No. 235. NEw Series.

SUMMER-TIME IN TOWN AND COUNTRY.
BY THOMAS MILLER.

LONDON in summer-time is like one of those great kitchens which were fitted up somewhere within the castles that were inhabited by the Ogres of our olden tales, and in which poor humanity, when captured, was cooked. If you stand upon the gratings to look into the shop windows on the sunny side of the way, they are as hot as gridirons, and if you loiter long enough you would be broiled. You get outside an omnibus to enjoy the fresh air; but all the fresh air has rushed down the streets that open upon the river to cool itself—and there you are all but baked. You get down, and try the inside by way of change; but that is like a great arched boiler, whose only safety-valve is the half-open door, and you find the big drops oozing from your forehead, and have just time to hail the conductor, to save yourself from being tenderly steamed. If you get into one of the squares, you might almost as well be fixed on a roasting-jack, for every window looks like a fire; and you go round and round, like Falstaff, 'larding the lean earth.' You hurry off to Blackfriars Bridge, hoping there to find a little breathing space; but every villanous compound of smell' has stolen a march before you, and is out sweetening itself. You try London Bridge, from whence so many of her Majesty's lieges embark, and there you are greeted with the self-same evil scent, as if 'Death could not keep his court' anywhere beside the Thames but at the foot of the bridges. Like a rat that tries to climb up the side of a copper covered with verdigris when a fire is lighted below, so to avoid the heat, you rush recklessly amid the poison, slip down, resign yourself to the Fates, and are either baked, steamed, or boiled, as they will it. The very dogs lie on the hot pavement as if they had given up all hopes of ever again finding a cool place; and as they languidly raise their eyes while you pass, seem to say, 'I would pity you if I could, but there is no help for either of us.' The cab horses hang their heads, and stand motionless; they have even given up whisking their tails and ears, but allow the flies to bite and the sun to burn, as if appealing mutely to our sympathies; while their very looks seem to ask if any one has the heart to call them off the stand on such a day. The brasses at the front of the windows blaze again; and Snip, Tailor,' seems written on a tongue of flame. The only chance you have of cooling yourself is by trusting to the imagination, and looking into the shops where Wenham ice is sold, and fancying that you can see it freezing. Even while the soda-water is effervescing, everything around is so hot, that you are almost doubtful whether or not it boils, so drink it up with a kind of desperate risk. The milkman's cans have a fiery look, and you marvel not that the milk so soon turns sour, while carried about in such-like furnaces.

PRICE 14d.

You shut one eye as you walk along, for it is the only part you can preserve from the heat. You feel almost sorry as you peep in at the fishmonger's, to think that the finny tribe should be taken out of their native element in such weather, and laid there to bake. A footman in scarlet livery looks like a burning sacrifice offered up by pride, as if he suffered for the sins of the whole family he serves. The flowers in windows droop, and seem sorrowful, and we never see a butterfly that has missed its way in the streets hovering around them without thinking that it is endeavouring to entice them away to the pleasant gardens in the suburbs: it seems a lost messenger sent out by the flowers. A green watering-pan at a brazier's door awakens pleasant recollections, and a parcel of children puddling about a pump or a plughole makes one feel cool for an hour after. On a breathless sultry day, the shrubs in the close city squares look as if they were cut out of green tinfoil; while the crevices between the stones over which the watering-carts pass seem to open like the mouths of a parched and thirsty multitude, each eager to catch the coveted drops. You envy the man who can smoke on such a day, and almost fancy that he must have some little portable fountain in his inside with which he cools himself. Covent Garden Market would really be pleasant, if you could but be sheltered by the shadows of covering trees, instead of the heated roofs of the stifling colonnades. Holborn and Snow Hill appear as if made purposely to punish stout sinners and vicious horses. Gold-fishes in a glass globe that stands in the shade are the only living objects you look upon with feelings of envy.

But leaving all discontent behind, let us look at summer through her green and ever-open doors into a little world walled with hedges of hawthorn, which but a month or so ago were white over with May. That fragrance-rich as ever floated around Eve when she knelt to pray in the garden of Eden, while her long hair fell upon clusters of full-blown roses-has been borne along by the breeze from some neighbouring hay-field. How refreshing it feels after inhaling that burnt-brownpaper smell which pervades the city streets! How gracefully that woodbine twines around the hazel! You can already see the young nuts peeping with their green bunches between the coronets of the red-streaked flowers. The very cooing of the ringdove falls drowsily upon the quietude, now near, now afar off, just as the fitful breeze comes and goes, and makes a murmur amid the long leaves. The water-flags seem playing with one another as they are swayed by the gentle wind; and the dragon-fly, that sits upon the edge of the white water-lily, looks as if admiring the fine gauze of his wings, and the beautiful blue of his slender body, which are mirrored in the clear stream. What a home of rest appears that thatched cottage, nestled amid the flicker