JULY-DESCRIPTIVE. terrace of flowers, as the whorls rise step above step, a pile of rose-coloured flowers, beautiful to look upon in the sunshine. Nor does the charm of each little bloom diminish, when examined closely, as it is found to belong to the lipped family of flowers, the most exquisite of all the many orders; and quaint old Culpepper, writing about it at his house in Spitalfields above two centuries ago, says, 'the leaves and flowers, by their sweet spicy taste, are comfortable both in meat and medicine;' he also calls it 'a very precious herb;' and in his curious book, he tells us where he found choice wild-flowers growing in the summer sun about London, in the very places where long miles of streets now spread, and not even a blade of grass can be seen. Through long leagues of untrodden flowers the golden-belted bees now go with a pleasant murmuring, over sunny openings in the bowery underwood, which shrub and bramble guard, and beneath overhanging branches by the watercourses, where the foot of man cannot tread. Up lanes that lead nowhere, saving to green fields, and over which a wheel seldom passes, saving at haytime, or during the garnering of harvest, they grow and run. Up the hillsides they climb, over the fences, and into the old woods, where they play at hide-and-seek behind every bank and shaded hollow. Great trees throw their green arms over them, and make a shelter for their beauty under their shadows. From the faces of steep crags, inaccessible to man, they droop and wave in all their beauty; and in their bells the insects find a home, and at the golden entrances they play in the sunshine. They lean over and listen to the singing of the river all day long, and when they are folded, still hear its soothing lullaby go rippling over the reflected stars. The gentle dews alight upon them with silver feet in the moonlight, and hang golden drops about their petals to sparkle in the sun, in hidden nooks which the eye of man never penetrates; for nature leaves no crypt in her great temple undecorated. Place any flower under a microscope, and it becomes a world of wonder: the petals are vast plains, the stamens stately trees, many of them formed of gold; and deep down, on a pavement richer than any that inhabitants of this beautiful world, winged, and was ever inlaid by the hand of man, move the dazzling to look upon-fitting forms' to sip nectar, and find a dwelling-place in the fragrant flowers. And what know we of their delights? The marigold may be to them a land of the sun, and its golden petals the beams that ever shine upon them without setting. frocks, waiting until the village-bells sound from the hoary tower to summon them to church. Even the bells, as they come and go in the shifting breeze, seem like sounding messengers sent out everyway-up the valley, and over the hillnow heard, then lost as if they left no nook unvisited, but carried their Sabbath tidings everywhere. The childish voices that come floating on the air from the low, white-washed, village Sundayschool, where they are singing some simple hymn, bring before us His image, who said: 'Suffer little children to come unto me,' and who walked out in the fields with His disciples, to enjoy the calm of the holy Sabbath. The very murmur that Nature makes, in the low rustling of the leaves, and the subdued ripple of the stream, seemsbecause they are audible-to leave the stillness more profound, as her voice would not be heard if the grit of the wain, the tramp of the hoof on the dry rutted road, and the ring of the anvil, broke the repose which rests here-almost noiseless as the dew falling on the fleece of a sleeping lamb-throughout the Sabbath-day. The very gardens appear asleep, the spade is stuck motionless in the ground, hoe and rake are laid aside, and, saving the murmuring of a bee among the flowers, or the twittering of a bird from the orchard-trees, all around lie images of rest-a land of peace from which brown Labour seems to have retired in silence, and left no sound of his whereabout, but sunk in slumber somewhere, folds his sinewy arms. How tempting those great ripe round-bellied gooseberries look on а hot July day; we wonder there is one left on the bushes, when we see so many children about! The red currants, too, hang down like drops of rich carnelian; while the black currants look like great ebony beads, half-hidden by their fragrant leaves-for all the early garden-fruits are now ripe to perfection. Down the long rows the pretty strawberries peep out, shewing like red-breasted robins at hide-andseek under the foliage; while overhead the melting cherries hang down, leading even the very birds to commit trespass, for they cannot resist such a tempting banquet. Sweet Summer has now attained her perfect loveliness; the roses on her cheeks will never look more beautiful than they do now, nor will her sky-blue eyes ever beam with sweeter lustre. She has wreathed her sunny hair with the sweetest and fairest of flowers; and when they have faded, there will be no more found to make a frame of blossoms round her matchless countenance until the leaves of Autumn sleep, and young Spring gone dancing away, holdhave fallen, white Winter awakened from his cold ing up her green kirtle as she trips over the daisies. As yet, there is no sign of decay around her, only a few birds are silent, but they have not yet departed; there are myriads of flowers in bloom, and great armies of insects hurrying along every fragrant air. Few writers had a deeper appreciaway, as they go sounding through the warm and tion of the beauties of nature than honest Izaak What tranquillity reigns around a green secluded village on the Sabbath! There seems a Sunday breath in the very air, so calm and quiet sleeps everything we look upon, compared with the unceasing hum of far-away cities, whose streets are never silent. The very fields are still, and we have often fancied that the flocks and herds take more rest on this old Holy day than at any other time. Not a sound of labour is heard. The creaking wagon, with its shafts turned up, stands Walton; we can almost hear the rain-drops fall under the thatched shed; and the busy wheel of while reading that beautiful passage where he the old water-mill rests, gray, and dry, and motiondescribes himself sitting under the hedge of honeyon in the summer sun. No far-sounding ring suckles, sheltering from the shower, which fell so comes from the blacksmith's forge, at the door of gently on the teeming earth, and gave yet a sweeter which a few peasants linger in their clean smocks on the towing flowers that adorned those THE BOOK OF DAYS. verdant meadows;' and listening to the birds in the adjoining grove that seemed to have a friendly contention with an echo, whose dead voice seemed to live in a hollow tree, near the brow of that primrose-hill.' What dreams have we dreamed, and what visions have we seen, lying idly with half-shut eyes in some greenwood shaw,' sheltering from July's noonday sun, while we seemed to hear 'airy tongues that syllable men's names,' in the husky whispering of the leaves! Golden forms have seemed to spring up in the sun-lighted stems of the trees, whose high heads were buried among the lofty foliage, through which were seen openings to the sky. The deep-dyed pheasant, shooting over the underwood with streaming plumage, became a fair maiden in our eyes; and the skulking fox, noiselessly threading the brake, the grim enchanter from whom she was escaping. The twining ivy, with discoloured leaves, coiled round the stem in the far distance, became the fanged serpent, which we feared would untwine and crush her in its scaly folds. Scouts were sent out after her in the form of bees and butterflies, and seemed not to leave a flowery nook unvisited in which there was room enough for her to hide. Bird called to bird in sweet confusion, from leafy hollows, open glades, and wooded knolls, as if to tell that she had passed this way and that, until their songs became so mingled, we could not tell from which quarter the voices came. Then, as the sun burst out in all its brightness, the grim enchanter seemed to throw a golden net over the whole wood, the meshes of which were formed of the checkered lights that fell through leaf and branch, and, as we closed our eyes, we felt that she could not escape, so lay silent until the shadows around us deepened, and gray twilight stole noiselessly over the scene: 'A pleasing land of drowsyhead it was, Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye; And of gay castles in the clouds that pass, For ever flushing round a summer sky.' THOMSON. What imaginative mind has not enjoyed these summer dreams, these poetical flashes of purple, gold, and azure, that play on the 'inward eye' like colours on a cathedral pavement, streaming through some triple-arched window, richly stained with 'twilight saints, and dim emblazonings!' Towards the close of July, most of our birds are silent-even the robin and the wren are but rarely heard again till the end of August. Large flocks of young birds may now be seen flying together, and many think that they have been driven away by the old ones, so congregate for company; their assembling has nothing to do with migration, as it is the case with those that never leave us, as well as with others that will soon migrate. It is just possible that they may have become so numerous in the places where they were hatched as to find food scarce, so set out together in flocks, to seek their living where fare is more plentiful. The chiff-chaff is one of the few birds that neither the heat of summer nor the advance of the season can silence, for it sings better in July than in any of the earlier months; leaving off the two shrill monotonous notes, which in sound resemble its name, and giving a peculiar whistle, unlike that of any other bird. One of the earliest singers in the morning is the chaffinch, which may often be heard before three o'clock during the long days of summer. The clean white on his wings give him a splendid appearance. These birds build their nests with such an eye to the harmony of colour, that they are difficult to distinguish from the branches and leaves amid which they are placed, as they will match the green moss on the bough, and the yellow lichen on the bark, so closely, that only the little bright eyes of the bird betray its whereabout by their glittering. In the midland counties they are called 'pinks,' from their constant repetition of the note conveying that sound. Though most birds display great courage in defending their young, yet hundreds of little nestlings perish during the absence of their parents in search of food. Then their stealthy enemies, who are ever on the watch, pounce upon the little half-naked things, tear them out of their nests, and devour them. It is pitiable to hear the cry of the female on her return, when she finds her nest empty, and parts of the remains of her little ones hanging to the thorns they have been dragged through. We have sometimes fancied those wailing notes convey the feeling of Shakspeare's Macduff, when he exclaimed: 'All my pretty ones. All at one fell swoop!' (HISTORICAL.) July was originally the fifth month of the Roman year, and thence denominated Quintilis. In the Alban Calendar, it had a complement of thirty-six days. Romulus reduced it to thirty-one, and Numa to thirty days, and it stood thus for many centuries. At length, it was restored to thirty-one days by Julius Caesar, who felt a personal interest in it as his natal month. After the death of this great reformer of the calendar, Mark Antony changed the name to July, in honour of the family-name of Cæsar. This month he selected for such honorary distinction, when the sun was generally most potent, the more effectually to denote that Julius was the emperor of the world, and therefore the appropriate leader of one-half of the year.'-Brady. Our Saxon ancestors called July Hey Monath, 'because therein they usually mowed and made their hay-harvest; and also Maed Monath, from the meads being then in their bloom.'-Verstegan. CHARACTERISTICS OF JULY. July is allowed all over the northern hemisphere to be the warmest month of the year, notwithstanding that the sun has then commenced his course of recession from the tropic of Cancer. This is owing to the accumulating effect of the heat, while the sun is still so long above the horizon. In a table formed from the careful observations of the Rev. Dr Robert Gordon, at Kinfauns, Perthshire, the mean temperature of the air during the month, in that part of Great Britain, appears to be 61°. The same average has been stated for England; but in London 62° would probably be more correct. At London, the sun rises on 1st July at 3.46 morning, and sets at 8.14 evening; on the 31st, the respective times are 4.18 morning and 7.42 evening. At Edinburgh, it rises on the 1st at 3.20 and sets at 8.46; on the 31st, the respective times are 44, and 8.8. The sun is in Cancer for the greater part of the month, and enters Leo about the 22d. The great heat of the month led to a superstition among the Romans: they conceived that this preeminent warmth, and the diseases and other calamities flowing from it, were somehow connected with the rising and setting of the star Canicula-the Little Dog-in coincidence with the sun. They accordingly conferred the name of DOG-DAYS upon the period between the 3d of July and the 11th of August. Horace, it will be remembered, makes allusion to this in his address to the Blandusian Fountain "Te flagrantis atrox hora Canicula The fact truly being that a spring necessarily pre- WALTON'S INITIALS. First of July. St Saints Julius and Aaron, martyrs, about 303. Born-Bishop (Joseph) Hall, 1574, Bristow Park, Died.-Edgar, king of England, 975; Admirable Crichton, assassinated at Mantua, 1582; Isaac Casaubon, learned scholar, editor of ancient classics, 1614, bur. Westminster Abbey; Frederick, Duke Schomberg, killed at the Battle of the Boyne, 1690; Edward Lluyd, antiquary, 1709, Oxford; Henry Fox, Lord Holland, 1774; William Huntingdon, 1813, Tunbridge Wells; G. F. von Schubert, German philosophical writer, 1860, Laufzorn, near Munich. ISAAC CASAUBON-WALTON'S INITIALS. Isaac Casaubon was a foreign scholar of the highest eminence, who came to England in 1610, along with Sir Henry Wotton, the English ambassador at Paris, who had lodged in his house at Geneva, and there contracted,' as Isaac Walton sus, 'a most worthy friendship with that man tells of rare learning and ingenuity.' Casaubon did not survive his arrival in England above four years. He was buried in the south transept of Westminster Abbey, where a marble mural tablet was erected to him by Bishop Morton. While we have ample record of the friendshipand it was an angling friendship-which subsisted between Isaac Walton and Sir Henry Wotton, we have none regarding any between Walton and 3658 Casaubon, beyond the respectful reference to him July 1, 1652, the eccentric John Taylor, commonly called the Water Poet, from his having been a waterman on the Thames, paid a visit to St Winifred's Well, at Holywell, in Flintshire. This was a place held in no small veneration even in Taylor's days; but in Catholic times, it filled a great space indeed. There is something at once so beautiful and so bountiful in a spring of pure water, that no wonder it should become an object of some regard among a simple people. We all feel the force of Horace's abrupt and enthusiastic address, 'O Fons Blandusiæ, splendidior vitro,' and do not wonder that he should resolve upon sacrificing a kid to it. In the middle ages, when a Christian tinge was given to everything, the discovery of a spring in a romantic situation, or remarkable for the brightness, purity, or taste of its water, was forthwith followed by its dedication to some saint; and once placed among the category of holy wells, its waters were endued, by popular faith, with powers more or less miraculous. Shrewd Thomas Powell, writing in 1631, 'Let them find out some strange says: water, some unheard-of spring; it is an easy matter to discolour or alter the taste of it in some measure, it makes no matter how little. Report strange cures that it hath done; beget a superstitious opinion of it. Good-fellowship shall uphold it, and the neighbouring towns shall all swear for it.' So early as 963, the Saxon king Edgar thought it necessary to forbid the 'worshipping of fountains,' and the canons of Anselm (1102) lay it down as a rule, that no one is to attribute reverence or sanctity to a fountain without the bishop's authority. Canons, however powerful to foster superstition, were powerless to control it; ignorance invested springs with sanctity without the aid of the church, and every county could boast of its holy well. The Some of these were held specially efficacious for certain diseases. St Tegla's Well was patronised by sufferers from 'the falling sickness;' St John's, Balmanno, Kincardineshire, by mothers whose children were troubled with rickets or sore eyes. Tobirnimbuadh, or spring of many virtues, in St Kilda's Isle, was pre-eminent in deafness and nervous disorders; while the waters of Trinity Gask Well, Perthshire, enabled every one baptized therein to face the plague without fear. Others, again, possessed peculiar properties. Thus, St The initials and date were first introduced to public notice, by Frank T. Buckland, Esq., 2d Life Guards, in the Field newspaper. HOLY WELLS. Loy's Well, Tottenham, was said to be always full but never overflowing; the waters of St Non's ebbed and flowed with the sea; and those of the Toberi-clerich, St Kilda, although covered twice in the day by the sea, never became brackish. The most famous holy well in the three kingdoms is undoubtedly that dedicated to St Winifred (Holywell, Flintshire), at whose shrine Giraldus Cambrensis offered his devotions in the twelfth century, when he says she seemed still to retain her miraculous powers.' Winifred was a noble British maiden of the seventh century; a certain Prince Cradocus fell in love with her, and finding his rough advances repulsed, cut off the lady's head. Immediately he had done this, the prince was struck dead, and the earth_opening, swallowed up his body. Meanwhile, Winifred's head rolled down the hill; where it stopped, a spring gushed forth, the blood from the head colouring the pebbles over which it flowed, and rendering fragrant the moss growing around. St Bueno picked up the head, and skilfully reunited it to the body to which it belonged, after which Winifred ST WINIFRED'S WELL, FLINTSHIRE. lived a life of sanctity for fifteen years, while the spring to which she gave her name became famous in the land for its curative powers. The spring rises from a bed of shingle at the foot of a steep hill, the water rushing out with great impetuosity, and flowing into and over the main basin into a smaller one in front. The well is enclosed by a building in the perpendicular Gothic style (dating from the beginning of the reign of Henry VII.), which forms a crypt under a small chapel contiguous to the parish church, and on a level with it, the entrance to the well being by a descent of about twenty steps from the street. The well itself is a star-shaped basin, ten feet in diameter, canopied by a most graceful stellar vault, and originally enclosed by stone traceried screens filling up the spaces between the supports. Round the basin is an ambulatory similarly vaulted.'* The sculptural ornaments consisted of grotesque animals, and the armorial-bearings of various benefactors of the shrine; among them being Catharine of Aragon, Margaret, mother of Henry VII., and different members of the Stanley family, the founders both of the crypt and the chapel above it. Formerly, the former contained statues of the Virgin Mary and St Winifred. The first was removed in 1635; the fate of Winifred's effigy, to which a Countess of Warwick (1439) bequeathed her russet velvet gown, is unknown. On the stones at the bottom of the well grow the Bissus iolethus, and a species of red Jungermania moss, known in the vulgar tongue as Winifred's hair and blood. In the seventeenth century, St Winifred could boast thousands of votaries. James II. paid a visit to the shrine in 1688, and received the shift worn by his great-grandmother at her execution, for his pains. Pennant found the roof of the vault hung with the crutches of grateful cripples. He says, 'the resort of pilgrims of late years to these Fontanalia has considerably decreased; the greatest number are from Lancashire. In the summer, still a few are to be seen in the water, in deep devotion up to their chins for hours, sending up their prayers, or performing a number of evolutions round the polygonal well; or threading the arches between and the well a prescribed number of times.' An attempt to revive the public faith in the Flintshire saint was made in 1805, when a pamphlet was published, detailing how one Winefred White, of Wolverhampton, experienced the benefit of the virtue of the spring. The cure is certified by a resident of Holywell, named Elizabeth Jones, in the following terms: 'I hereby declare that, about three months ago, I saw a young woman calling herself Winefred White, walking with great difficulty on a crutch; and that on the following morning, the said Winefred White came to me running, and without any appearance of lameness, having, as she told me, been immediately cured after once bathing in St Winifred's Well.' of no avail; a dead belief was not to be brought again to life even by Elizabeth Jones of Holywell. St Madern's Well, Cornwall, was another popular resort for those who sought to be relieved from aches and pains. Bishop Hall, in his Mystery of Godliness, bears testimony to the reality of a cure wrought upon a cripple by its waters. He says he took strict and impartial examination' of the evidence, and 'found neither art nor collusion-the cure done, the author an invisible God.' In the seventeenth century, however, the well seems to have lost its reputation. St Madern was always propitiated by offerings of pins or pebbles. This custom prevailed in other places beside; Mr Haslam assures many us, that pins may be collected by the handful near most Cornish wells. At St Kilda, none dared approach with empty hands, or without making Bome offering to the genius of the place, either in *Archæological Journal, iii. 148. It was HOLY WELLS. the shape of shells, pins, needles, pebbles, coins, or rags. A well near Newcastle obtained the name of Ragwell, from the quantity of rags left upon the adjacent bushes as thank-offerings. St Tegla, of Denbighshire, required greater sacrifices from her votaries. To obtain her good offices, it was necessary to bathe in the well, walk round it three times, repeating the Lord's Prayer at each circuit, and leave fourpence at the shrine. A cock or hen (according to the patient's sex) was then placed in a basket, and carried round the well, into the churchyard, and round the church. The patient then entered the church, and ensconced him or herself under the communion-table, with a Bible for a pillow, and so remained till daybreak. If the fowl, kept all this while imprisoned, died, the disease was supposed to have been transferred to it, and, as a matter of course, the believer in St Tegla was made whole. Wells were also used as divining-pools. By taking a shirt or a shift off a sick person, and throwing it into the well of St Oswald (near Newton), the end of the illness could easily be known-if the garment floated, all would be well; if it sank, it was useless to hope. The same result was arrived at by placing a wooden bowl softly on the surface of St Andrew's Well (Isle of Lewis), and watching if it turned from or towards the sun; the latter being the favourable omen. A foreknowledge of the future, too, was to be gained by shaking the ground round St Madern's Spring, and reading fate in the rising bubbles. At St Michael's (Banffshire), an immortal fly was ever at his post as guardian of the well. If the sober matron wished to know the issue of her husband's ailment, or the love-sick nymph that of her languishing swain, they visited the well of St Michael. Every movement of the sympathetic fly was regarded with silent awe, and as he appeared cheerful or dejected, the anxious votaries drew their presages.' Of St Keyne's Well, Cornwall, Carew in his The shape-four trees of divers kind, Make with their roots an arched roof, Thereby the mastery gains.' Southey sang of St Keyne-how the traveller drank a double draught when the Cornishman enlightened him respecting the properties of the spring, and how 'You drank of the well I warrant betimes? He to the Cornishman said; But the Cornishman smiled as the stranger spake, And sheepishly shook his head. 'I hastened as soon as the wedding was done, But i' faith she had been wiser than me, * Statistical Account of Scotland. |