings to be displayed on Ihe title-pace of 

 their volume of " Transactions " for the first quarter of the current 

 year, we, should they do us the honour to consult us, would suggest 

 a cloud-cumulus, rain-surcharged, proper on the shield, with Aquarius 

 and the " watery " Hyades as supporters ; Eolus orderim^ •'' a fresh 

 hand to the bellows" as a crest, and the Iterum, Iterum, Iterumque 



