been gradually diminishing. The farmer is still occupied in getting the productions of the earth into hie 
garners; but those who can avoid labour enjoy as much rest and shade as possible. There is a sense of 
heat and quiet all over nature. The birds are silent. The little brooks are dried up. The earth is chapped 
with parching. The shadows of the trees are particularly grateful, heavy, and still. The oaks, which are 
freshest because latest in leaf, form noble clumpy canopies, looking, as you lie under them, of a strong and 
emulous green against the blue sky. The traveller delights to cut across the country through the fields and 
the leafy lanes, where nevertheless the flints sparkle with heat. The cattle get into the shade, or stand in 
the water. The active and air-cutting swallows, now beginning to assemble for migration, seek their prey 
about the shady places, where the insects, though of differently compounded natures, ‘fleshless and bloodless 5 
seem to get for coolness, as they do at other times for warmth. The sound of insects is also the only 
audible thing now, increasing rather than lessening the sense of quiet by its gentle contrast. The bee now 
and then sweeps across the ear with his gravest tone. The gnats 
Their murmuring small trumpets sounden wide ; Spenser. 
And here and there the little musician of the grass touches forth its tricksy note. 
The poetry of earth is never dead ; 
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, 
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run 
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead ; 
That is the grasshopper’s. Keats. 
Besides some of the flowers of last month, there are now candy-tufts, catch-fly, columbines, egg- 
plant, French marygolds, lavateras, London-pride, marvel of Peru, veronicas, tuberoses, which seem born 
of the white rose and lily; and scarlet-beans, which though we are apt to think little of them because they 
furnish us with a good vegetable, are quick and beautiful growers, and in a few weeks will hang a walk or 
trellis with an exuberant tapestry of scarlet and green. 
The additional trees and shrubs in flower are bramble, button weed, iteas, cistuses, climbers, and 
broom. Pimpernel, cockle, and fumitory, are now to be found in corn-fields, the blue-bell in wastes or by 
the road-sides ; and the luxuriant hop is flowering. 
The fruits begin to abound and are more noticed, in proportion to the necessity for them occasioned 
by the summer heat. The strawberries are in their greatest quantity and perfection ; and currants, goose- 
berries, and raspberries, have a world of juice for us, prepared as it were, in so many crowds of little bottles, 
in which the sunshine has turned the dews of April into wine. The strawberry lurks about under a beau- 
tiful leaf. Currants are also extremely beautiful. A handsome bunch looks like pearls or rubies, and an 
imitation of it would make a most graceful ear-ring. We have seen it, when held lightly by fair fingers, 
present as lovely a drop, and piece of contrast, as any holding hand in a picture of Titian. 
Bulbous rooted flowers, that have almost done with their leaves, should now be taken up, and de- 
posited in shallow wooden boxes. Mignionette should be transplanted into small pots, carnations be well 
attended to and supported, and auriculas kept clean from dead leaves and weeds, and in dry weather fre- 
quently watered. 
It is now the weather for bathing, a refreshment too little taken in this country, either in summer or 
winter. We say in winter, because with very little care in placing it near a cistern, and having a leathern 
pipe for it, a bath may be easily filled once or twice a week with warm water; and it is a vulgar error that 
the warm bath relaxes. An excess, either warm or cold, will relax ; and so will any other excess : but the 
sole effect of the warm bath moderately taken is, that it throws off the bad humors of the body by opening 
and clearing the pores. As to summer bathing, a father may soon teach his children to swim, and thus 
perhaps might be the means of saving their lives some day or other, as well as health. Ladies also, though 
they cannot bathe in the open air as they do in some of the West Indian islands and other countries, by 
means of natural basins among the rocks, might oftener make a substitute for it at home in tepid baths. 
