summer. The length of the days and the shortness
of the nights allow the earth to retain a
portion of yesterday's heat, which, added to that
given by the sun to-day, accumulates to a maximum
until the lengthening nights cause the scale
to turn, and alter the balance of temperature.

Summer is a jolly time for people at their
ease, but for people not living at their ease it is
a hard and wearisome time. What kind of
appreciation of summer has a restaurant's cook, a
steam-engine stoker, a waiter in a Swiss hotel, a
baker of small things three times a day, a
butcher in a neighbourhood where customers
are few, and blowflies plenty? Up north, where
summer bursts upon you with a flash and blazes
brightly and incessantly, with no real night for
two or three months, how can the fisherman,
the farmer, the wood-cutter, the dairyman, snatch
any but the scantiest repose? The briefer the
summer and the shorter the nights, the harder
must they toil and the less may they sleep. They
fag out their wretched summer lives, to secure a
store of hay, butter, corn, cheese, fire-wood,
salt cod, pickled herrings, timber, cranberries,
and other necessaries, for all the year round, as
well as for winter use. All must labour,
irrespective of sex and age—cows, maidens, boys,
and elders. When the long spell of sleepless
worry is suddenly stopped by the advent of
autumn, they thank the stars whose office it is
to bring all seasons to an end, and cry:

    Now is the summer of our discontent
    Made glorious winter by the fall of snow.

And yet their health does not seem to have
suffered; so true is it that men often rust up
faster than they wear up. Besides, they have
enjoyed the beneficial stimulus of light and
heat without suffering the evils of their excess.

We fancy, here, that we know what summer
heat is, because once or twice in the season,
perhaps once or twice in three or four years, we
have a brief and approximate sample of what
heat can be or what heat can do. But the
pungent pricking lancet-like radiation from the
sun, entering into the flesh like needles, which
inspired the Greeks with their "arrows of
Phoebus," is hardly experienced in the British
isles. Our summers, known as " three fine
days and a thunder-storm," are not long enough
nor settled enough, to allow heat to acquire the
full intensity which it might acquire in our
latitude. Its accumulation is checked by occasional
showers and cloudy days.

Heat rays, everybody knows, are distinct
from light rays, and are much more penetrating
in quality. Fortunately for us, with our
vaporous and cloudy firmament, heat rays have
the power of radiating through a grey and
misty sky, and so are able to warm the earth
and ripen our fruits: which they could not do
without that power. In proof whereof, on such
a day lay out, in a place where the sun ought to
shine, any heat-attracting object—a stone or a
piece of iron—and you will find it heated. It
is therefore no absurdity, during summer, for a
lady to carry a parasol when the sun does not
shine. In consequence of the sun's penetrating
power, a lined parasol is better than an unlined
one. A quilting even of wadding, under the
lining, would do no harm. Idem, flounces and
furbelows, outside the parasol, are not for show
merely, but are useful as sun-screens.

With sufficient imprudence, and at the right
time and place, you may get and rue a sun-stroke
before you are aware of it. The head, or rather
the brain inside the head, is the portion of the
human frame which appears to suffer, almost
exclusively, from exposure to the sun's fiercer
and more projectile rays. Hence the various
devices amongst southern nations for protecting
the cranium and its contents from far-darting
Apollo's shafts. In Italy postboys, carters,
and men of the working class generally, wear
a coloured cotton nightcap—sometimes two—
under the hat, to keep off the heat. The
superfluous tail of the gaudy cap, which is too long to
be drawn upon the head, is not lost to view
beneath the hat, but hangs down jauntily on one
side. Turkish turbans, and high thick Persian
caps, are still more effective contrivances for the
same purpose. The more ardent the sunshine,
the more dense and impenetrable must be the
shield against it. Any non-conducting substance
is good to wrap about the head; for whatever
will keep out cold will also keep out heat; or,
more accurately stated, whatever will keep
warmth in, will keep it out. Blankets keep
out heat, as well as cold. Ice, wrapped in three
or four folds of flannel, bears transport tolerably
for short distances.

Light, pervious, plaited, "ventilating" headgear,
such as straw-hats, with nothing but a
flimsy semi-lining of calico inside, are
useless, except for milk-and-water climates where
the sun shoots only a feeble ray, and summer
sets in "with its usual severity." Not a word, by
the way, be breathed against such climates; they
admit of much enjoyment, and engender few
torments or tormentors! But take a walk along
the Appian Way at two o'clock of an August
afternoon (when nobody, according to Italian
axiom, ventures to stir abroad except mad
dogs and Englishmen), with a light straw hat
upon your head, and you will soon wish for
a velvet skull-cap, or a double lining of extra-thick
felt. A wooden-bowl, even, as a helmet,
would be accepted; in default of which, you
might do worse than double your silk handkerchief
into many folds, and place it within the
crown, so as to extend from your organ of
benevolence to a little beyond that of self-esteem.
Stout brown paper is not to be despised as an
anti-caloric. Should you ever emigrate to
Vancouver's Island, or try a venture in sunny Queensland,
the art of folding paper into a cap may
prove something more than an amusing pastime.

With the cranium sufficiently protected, the
rest of the human frame seems to derive benefit
from exposure to the solar radiation, when not
too suddenly and violently applied. Sudden
exposure would blister or excoriate thin-skinned
folk, and would also be apt to derange the health
by modifying the insensible perspiration; but of