CHAPTER XXXIII. 



A non-'*vLaughing " Summer — Rheumatic Pains— Old Gaelic Incantation for Cattle Ailments. 



The best thing, perhaps, that can he said of our summer up to this 

 date [July 1872], is that it has, upon the whole, been amiable and 

 summer-like ; has, after the manner of a love-lorn maiden, wept 

 much and often smiled, although, until within the last day or two, 

 it has never actually laughed. You loved it, and couldn't help 

 yourself, but your love wanted warmth and fervour, just because of 

 its want of jocundity and joyousness. Even in our climate, 

 summer is not summer by the mere reading of the thermometer, 

 however sensitive and delicate its mercurial indications ; one wants 

 brilliant sunshine, with cloudless, or almost cloudless skies, to make 

 up a summer as a summer proper ought to be. The poets of the 

 East and South always speak of summer and summer scenes as 

 " laughing," while in more northern and less favoured lands your poet 

 is content to describe otherwise exactly similar scenes and situations 

 as simply " smiling," " gentle," " sweet," " quiet," and so forth, so 

 that an acute critic, by attending to this alone, could teU, were 

 other proofs entirely wanting, whether a poet was born under 

 northern skies, or lived and loved, soared and sang, in sunnier and 

 more southern climes. Horace has — 



— " miki angvlvs ridet." 



His " comer," observe, does not merely smile ; it " lauglis " under 

 the bright blue Italian sky. Lucretius has — 

 — " tibi rident aeguora ponti; " 



