July 15. St. Swithin. St. Henry II. Emperor. St. Plechelm.

Orises at III. 56'. and sets at VIII. 4.

IDUS.-Castoris et Pollucis. Rom. Cal.

St. Swithin, in the Saxon Swithum, received his clerical tonsure, and put on the monastic habit, in the old monastery at Winchester: he was of noble parentage, and passed his youth in the study of grammar, philosophy, and the Scriptures. Swithin was promoted to holy orders by Helmstan, Bishop of Winchester; at whose death, in 852, King Ethelwolf granted him the see. In this he continued eleven years, and died in 868.

In Poor Robin's Almanack for 1697 are the following lines, allusive to this day :

In this month is St. Swithin's Day;
On which, if that it rain, they say
Full forty days after it will,
Or more or less, some rain distil.
This Swithin was a saint, I trow,
And Winchester's bishop also,
Who in his time did many a feat,
As Popish legends do repeat.
A woman having broke her eggs
By stumbling at another's legs,

For which she made a woeful cry,

St. Swithin chanced for to come by,

Who made them all as sound, or more
Than ever that they were before.
Better it is to rise by time,

And to make hay when the Sun do shine,

Than to believe in tales and lies,

Which idle Monks and Friars devise.

A Scottish proverb says:

St. Swithin's Day, gif ye do rain,

For forty daies it will remain:
St. Swithin's Day, an ye be fair,
For forty daies 'twill rain na mair.

A rainy St. Swithin is well described by Gay :

Now, if on Swithin's feast the welkin lours,

And every penthouse streams with hasty showers,

Twice twenty days shall clouds their fleeces drain,
And wash the pavements with incessant rain.
Let not, such vulgar tales debase thy mind;
Nor Paul nor Swithin rule the clouds and wind.
If you the precepts of the Muse despise,
And slight the faithful warning of the skies,
Others you'll see, when all the town's afloat,
Wrapt in the embraces of a kersey coat,
Or double bottomed frieze; their guarded feet
Defy the muddy dangers of the street;
While you, with hat unlooped, the fury dread
Of spouts high streaming, and with cautious tread
Shun every dashing pool, or idly stop,

To seek the kind protection of a shop.

But business summons; now with hasty scud
You jostle for the wall; the spattered mud
Hides all thy hose behind; in vain you scour,
Thy wig, alas! uncurled, admits the shower.
So fierce Electo's snaky tresses fell,

When Orpheus charmed the rigorous powers of hell;
Or thus hung Glaucus' beard, with briny dew
Clotted and straight, when first his amorous view
Surprised the bathing fair; the frighted maid

Now stands a rock, transformed by Circe's aid.

It is commonly said, if a slight sprinkling of rain fall on this day, that it is St. Swithin christening the apples. In the Almanacks of Poor Robin may be found many instructive lines and rules for this day.

On Wet Midsummer Weather.

And now sharp hail falls down in hasty sallies,
And all the tiles with dancing showers rattle;
And the fair Jewess hies to sheltered alleys,
To sell her Strawberries in brimful Pottle;
And farmers praise St. Swithin come again
To wet the crops with forty days of rain.

The two last lines are agreeable to Virgil's admonition :
Humida solstitia atque hyemes orate serenas.

We shall conclude this account of St. Swithin's Day with the following explanation attempted by Mr. Howard in his Climate of London :

Examination of the popular Adage of " Forty Days Rain after St. Swithin" how far it may be founded in fact.

"The opinion of the people on subjects connected with natural history is commonly founded in some degree on fact or experience; though in this case vague and inconsistent conclusions are too frequently drawn from real premises. The notion commonly entertained on this subject, if put strictly to the test of experience at any one station in this

part of the island, will be found fallacious. To do justice to popular observation, I may now state, that in a majority of our summers, a showery period, which, with some latitude as to time and local circumstances, may be admitted to constitute daily rain for forty days, does come on about the time indicated by this tradition: not that any long space before is often so dry as to mark distinctly its commence

ment.

The tradition, it seems, took origin from the following circumstances. Swithin or Swithum, Bishop of Winchester, who died in 868, desired that he might be buried in the open churchyard, and not in the chancel of the minster, as was usual with other bishops, and his request was complied with; but the monks, on his being canonized, considering it disgraceful for the saint to lie in a public cemetery, resolved to remove his body into the choir, which was to have been done with solemn procession, on the 15th of July: it rained, however, so violently for forty days together at this season, that the design was abandoned. Now, without entering into the case of the bishop, who was probably a man of sense, and wished to set the example of a more wholesome, as well as a more humble mode of resigning the perishable clay to the destructive elements, I may observe, that the fact of the hinderance of the ceremony by the cause related is sufficiently authenticated by tradition; and the tradition is so far valuable, as it proves that the summers in this southern part of our island were subject a thousand years ago to occasional heavy rains, in the same way as at present. Let us see how, in point of fact, the matter now stands.

In 1807 it rained with us on the day in question, and a dry time followed. In 1808 it again rained on this day, though but a few drops: there was much lightning in the West at night, yet it was nearly dry to the close of the lunar period, at the New Moon, on the 22d of this month, the whole period having yielded only a quarter of an inch of rain; but the next Moon was very wet, and there fell 5.10 inches of rain.

In 1818 and 1819 it was dry on the 15th, and a very dry time in each case followed. The remainder of the summers occurring betwixt 1807 and 1819, appear to come under the general proposition already advanced: but it must be observed, that in 1816, the wettest year of the series, the solstitial abundance of rain belongs to the lunar period, ending, with the Moon's approach to the third quarter, on the 16th of the seventh month; in which period there fell 513 inches, while the ensuing period, which falls wholly

within the forty days, though it had rain on twentyfive out of thirty days, gave only 2.41 inches.

I have paid no regard to the change effected in the relative position of this so much noted day by the reformation of the calendar, because common observation is now directed to the day as we find it in the almanack; nor would this piece of accuracy, without greater certainty as to a definite commencement of this showery period in former times, have helped us to more conclusive reasoning on the subject.

Solstitial and Equinoctial Rains.-Our year then, in respect of quantities of rain, exhibits a dry and a wet moiety. The latter again divides itself into two periods distinctly marked, as the reader will perceive by viewing the two elevations of the curve in fig. 11, p. 193. The first period is that which connects itself with the popular opinion we have been discussing. It may be said on the whole to set in with the decline of the diurnal mean temperature, the maximum of which, we may recollect, has been shown to follow the Summer Solstice at such an interval as to fall between the 12th and 25th of the month called July. Now the 15th of that month or Swithin's Day in the old style, corresponds to the 26th in the new; so that common observation has long since settled the limits of the effect, without being sensible of its real cause. The operation of this cause being continued usually through great part of the eighth month, the rain of this month exceeds the mean by about as much as that of the ninth falls below it."- Howard's Climate of London. For Castor and Pollux see p. 32.

July 16.

St. Eustathius Patriot of Antioch.
St. Elier Hermit and Martyr.

CHRONOLOGY.-King Edward II. of England crowned at Westminster

in 1377.

Mahommed's flight to Mecca in 622, and the beginning of the Hegira, a celebrated epoch used by the Arabs for the computation of time, which began with the New Moon; and hence the mosques in the East are adorned with a Crescent.

An old play has this reference to it :

Even as the parting kiss of Mahomet

Given to the young Diana, when her lamp,
A crescent then, burned as he forward went,
And daily shone the stronger: thus our love,
Sealed at this dark period of New Moon
By parting kisses, shall, as our distance
Widens, with the crescent Moon grow big
And fiercer burn till our next meeting.

COELUM. The circumstances of a showery time, such

as often sets in at this time of year, are thus described by Gay. He might have added many other scenes familiar in London: the Fruitsellers hastening to the covered places and alleys to sell their pottles of Strawberries to passengers who resort thither for shelter, the inconvenience from numerous umbrellas, and other similar concomitants of showery weather in town:

But when the swinging signs your ears offend
With creaking noise, then rainy floods impend;
Soon shall the kennels swell with rapid streams,
And rush in muddy torrents to the Thames.
The bookseller, whose shop's an open square,
Foresees the tempest, and with early care,
Of learning strips the rails; the rowing crew,
To tempt a fare, clothe all their tilts in blue;
On hosier's poles depending stockings tied,
Flag with the slackened gale from side to side;
Church monuments foretell the changing air,
Then Niobe dissolves into a tear,

And sweats with sacred grief; you'll hear the sounds
Of whistling winds, ere kennels break their bounds;
Ungrateful odours common shores diffuse;

And dropping vaults distil unwholesome dews,
Ere the tiles rattle with the smoking shower,
And spouts on heedless men their torrents pour.

July 17. St. Alexius. SS. Speratus &c. Martyrs. St. Marcellina Virgin. St. Ennodius. St. Leo IV. Pope. St. Turninus of Ireland.

CHRONOLOGY.-Charles VII. of France crowned at Rheims in 1429. Peter III. of Russia secretly murdered.

Alliensis dies atra.-Rom. Cal.

NEPTUNUS. The frequent short voyages made by continental travellers in steam boats at this time of year remind us of the following lines:

On the Swiftness of the Steam Boat's Passage.
History records with wonder Blanchard's flight,
Through air, to Calais once from Dover's height;
And children love to rhyme how whylome he
Dining at Dover got to France to tea.
But since the steam boat is come into use,
You may do more than this if now you choose:
Breakfast, and then embark, in three hours more
You're safely landed on fair Gallia's shore;
There dine, then reembark, and put to sea,
And you'll be paddled back again to tea.

To a person long accustomed to sailing vessels, the sensation produced by the first voyage in one of these