-the same full, twittering, dancing, circlemaking overflowings of gutter, which they have been ever since five in the morning, and which they mean to be, apparently, till five to-morrow.

Wash! wash! wash! The window-panes, weltering, and dreary, and rapid, and misty with the rain, are like the face of a crying child who is afraid to make a noise, but who is resolved to be as "aggravating" as possible with the piteous ostentation of his wet cheeks,weeping with all his might, and breathing, with wide-open mouth, a sort of huge, wilful, everlasting sigh, by way of accompaniment. Occasionally he puts his hand over to his ear, -hollow, as though he feared to touch it, his master having given him a gentle pinch and at the same moment, he stoops with bent head and shrugged shoulders, and one lifted knee, as if in the endurance of a writhing anguish.

You involuntarily rub one of the panes, thinking to see the better into the street, and forgetting that the mist is made by the rain on the other side.-On goes the wet as ever, rushing, streaming, running down, mingling its soft and washy channels; and now and then comes a clutter of drops against the glass, made by a gust of wind.

Clack, meantime, goes the sound of pattens; and when you do see, you see the street almost deserted, a sort of lay Sunday. The rare carriages drive as fast as they can; the hackney-coaches lumber along, glossy (on such occasions only) with the wet, and looking as old and rheumatic as the poor coachmen, whose hats and legs are bound with straw; the rainspouts are sputtering torrents; messengers dart along in oil-skin capes; the cry of the old shrimp-seller is hoarse; the postman's knock is ferocious.

If you are out of doors, woe betide you, should you have gone out unprepared, or relying on a coach. Your shoes and stockings are wet through, the latter almost as muddy as the dog that ran by just now without an owner; the rain washes your face, gets into the nape of your neck, makes a spout of your hat. Close by your ears comes roaring an umbrella, the face underneath it looking astonished at you. A butcher's boy dashes along, and contrives to come with his heel plump upon the exact spot of a loose piece of pavement, requisite for giving you a splash that shall embrace the whole of your left leg. To stand up under a gateway is impossible, because in the state you are in, you will catch your "death o'cold ;" and the people underneath it look at you amazed, to think how you could have come out "such a day, in such a state." Many of those who are standing up, have umbrellas; but the very umbrellas are wet through. Those who pass by the spot, with their oil or silk skins roaring as above (a sound particularly distressing to

the non-possessors) show that they have not been out of doors so long. Nobody puts his hand out from under the gate-way to feel whether it is still raining. There can be no question of it. The only voluntary person visible in the street is a little errand-boy, who because his mother has told him to make great haste, and not get wet feet, is amusing himself with double zest, by kicking something along through the gutter.

In private streets, the pavement is washed clean; and so it is for the moment in public; but horrible will be the mud to-morrow. Horses are splashed up to the mane; the legs of the rider's overalls are as if he had been sitting in a ditch; poor girls with bandboxes trip patiently along, with their wet curls over their eyes, and a weight of skirt. A carriage is coming down a narrow street; there is a plenitude of mud between you and the wheels, not to be eschewed; on dash they, and give you three beauty spots, one right on the nose.

Swift has described such a day as this in lines which first appeared in the "Tatler," and which hearty, unenvying Steele introduces as written by one, "who treats of every subject after a manner that no other author has done, and better than any other can do." [In transcribing such words, one's pen seems to partake the pleasure of the writer.] Swift availing himself of the licence of a different age, is apt to bring less pleasant images among his pleasant ones, than suit everybody now: but here follows the greater part of his verses :—

"Careful observers may foretell the hour,
By sure prognostics, when to dread a shower:
While rain depends, the pensive cat gives o'er
Her frolics, and pursues her tail no more.
If you be wise, then go not far to dine,
You'll spend in coach hire more than save in wine.—
A coming shower your shooting corns presage,
Old aches will throb, your hollow tooth will rage.
Sauntering in coffee-house is Dulman seen;
He damns the climate, and complains of spleen.
Meanwhile the south, rising with dabbled wings,
A sable cloud athwart the welkin flings.
*
*

*

*

*

Brisk Susan whips her linen from the rope,
While the first drizzling shower is borne aslope;
Such is that sprinkling which some careless quean
Flirts on you from her mop, but not so clean.
You fly, invoke the gods; then, turning, stop
To rail; she, singing, still whirls on her mop.-
Not yet the dust had shunn'd the unequal strife,
But, aided by the wind, fought still for life;
And, wafted with its foe by violent gust,
'Twas doubtful which was rain and which was dust.
Ah! where must needy poet seek for aid,
When dust and rain at once his coat invade?-
His only coat,-where dust confused with rain,
Roughens the nap, and leaves a mingled stain?

"Now in contiguous drops the flood comes down,
Threatening with deluge this devoted town.
To shops in crowds the draggled females fly,
Pretend to cheapen goods, but nothing buy.
The Templar spruce, while every spout's abroach,
Stays till 'tis fair, yet seems to call a coach.

The tuck'd-up sempstress walks with hasty strides,
While streams run down her oil'd umbrella's sides.
There various kinds, by various fortunes led,
Commence acquaintance underneath a shed.
Triumphant Tories and desponding Whigs
Forget their feuds, and join to save their wigs.
Box'd in a chair*, the beau impatient sits,
While spouts run clattering o'er the roof by fils;
And ever and anon with frightful din,

The leather sounds; he trembles from within.
So when Troy chairmen bore the wooden steed,
Pregnant with Greeks, impatient to be freed,
(Those bully Greeks, who, as the moderns do,
Instead of paying chairmen ran them through),
Laocoon struck the outside with his spear,
And each imprison'd hero quaked for fear."

The description concludes with a triumphant account of a gutter, more civic than urbane.

How to make the best of a bad day has been taught by implication in various pages throughout our writings, especially in those where we have studied the art of making everything out of nothing, and have delivered immense observations on rain-drops. It may be learned in the remarks which appeared in our No. XV. on a "Dusty Day." The secret is short and comprehensive, and fit for trying occasions of all sorts. Think of something superior to it ;-make it yield entertaining and useful reflection, as the rain itself brings out the flowers. Think of it as a benignant enemy, who keeps you indoors, or otherwise puts your philosophy to a trial, for the best of purposes,-to fertilise your fields, to purify your streets against contagion, -to freshen your air and put sweets upon your table, to furnish life with variety, your light with a shadow that sets it off, your poets with similes and descriptions. When the summer rains, Heaven is watering your plants. Fancy an insect growling at it under his umbrella of rose-leaf. No wiser is the man who grumbles under his gateway; much less over his port wine. Very high-bred ladies would be startled to learn that they are doing a very vulgar thing (and hurting their tempers to boot) when they stand at a window, peevishly objecting to the rain, with such phrases as "Dear me ! how tiresome!"-My lady's maid is not a bit less polite, when she vows and "purtests," that it is "quite contrary;"-as if heaven had sent it on purpose to thwart her ladyship and her waiting-woman! By complaint we dwindle and subject ourselves, make ourselves little-minded, and the slaves of circumstance. By rising above an evil, we set it at a distance from us, render it a small object, and live in a nobler air.

temper. Some bookseller with a taste, who
deals in that species of publication, should give
us a new edition of this poem, with engravings.
Wilkie, Mulready, and others, might find sub-
jects enough to furnish a design to every page.
"In rainy days keep double guard,
Or spleen will surely be too hard;
Which like those fish by sailors met,
Fly highest when their wings are wel.
In such dull weather so unfit
To enterprise a work of wit,
When clouds one yard of azure sky
That's fit for simile deny,

I dress my face with studious looks,
And shorten tedious hours with books;
But if dull fogs invade the head,
That mem'ry minds not what is read,
I sit in windows dry as ark,

And on the drowning world remark:
Or to some coffee-house I stray
For news, the manna of the day,
And from the hipp'd discourses gather
That politics go by the weather;
Then seek good-humour'd tavern-chums,
And play at cards, but for small sums;
Or with the merry fellows quaff,
And laugh aloud with them that laugh,
Or drink a joco-serious cup

With souls who've took their freedom up,
And let my mind, beguiled by talk,
In Epicurus' garden walk,

Who thought it heaven to be serene;
Pain, hell; and purgatory, spleen."

XVIII. THE EAST-WIND.

DID anybody ever hear of the East-Wind when he was a boy? We remember no such thing. We never heard a word about it, all the time we were at school. There was the schoolmaster with his ferula, but there was no East-Wind. Our elders might have talked about it, but such calamities of theirs are inaudible in the ears of the juvenile. A fine day was a fine day, let the wind be in what quarter it might. While writing this article, weather is polluted by the presence of the we hear everybody complaining, that the fine East-Wind. It has lasted so long as to force itself upon people's attention. The ladies confess their exasperation with it, for making free without being agreeable; and as ladies' quarrels are to be taken up, and there is no other way of grappling with this invisible enemy, we have put ourselves in a state of Editorial resentment, and have resolved to write an article against it.

The winds are among the most mysterious of the operations of the elements. We know not whence they come, or whither they go,how they spring up, or how fall,-why they prevail so long, after such and such a fashion, in certain quarters; nor, above all, why some of them should be at once so lasting and apparently so pernicious. We know some of their uses; but there is a great deal about them we do not know, and it is difficult to put them to the question. As the sailor said of the ghosts,

What

we do not understand their tackle." is very curious is, there seems to be one of them which prevails in some particular quarter, and has a character for malignity. In the South there is the Scirocco, an ugly customer, dark, close, suffocating, making melancholy; which blots the sky, and dejects the spirits of the most lively. In the Oriental parts of the Earth, there is the Tifoon, supposed by some to be the Typhon, or Evil Principle of the ancients; and in Europe we have the EastWind, whom the ancients reckoned among the Sons of Typhon. The winds, Mr. Keightley tells us, were divided by the Greeks into "wholesome and noxious; the former of which, Boreas (North-Wind), Zephyrus (West-Wind), and Notus (South-Wind), were, according to Hesiod, the children of Astræus (Starry) and Eos (Dawn). The other winds, he says (probably meaning only those who blow from the East), are the race of Typhoeus, whom he describes as the last and most terrible child of Earth. In Greece, as over the rest of Europe, the East-Wind was pernicious."

In England, the East-Wind is accounted pernicious if it last long; and it is calculated, we believe, that it blows during three parts even of our fine weather. We have known a single blast of it blight a long row of plants in a greenhouse. Its effects upon the vegetable creation are sure to be visible if it last any time; and it puts invalids into a very unpleasant state, by drying the pores of the skin, and thus giving activity to those numerous internal disorders, of which none are more painful than what the moderns call nervousness, and our fathers understood by the name of the Vapours or the "Spleen," which, as Shenstone observed, is often little else than obstructed perspiration. An irritable poet exclaimed

"Scarce in a showerless day the heavens indulge
Our melting clime, except the baleful East
Withers the tender spring, and sourly checks
The fancy of the year. Our fathers talk'd
Of summers, balmy airs, and skies serene:
Good Heaven! for what unexpiated crimes
This dismal change?"-

This terrible question we shall answer presently. Meantime, the suffering poet may be allowed to have been a little irritated. It is certainly provoking to have this invisible enemy invading a whole nation at his will, and sending among us, for weeks together, his impertinent and cutting influence, drying up our skins, blowing dust in our eyes, contradicting our sunshine, smoking our suburbs, behaving boisterously to our women, aggravating our scolds, withering up our old gentlemen and ladies, nullifying the respite from smoke at Bow, perplexing our rooms between hot and cold, closing up our windows, exasperating our rheumatisms, basely treating the wounds of our old soldiers, spoiling our gardens, preventing our voyages, assisting thereby

our Bow-street runners, hurting our tempers, increasing our melancholies, deteriorating our night-airs, showing our wives' ankles, disordering our little children, not being good for our beasts, perplexing our pantaloons (to know which to put on), deranging our ringlets, scarifying our eyes, thinning our apple-tarts, endangering our dances, getting damned our weathercocks, barbarizing our creditors, incapacitating our debtors, obstructing all moist processes in the arts, hindering our astronomers *, tiring our editors, and endangering our sales.

The poet asks what crimes could have brought upon us the evils of our climate? He should ask the school-boy that runs about, the gipsy who laughs at the climate, or the ghost of some old English yeoman, before taxes and sedentary living abounded. An East-Wind, like every other evil, except folly and ill intention, is found, when properly grappled with, to be not only no evil, but a good, at least a negative one, sometimes a positive; and even folly and ill intention are but the mistakes of a community in its progress from bad to good. How evil comes at all, we cannot say. It suffices us to believe, that it is in its nature fugitive; and that it is the nature of good, when good returns, to outlast it beyond all calculation. If we led the natural lives to which we hope and believe that the advance of knowledge and comfort will bring us round, we should feel the East-Wind as little as the gipsies do it would be the same refreshment to us that it is to the glowing school-boy, after his exercise; and as to nipping our fruits and flowers, some living creature makes a dish of them, if we do not. With these considerations, we should be well content to recognise the concordia discors that harmonizes the inanimate creation. If it were not for the EastWind in this country, we should probably have too much wet. Our winters would not dry up; our June fields would be unpassable: we should not be able to enjoy the West-Wind itself, the Zephyr with his lap full of flowers. And upon the supposition that there is no peril in the East-Wind that may not ultimately be nullified, we need not trouble ourselves with the question, why the danger of excessive moisture must be counteracted by a wind full of dryness. All the excesses of the elements will one day be pastime, for the healthy arms and discerning faculties of discovering man.

And so we finish our vituperations in the way in which such things ought generally to be finished, with a discovery that the fault objected to is in ourselves, and renewed admiration of the abundance of promise in all the works of nature.

* During East-Winds astronomers are unable to pursue their observations, on account of a certain hazy motion in the air.