“Unto the white upturned wond’ring eyes
Of school-boys, that fall back to gaze on them,”
as they hang over the garden-wall, next to the road.
As to the other fruits, they look almost as handsome and inviting as ever they will. But we must be content to let them “enjoy the air they breathe” for a month or so longer, if we expect them to do the same by us.
Of London what shall we say, at this only one of its seasons when it has nothing to say for itself? when even the most immoveable of its citizens become migratory for at least a month, and permit their wives and daughters to play the parts of mermaids on the shores of Margate, while they themselves pore over the evening papers all the morning, and over the morning ones all the evening?—when ’Change Alley makes a transfer of half its (live) stock every Saturday to the Steine at Brighton, to be returnable by Snow’s coaches on Monday morning?—nay, when even the lawyers’ clerks themselves begin to grow romantic, and, neglecting their accustomed evening haunts at the Cock in Fleet-street, Offley’s, and the Cider Cellar, permit themselves to be steamed down from Billingsgate to Broadstairs, where they meditate moonlight sonnets to their absent Seraphinas (not without an eye to half-a-guinea each in the magazines), beginning with “Oh, come unto these yellow sands!”
What can be said of the Town at a time like this? The truth is, I am not disposed to quarrel with London (any more than I am with my “bread and butter,” and for a similar reason) at any season; so that the less I say or think of it now the better. Suffice it, that London in August is a species of nonentity, to all but those amateur architects who “go partnerships” in candle-lit grottos at the corners of courts. But, en revanche, it is to them a month that, like May to the chimney-sweepers, “only comes once a year.”
SEPTEMBER.
I am sorry to mention it, but the truth must be told, even in a matter of age. The Year, then, is on the wane. It is “declining into the vale” of months. It has reached “a certain age.” Its bloom (that indescribable something which surpasses and supersedes all mere beauty) is fled, and with it all its pretensions to be regarded as an object of passionate admiration.
A truce, then, to our treatment of the Months as mistresses. But let us henceforth look upon them as the next best thing, as dear and devoted friends: for