July the seventh month of the year. According to ancient reckoning it was the Sfth, anu called QUINTILIS, until Mark Antony denominated it July, in compliinent to Caius Cæsar, the Roman dictator, whose surname was Julius, who improved the calendar, and was born in this month. July was called by the Saxons henmonath, which probably expressed the meaning of the German word hain, signifying wood or trees; and hence henmonath might mean foliage month. They likewise called it heymonath, or hay month; "because," says Verstegan, "therein they usually mowed and made their hay harvest ;" and they also de 10. inated it Lida-aftera, meaning the ser und "Lida," or second month after the sun's descent.* The beautif 1 representation preceding Spenser's per nification of July, on the preceding page, was designed and engraved by Mr. Samuel Williams, of whom it shoula in justice be said, that his talents have enriched the Every-Day Book with most of its best illustrations. Now comes July, and with his fervid noon Mr. Leigh Hunt in his Months, after remarking that" July is so called after Julius Cæsar, who contrived to divide his names between months and dynasties, and among his better deeds of ambition reformed the calendar," proceeds to notice, that " The heat is greatest in this month on account of its previous duration. The reason why it is less so in August is, that the days are then much shorter, and the influence of the sun has been gradually diminishing. The farmer is still occupied in getting the productions of the earth into his 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 aircutting 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,' 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 hi. wide; and here and there the little musician of sun, And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run mead: That is the grasshopper's. Keats. "Besides some of the flowers of last month, there are now candy-tufts, catchfly, 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 exub erant tapestry of scarlet and green. "The additional trees and shrubs in flower are bramble, button-wood, 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 ther greatest quantity and perfection; am * Dr. Frank Sayers. currants, gooseberries, 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 beautiful 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 deposited 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 frequently 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 humours of the body by opening and clearing the pores. As to summer bathing, a father inay 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. The most beautiful aspects under which Venus has been painted or sculptured, have been connected with bathing: and indeed there is perhaps no one thing that so equally contributes to the three graces of health, beauty, and good temper;-to health, in putting the body into its best state; to beauty, in clearing and tinting the skin; and to good temper, in rescuing the spirits from the irritability occasioned by those formidable personages the nerves,' which nothing else allays in so quick and entire a manner. See a lovely passage on the subject of bathing in sir Philip Sydney's Arcadia,' where Philoclea. blushing, and withall smiling, making shame fastnesse pleasant, and pleasure shamefast, tenderly moved her feet, unwonted to feel the naked ground, until the touch of the cold water made a pretty kind of shrugging come over her body, like the twinkling of the fairest among the fixed stars.'' A Morning's Walk in July. But when mild morn, in saffron stole, First issues from her eastern goal, Let not my due feet fail to climb Some breezy summit's brow sublime, Whence Nature's universal face Illumined smiles with newborn grace, The misty streams that wind below With silver sparkling lustre glow; The groves and castled cliffs appear The smoke that mounts in azure wreath The Bleeding Image. On the 3d of July is annually celebrated, in Paris, in the church of St. Leu and St. Giles, a solemn office, in commemoration of a miracle wrought by the blessed virgin, in la Rue aux Ours, or the street for the bears; the history of which is as follows:--In the year 1518, a soldier coming out of a tavern in this Bear-street, where he had been gambling, and losing his money and clothes, was blaspheming the name of God; and as he passed by the image of the holy virgin, standing very quietly and inoffensively at the corner of the street, he struck it, or her, furiously with a knife he had in his hand; on which God permitted, as the modern and modest tellers of this tale say, the image to bleed abundantly. The ministers of justice were informed, and the wretch was seized, conducted to the spot where he had committed the sacrilege, tied to a post, and scourged, from six o'clock in the morning till night, till his eyes dropped out; his tongue was bored with a hot iron, and his body was cast into the fire. The blessed image was transported to Rome. This was the origin of a ceremony still remembered, and which once was very curious. The zeal of the inhabitants of Bear-street was conspicuous, and their devotion to the blessed virgin not less so. At first they only made the figure of the soldier, as we in England do of Guy Faux, and threw it into the fire; by degrees the feast became more solemn, and the soldier; who had been rudely fashioned out of faggots, was at last a composition of fireworks, which, after being carried in procession through the streets of Paris, took a flight into the air, to the great joy and edification of the Parisians, particularly of Bear-street. In At last, however, the magistrates wisely recollected that the streets being narrow, and the buildings numerous in that part of the city, a fire might happen, and it would then be still more miraculous if the holy image should travel from Rome to Paris to extinguish the flames: not to mention that the holy image might not at that precise moment be so plentifully supplied as on a similar occasion our friend Gulliver was. 1744, therefore, they forbad any future fire-work soldiers, and the poor distressed inhabitants of Bear-street, were once more reduced to their man of wood, whom they continue to burn with great affection every 3d of July, after having walked him about Paris three days. This figure is now made of osier, clothed, and armed with a knife, and of so horrid an appearance, it would undoubtedly frighten women and children who did not know the story of the sacrilegious soldier; as it is, they believe they see him breathe blasphemy. Messieurs, the associated gen tlemen of Bear-street, give the money formerly spent in fireworks, to make procession to the proxy of the blessea image which now stands where the bleeding one did, and to say a sclemn mass to the blessed virgin, for the souls of the defunct gentlemen, associates of Bearstreet. The mummery existed under Napoleon, as appears by the preceding particulars, dated Paris, July 12, 1807, and may be seen in the Sunday Advertiser, of the 19th of that month. On the 3d of July, 1810, a small loar fastened by a string, was suspended from the equestrian statue at Charing-cross, te which was attached a placard, stating that it was purchased from a baker, ano was extremely deficient in weight, and was one of a numerous batch. The notice concluded by simply observing, "Does this not deserve the aid of par * Ode on the Approach of Summer liament?" This exhibition attracted a great crowd of people, until the whole of the loaf was nearly washed away by subsequent heavy rain. THE DOG-DAYS. "The Dog-star rages." Sirius, or the Dog-star, is represented as in the above engraving, on a garnet gem, in lord Besborough's collection, etched by Worlidge. The late Mr. William Butler, in his Chronological Exercises, says, that on this day" commence, according to the almanacs, the Canicular, or Dog-days, which are a certain number of days preceding and following the heliacal rising of Canicula, or the Dog-star, in the morning. Their beginning is usually fixed in the calendars on the 3d of July, and their termination on the 11th of August; but this is a palpable mistake, since the heliacal rising of this star does not now take place, at least in our latitude, till near the latter end of August; and in five or six thousand years more, Canicula may chance to be charged with bringing frost and snow, as it will then, owing to the precession of the equinoxes, rise in November and December." Dr. Hutton remarks, that some authors say, from Hippocrates and Pliny, that the day this star first rises in the morning, the sea boils, wine turns sour, dogs begin to grow mad, the bile increases and irritates, and al! animals grow languid; also, "the diseases it usually occasions in men are burning fevers, hysterics, and phrensies. Th? Romans sacrificed a brown dog every VOL. L year to Canicula, at his first rising to ap. pease his rage." A Cambridge contributor to the EveryDay Book affirms, that, in the year 1824, an edict was issued there for all persons keeping dogs either to muzzle or tie them up, and many a dog was tied up by the neck as a sacrifice; whether to the Mayor or Canicular, this deponent saith not; but the act and deed gave rise to the following JEU D'ESPRIT. Good mister Mayor All dogs declare The beam of justice falters! To miss the puppies-sure she's blind, Mr. Brady observes, in his "Clavis Calendaria," "That the weather in July and August is generally more sultry than at any other period of the year, and that some particular diseases are consequently at that time more to be dreaded, both to man and beast, is past dispute. The exaggerated effects of the rising of Sirius are now, however, known to be groundless; and the superior heat usually felt during the Dog-days has been more philosophically accounted for. The sun, at this period of the year, not only darts his rays almost perpendicularly upon us, and of course with greater power; but has also continued to exert his influence through the spring and summer seasons, whereby the atmosphere and earth have received a warmth, proportioned to the continuity of its action; and moisture, in itself naturally cold, has been dissipated. Even in the course of a day, which has been aptly typified as a short year, the greatest effect of the sun is generally felt at about two o'clock, although it has then passed the meridian, because by having so much longer exerted its powers, its consequent effects are more than commensurate for the diminution of heat in its rays. The cold of winter in like manner augments about the time the days begin to increase, and continues to do so for a considerable time after, because, at that season, the earth has become wet and chilled, from the effects of the preceding gradual decrease of power in the sun, although, at that time, when the cold is usually most severe, that orb is ascensive, and returning from the winter solstice: and our Saxon ancestors were experimentally 30 well aware of this latter circum. stance, that in the delineation on their calendars, to illustrate the characters of the months they represented February, as a man in the act of striking his arms across his body to warm himself: while there is also yet in common use a very old saying, grounded upon the like conviction, that when the days lengthen, the frost is sure to strengthen.' 66 The early Egyptians, whose hierogly phical characters, aptly adapted by them to the peculiarity of their climate and cirCmstances, were the principal or perhaps sole origin of all the heathenish superstitions of other nations, were taught by long observation and experience, that as soon as a particular star became visible, the Nile would overflow its banks; and they accordingly upon its very first appearance retreated to their terraces, where they remained until the inundation had subsided. This star, therefore, was called by them Sihor, i. e. the Nile; as Zeigtos is in Greek. and Sirius in Latin; and from the waring it afforded them, they typified it as a dog, or in most cases as a man with a dog's head; that faithful animal having been, even in those times, distinguished for his peculiar qualities of watching over the affairs of man, and affording warning of approaching danger. The names assigned to this star by the Egyptians was Thaaut, or Tayout, the dog; and in later times Sothis, Thotes, or Thot, each bearing the like signification; but it was left for the subsequent ignorance of those other nations who adopted that character for Sihor, now Sirius, without considering the true origin of its appellation, falsely to assign to it, the increasing heat of the season, and its consequent effects upon animated nature. The idea, however, of any such effects, either as to heat, or to disorders, from the influence of the canicular star, is now wholly exploded, from the reasons already assigned, and because 'that star not only varies in its rising every year, as the latitude varies, but that it rises later and later every year in all latitudes;' so that when it rises in winter, which, by the way, cannot be for five or six thousand years, it might, with equal propriety, be charged with increasing he frost and besides, it is to be obseed, that although Sirius is the nearest to the earth of any of the fixed stars, it is computed to be at the enormous distance of 2,200,000,000,000 miles from our globe; a space too prodigious to admit of its rays affording any sensible heat; and which could not be passed by a cannon-ball, flying with its calculated velocity of 480 miles in one lour, in less than 523,211 years! Upon the whole, there. fore, it evidently appears, that the origi of the name of this star was not only wholly disregarded, but that common and undigested opinion made its conjunction with the sun, the cause of heat &c. instead of having regarded it as a sign of the period when such effects night naturally be expected." Mad Dogs. There is no cure for the bite of a mnd dog; and as at this time dogs go mad, it is proper to observe, that immediate burning out of the bitten part by caustic, or the cutting of it out by the surgeon's knife, is the only remedy. If either burning or cutting be omitted, the bitten person, unless opiumed to death, or smothered between featherbeds, will in a few days or weeks die in unspeakable agony. The latter means are said to have been sometimes resorted to as a merciful method of extinguishing life. It is an appalling fact, that there is no cure for hydrophobia. Preventive is better than cure, and in this case it is easy. Dogs, however useful in some situations, are wholly useless in towns. Exterminate them. Against this a cry will go forth from all dog-owners: they will condemn the mea sure as proceeding from a barbarian; but they are the barbarians who keep animals subject to a disease fatal to human life. Such persons, so far from being entitled to a voice against its execution, merit abhorrence and contempt for daring to propose that every man, woman, and child among their friends and neighbours, should run the risk of a cruel death for the gratification of selfishness. Every honest man in every town who keeps a dog, should destroy it, and use his influence with others to destroy theirs. No means of preventing hydrophobia exists but the destruction of dogs. Oh! but dogs are useful; they guard our houses at night; they go in carts and guard our goods by day; they catch our rats; and, then, they are such faithful creatures! All this, though very true, does not urge one reason against their destruction as a preventive from the communicating a fatal and wholly incunable disease. Instead of house-dogs at night, get additional watchmen, or secure |