Mirror of the Months

by P. G. Patmore

Supposing ourselves, as usual, in the middle of the month, we shall find the seed Harvests quite completed, and even the ground on which they stood appearing under an entirely new aspect,—the Plough having opened, or being now in the act of opening, its fragrant breast, and exposing it for a while to the genial influence of the sun and air, before it is again called upon to perform its never-failing functions.

There are other Harvests, however, which are still to be gathered in; in particular, that most elegant and picturesque of all with which this country is acquainted, and which may also be considered as peculiar to this country, upon any thing like a great scale: I mean the Hop Harvest. In the few counties in which this plant is cultivated, we are now presented with the nearest semblance we can boast, of the Vintages of Italy and Spain.

The Apple Harvest, too, of the Cider counties takes place this month; and though I must not represent it as very fertile in the elegant and picturesque, let me not neglect to do justice to its produce, as the only one deserving the name of British Wine; all other so-called liquors being, the reader may rest assured, worse than poisons, in the exact proportion that specious hypocrites are worse than open, bold-faced villains.

I hope the good housewives of my country (the only country in the world which produces the breed) need not be told, that, in thus placarding the impostor above-named, I have not the slightest thought of hurting the high reputation of her immaculate “home-made,” which she so generously brings out from the bottom division of her shining beaufet, and presses (somewhat importunately) on every morning comer. She shall never have to ask me twice to taste even a second glass of it, always provided she calls it by its true and trustworthy name of “home-made”—to which, in my vocabulary, Montepulciano itself must yield the pas. But if, bitten perhaps by some London Bagman, she happen to have contracted an affection for fine phrases, and chooses to call her cordial by the style and title of “British wine”—away with it, for me! I would not touch it,

“Though ’twere a draught for Juno when she banquets.”

In fact, she might as well call it Cape at once!

The truth is, I once, to oblige an elderly lady at Hackney, did taste two glasses of “British wine” at a sitting; and my stomach has had a load (of sugar of lead) upon its conscience ever since.

It must be confessed, that the general face of the country has undergone a very material change for the worse since we left it last month; and none of its individual features, with the exception of the Woods and Groves, have improved in their appearance. The Fields are for the most part bare, and either black and arid with the remains of the Harvest that has been gathered from them, or at best but newly furrowed by the plough. The ever green Meadows are indeed still beautiful, and the more so for the Cattle that now stud them almost every where; the second crops of grass being long since off. The Hedge-rows, too, have lost much of their sweet tapestry of flowers, and even their late many-tinted greens are sobered down into one dull monotonous hue. And the berries and other wild fruits that the latter part of the season produces, do not vary this hue,—having none of them as yet assumed the colours of their maturity. It is true the Woodbine again flings up, here and there, its bunches of pale flowers, after having ceased to do so for many weeks. But they have no longer the rich luxuriance of their Spring bloom, nor even the delicious scent which belonged to them when the vigour of youth was upon them. They are the pale and feeble offspring of the declining life of their parent.

It follows, from this general absence of wild flowers, that we are now no longer greeted, on our morning or evening wanderings, by those exquisite odours that float about upon the wings of every Summer wind, and come upon the captivated sense like strains of unseen music.

Even the Summer birds, both songsters and others, begin to leave us—urged thereto by a prophetic instinct, that will not be disobeyed: for if they were to consult their feelings merely, there is no season at which the temperature of our climate is more delightfully adapted to their pleasures and their wants.