green flowerless after-math. Many of the birds that sung in the green chambers which she hung for them with her richest arras, have left her and gone over the sea. What few singers remain are silent, and preparing for their departure; and when she hears the robin, his song comforts her not, for she knows that he will chiant a sweeter lay to autumn, when she lies buried beneath the fallen leaves. Musing at times over her approaching end, upon the hillsides, they are touched by her beauty, and crimson up with the flowers of the heather, and long leagues of wild moorland catch the reflected blush, which goes reddening up like sunshine along the mountain slopes. The blue harebell peeps out in wonder to see such a land of beauty, and seems to shake its fragile bells with delight. In waste-places, the tall golden-rod, the poppy, and the large ox-eyed daisy muster, as if for a procession, and there wave their mingled banners of gold, crimson, and silver, as summer passes by, while the little eyebright, nestling among the grass, looks up and shews its white petals, streaked with green and gold.

scarlet

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so had a soft pillow provided for its exquisite flowers to repose upon. Nor does it change, when properly dried, if transferred to the herbarium, but there looks as fresh and beautiful as it did while growing-the very fairy of flowers. Nor will the splendid silver-weed be overlooked, with its prettily-notched leaves, which underneath have a rich silvery appearance; while the golden-coloured flowers, which spread out every way, are soft as velvet to the feel. Then the water has its grass like the field, and is sometimes covered with great meadows of green, among which are seen flowers as beautiful as grow on the inland pastures. The common duck-weed covers miles of water with its little oval-shaped leaves, and will from one tiny root soon send out buds enough to cover large pool, for every shoot it sends forth becomes flower and seed while forming part of the original stem, and these are reproduced by myriads, and would soon cover even the broad Atlantic, were the water favourable to its growth, for only the land could prevent it from multiplying further. Row a boat through this green landlooking-like meadow, and almost by the time you have reached the opposite shore-though you have sundered millions of leaves, and made a glassy course wide enough for a carriage to pass through the water, not a trace will be left, where all was bright and clear as a broad silver mirror, but all again be covered with green, as with a smooth carpet. Beside its velvet-meadows, the water has its tall forests and spreading underwood, and stateliest amongst its trees are the flower-bearing rushes, one of which is the very Lady of the Lake, crowned with a red tiara of blossoms. The sword-leaved bur-weed, and many another aquatic plant, are like bramble, fern, and shrub, the underwood of the tall sedge, which the nodding bulrushes overtop. Nor is forest or field frequented with more beautiful birds or insects than those found among our water-plants.

But, far as summer has advanced, several of her beautiful flowers and curious plants may still be found in perfection in the water-courses, and beside the streams-pleasanter places to ramble along than the dusty and all but flowerless waysides in August. There we find the wild-mint, with its lilac-coloured blossoms, standing like a nymph knee-deep in water, and making all the air around fragrant. And all along the margin by where it grows, there is a flush of green, fresh as April; and perhaps we find a few of the grand water-flags still in flower, for they often bloom late, and seem like gold and purple banners hanging out over some ancient keep, whose colours are mirrored in the moat below. There also the beautiful arrow-head, with its snow-white flowers and arrow-pointed leaves, may be found, looking like ivy growing about the water. Many a rare plant, too little known, flourishes beside and in our sedge-fringed meres and bright meadow streams, where the overhanging trees throw cooling shadows over their grassy margins, and the burning noon of summer never penetrates. Such pleasant places are always cool, for there the grass never withers, nor are the paths ever wholly dry; and when we come upon them unaware, after having quitted the heat and glare of the brown dusty highway, it seems like travelling into another country, whose season is spring. And there the water-plantain spreads its branches, and throws out its pretty broad leaves and rose-tinted flowers, which spread up to the very border of the brook, and run in among the pink-flowers of the knot-grass, which every ripple sets in motion. Further on, the purple loosestrife shews its gorgeous spikes of flowers, seeming like a border woven by the moist fingers of the Naiads, to curtain their crystal baths; while the water-violets appear as if growing to the roofs of their caves, the foliage clinging to the vaulted-silver, and only the dark-blue flowers shewing their heads above the Water. There, too, is the bog-pimpernel, almost as pretty as its scarlet sister, which may still be found in bloom by the wayside, though its flowers are not so large. Beautiful it looks, a very flower in arms, nursed by the yielding moss, on which it leans, as if its slender stem and prettily-formed leaves were too delicate to rest on common earth,

Then we have the beautiful white water-lily, which seems to bring an old world before us, for it belongs to the same species which the Egyptians held sacred, and the Indians worshipped. To them it must have seemed strange, in the dim twilight of early years, when nature was so little understood, to see a flower disappear at night, leaving on the surface no trace of where it bloomed-to reappear again in all its beauty, as it still does, on the following morning. And lovely it looks, floating double lily and shadow, with its rounded leaves, looking like green resting-places for this Queen of the Waters to sit upon, while dipping at pleasure her ivory sandals in the yielding silver; or, when rocked by a gentle breeze we have fancied they looked like a moving fairy-fleet on the water, with low green hulls, and white sails, slowly making for the shore. The curious little bladder-wort is another plant that immerses itself until the time for flowering arrives, when it empties all its water-cells, fills them with air, and rises to the surface. It may now be seen almost everywhere among water-plants. In a few more weeks it will disappear, eject the air, fill its little bladders once more with water, and, sinking down, ripen its seed in its watery bed, where it will lie until another summer warns and wakens it to life, when it will once more empty its water-barrels, fill them with air, and rising to the light and

sunshine, again beautify the surface with its flowers. Sometimes water-insects open the valves of these tiny bladders, and get inside; but they cannot get out again until the cells are once more unlocked to receive air. Many another rare and curious plant may be found by the water-side in August, where sometimes the meadow-sweet still throws out a few late heads of creamy-coloured bloom, that scent the air with a fragrance delicious as May throws out, when all her hawthorns are in blossom, for though June is a season

'Half-pranked with spring, with summer halfembrowned,'

August is a month richly flushed with the last touches of summer, toned down here and there with the faint grays of autumn, before the latter has taken up his palette of kindled colours.

Still, we cannot look around, and miss so many favourite flowers, which met our eye on every side a few weeks ago, without noticing many other changes. The sun sinks earlier in the evening; mists rise here and there and dim the clear blue of twilight; we see wider rents through the foliage of the trees and hedges, and, above all, we miss the voices of those sweet singers, whose pretty throats seemed never at rest, but from morning to night shook their speckled feathers with swellings of music. Yet how almost imperceptibly the days draw in, like the hands of a large clock, that appear motionless, yet move on with true measured footsteps to the march beaten by Time. So do the days come out and go in, and move through the land of light and darkness, to the shelving steep, down which undated centuries have shot and been forgotten. Soon those pleasant meadows that are still so green, and where the bleating of white flocks, and the lowing of brindled herds, are yet heard, will be silent, the hedges naked, and not even the hum of an insect sound in the air. Where the nearly ripe harvest, when the breeze blows, now murmurs like the sea in its sleep, and where the merry voices of sun-tanned reapers will soon be heard, the trampled stubble only will be seen, and brown bare patches of miry earth, where the straw has blackened and rotted, shew like the coverings of newly made graves. Even now unseen hands are tearing down the tapestry of flowers which summer had hung up to shelter her orchestra of birds in the hedges. What few flowers the woodbine again throws out-children of its old agehave none of the bloom and beauty about them tke those born in the lusty sunshine of early summer. For even she is getting gray, and the whate down of thistles, dandelion, groundsel, and many other hoary seeds streak her sun-browned hare There are blotches of russet upon the ferns that before only unfolded great fans of green, and in the sunset the fields of lavender seem all on fire, as it this purple heads of the flowers had been Kouth & by the golden blaze which fires the Painter, and further between each e hall chithering of the grasshopper may vet bohud, and as we endeavour to obtain a sight 14 hout Pio voice fades away beyond the beautiful cd coloured pheasant's-eye, which mens still call rose-a-ruby, believing put it they have not a sweetheart before it goes ddowe, they will have to wait for another . at med at bloons again. The dwarf convolvulus

twines around the corn, and the bear-bine coils about the hedges, the former winding round in the direction of the sun, and the latter twining in a contrary direction. Sometimes, where the little pink convolvulus has bound several stems of corn together, and formed such a tasteful wreath as a young lady would be proud to wear on her bonnet, the nest of the pretty harvest-mouse may be found. This is the smallest quadruped known to exist

the very humming-bird of mammalia-for when full-grown it will scarcely weigh down a worn farthing, while the tiny nest, often containing as many as eight or nine young ones, may be shut up easily within the palm of the hand, though so compactly made, that if rolled along the floor like a ball, not a single fibre of which it is formed will be displaced. How the little mother manages to suckle so large a family within a much less compass than a common cricket-ball, is still a puzzle to our greatest naturalists. It is well worth hiding yourself for half an hour among the standing-corn, just for the pleasure of seeing it run up stalks of wheat to its nest, which it does much easier than we could climb a wide and easy staircase, for its weight does not even shake a grain out of the ripened ears that surmount its pretty chamber. It may be kept in a little cage, like a white mouse, and fed upon corn; water it laps like a dog; and it will turn a wheel as well as any squirrel. Often it amuses itself by coiling its tail around anything it can get at, and hanging with its mite of a body downward, will swing to and fro for many minutes together. One, while thus swinging, would time its motions to the ticking of the clock that stood in the apartment, and fall asleep while suspended.

There are now thousands of lady-birds about, affording endless amusement to children; only a few years ago, they invaded our southern coast in such clouds, that the piers had to be swept, and millions of them perished in the sea; many vessels crossing over from France had their decks covered with them. That pretty blue butterfly, which looks like a winged harebell, is now seen everywhere; and as it balances itself beside some late cluster of purple sweet-peas, it is difficult to tell which is the insect and which the flower, until it springs up and darts off with a jerk along its zigzag way. On some of the trees we now see a new crop of leaves quite as fresh and beautiful as ever made green the boughs in vernal May, and a pleasant appearance they have beside the early-changing foliage that soonest falls, looking in some places as if spring, summer, and autumn had combined their varied foliage together. And never does the country look more beautiful than now, if the eye can at once take in a wide range of scenery from some steep hillside. Patches of green, where the cattle are feeding on the second crop of grass, are all one emerald-looking in the distance as if April had come again, and tinted them with the softest flush of spring; and if you are near enough, you may still hear the milkmaid's carol morning and night, for that green eddish causes the cows to yield as much milk as they did when feeding knee-deep amid the flowers of May. Then great fields of ripe corn rush in like floods of sunshine between these green spaces, widening and yellowing out on every hand, shewing here and there a thin dark band, which would hardly arrest the eye, were it not beaded with trees that shoot up from amid these low hedgerows.

LAMMAS.

MRS INCHBALD.

St Peter ad Vincula, or St Peter's Chains. The Seven Machabees, brothers, and their mother, martyrs. Saints Faith, Hope, and Charity, virgins and martyrs, 2d century. St Pellegrini or Peregrinus, hermit, 643. St Ethelwold, bishop of Winchester, confessor, 984.

Lammas.

This was one of the four great pagan festivals of Britain, the others being on 1st November, 1st February, and 1st May. The festival of the Gule of August, as it was called, probably celebrated the realisation of the first-fruits of the earth, and more particularly that of the grain-harvest. When Christianity was introduced, the day continued to be observed as a festival on these grounds, and, from a loaf being the usual offering at church, the service, and consequently the day, came to be called Hlaf-mass, subsequently shortened into Lammas, just as hlaf-dig (bread-dispenser), applicable to the mistress of a house, came to be softened into the familiar and extensively used term, lady. This we would call the rational definition of the word Lammas. There is another, but in our opinion utterly inadmissible derivation, pointing to the custom of bringing a lamb on this day, as an offering to the cathedral church of York. Without doubt, this custom, which was purely local, would take its rise with reference to the term Lammas, after the true original signification of that word had been forgotten.

'It was once customary in England, in contravention of the proverb, that a cat in mittens catches no mice, to give money to servants on Lammas-day, to buy gloves; hence the term GloveSilver. It is mentioned among the ancient customs of the abbey of St Edmund's, in which the clerk of the cellarer had 2d.; the cellarer's squire, 11d.; the granger, 11d.; and the cowherd a penny. Anciently, too, it was customary for every family to give annually to the pope on this day one penny, which was thence called Denarius Sancti Petri, or Peter's Penny.'-Hampson's Medii Evi Kalendarium.

What appears as a relic of the ancient pagan festival of the Gule of August, was practised in Lothian till about the middle of the eighteenth century. From the unenclosed state of the country, the tending of cattle then employed a great number of hands, and the cow-boys, being more than half idle, were much disposed to unite in seeking and creating amusement. In each little district, a group of them built, against Lammas-day, a tower of stones and sods in some conspicuous place. On Lammas-morning, they assembled here, bearing flags, and blowing cow-horns-breakfasted together on bread and cheese, or other provisions-then set out on a march or procession, which usually ended in a foot-race for some trifling prize. The most remarkable feature of these rustic fêtes was a practice of each party trying, before or on the day, to *Gwyl, Brit, a festival,

demolish the sod fortalice of some other party near by. This, of course, led to great fights and brawls, in which blood was occasionally spilt. But, on the whole, the Lammas Festival of Lothian was a pleasant affair, characteristic of an age which, with less to gain, had perhaps rather more to enjoy than the present.*

Born.-Tiberius Claudius Drusus, Roman emperor, uncle and successor of Caligula, B.C. 11, Lyons.

Died.-Marcus Ulpius Trajanus Crinitus (Trajan), Roman emperor, 117, Selinus, in Cilicia; Pope Celestine I., 432; Louis VI., surnamed Le Gros, king of France, 1137; Stephen Marcel, insurrectionary leader, slain at Paris, 1358; Cosmo de Medici, the elder, grandfather of Lorenzo the Magnificent, 1464, Florence; Lorenzo Valla, distinguished Latin scholar, 1457 or 1465, Rome; Anne, queen of England, 1714; Jacques Boileau, theologian, brother of the satirist, 1716, Paris; Admiral Sir John Leake, great naval commander, 1720, Greenwich; Richard Savage, poet and friend of Johnson, 1743, Bristol ; Bernard Siegfried Albinus, celebrated anatomist, 1770, Leyden; Dr Shebbeare, notorious political writer, 1788; Mrs Elizabeth Inchbald, actress and dramatist, missionary to China, 1834, Canton; Harriet Lee, novelist, 1821; Rev. Robert Morrison, D.D., first Protestant 1851, Clifton; Bayle St John, miscellaneous writer, 1859, London.

COSMO DE MEDICIS.

The Florentine family of the Medicis, which made itself in various ways so notable in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, may be said to have been founded by Cosmo, who died in 1464. This gentleman, for he was of no higher rank, by commerce acquired wealth comparable to that of kings, which enabled him to be the friend of the poor, to enrich his friends, to ornament his native city with superb edifices, and to call to Florence the Greek savans chased out of Constantinople. His counsels were, during thirty years, the laws of the republic, and his benefactions its sole intrigues. Florence, by common consent, inscribed his tomb with the noble legend: 'THE FATHER OF HIS COUNTRY.'

MRS INCHBALD.

Biography does not perhaps afford a finer example of industry, prudence, self-denial, and beneficence, than the story of Mrs Inchbald. Starting in life with the merest rudiments of education, she managed to make a living in literature; her personal expenditure she governed with a severity which Franklin's Poor Richard' might have applauded; her charity she dispensed with a lavish generosity; her path lay through scenes proverbial for their dangers, yet she preserved a spotless name; and the world's copious flattery of her

A minute account of the Lammas Festival was written by Dr James Anderson, and published in the Transactions of the Antiquarian Society of Scotland, vol. i. p. 194.